[asia-apec 225] Multinational Monitor editoral on APEC blacklist

[Robert Weissman]

Attached is an editorial from the forthcoming issue of Multinational 
Monitor. For those on this list, it covers familiar ground, but the 
discussion toward the end, relating to comments made by Philippine 
Embassy staff during last week's protest in Washington, D.C. may be of 
interest.

Robert Weissman
Essential Information			|   Internet:	rob at essential.org

Banned: Nobel Peace Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Laureate 
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Japanese Bishop Aloisus Nobuo Soma, Danielle 
Mitterand, wife of the former French president.
	So decreed the government of the Philippines in October in 
refusing entry to at least 100 peace and human rights activists. 
	The government concluded that the activists, expected to seek 
entry to attend a non-governmental organization (NGO) meeting to be held 
parallel to a Manila summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation 
(APEC), were "potential troublemakers." APEC is an economic grouping of 
18 countries, including the United States, Japan, China, the Philippines 
and Indonesia. Heads of state will be attending the APEC summit in late 
November.
	Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos acknowledged in a 
teleconference at the U.S. National Press Club that the banned activists 
did not pose any genuine security threat to the Philippines or the APEC 
gathering.
	Ramos and the Philippine government deem the activists "potential 
troublemakers" not because of the threat they pose to physical security, 
but because of the threat they pose with their ideas -- including 
especially the idea that the people of East Timor should be free from 
repression by the Indonesian military and afforded the right to self 
determination. 
	Indonesia invaded the small nation of East Timor in 1975. In the 
two subsequent decades, one-third of all East Timorese -- more than 
200,000 people -- are estimated to have lost their lives in massacres 
carried out by the Indonesian military and due to forced starvation. 
	Jose Ramos-Horta, special representative of the National Council 
of Maubere Resistance, the underground umbrella organization representing 
East Timorese groups opposing Indonesian occupation, received this year's 
Nobel Peace Prize (along with Timorese Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo) for 
his work on behalf of East Timor. Ramos-Horta has called for a 10-year 
phase out of the Indonesian occupation, to be followed by a UN-sponsored 
referendum on self-determination for East Timor. The other activists on 
the APEC blacklist have also been prominent opponents of Indonesia's 
brutal and illegal occupation of East Timor.
	The Philippines' proximate motivation for imposing the ban was 
clearly a desire to please Indonesia. Indonesia recently helped broker a 
peace settlement on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao between 
the Philippine government and Muslim rebels.
	Broader concerns also underlay the Philippine decision, however. 
The APEC meeting is supposed to focus on trade and economics, says Jose 
Ebro, a spokesperson with the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. 
Discussions of political and security issues, even if planned to take 
place at a citizen forum like the Manila People's Forum on APEC, should 
be held at a different time, he says. Holding them simultaneously might 
introduce a "disruptive influence," Ebro claims.
	Ebro's vague expressed concern about "disruptive influences" is 
vague is subject to two interpretations. One is an actual terrorist 
threat, but since President Ramos himself has clarified that there is no 
security problem posed by the banned activists, that is hard to take 
seriously.
	The second sense in which Ebro uses the term "disruptive 
influence" is to suggest that the citizen meeting might divert the 
official APEC discussions, and the media gathered to cover the summit, 
from a narrow focus on trade and economic issues divorced from other 
considerations. One particular fear he expresses is that private sector 
meetings scheduled during the summit might be "disrupted" by citizen 
discussions and street protests -- and that these disruptions might 
interfere with the Philippines' effort to showcase itself to foreign 
investors during the APEC meeting.
	The mass banning is not just some quirky move by an insecure 
government. The Philippines is the current chair of APEC, and its actions 
reflect on the entire APEC grouping. 
	The APEC agenda is still inchoate and contested, but is vectored 
toward free trade and dismantling of strong governments [see 
"INTERVIEW"]. If the APEC is to be anything more than a secretive cabal 
of bureaucrats gathering to redesign national laws and fashion a free 
trade area as demanded by big business, it must be open to participation 
from the public. At minimum, that must mean allowing critics of APEC or 
APEC government policies to speak freely on issues of concern -- and 
without regard to an artificial, neat and tidy distinction between 
economics and trade on the one hand, and politics, human rights and 
social concerns on the other.
	This must be a foundational principle of APEC, respected even by 
those hoping to turn APEC into the world's largest free trade area. If 
the Philippines refuses to reconsider and revise its decision to impose 
the APEC blacklist, the leaders of the other APEC countries -- with U.S. 
President Bill Clinton leading the way -- should refuse to attend the 
Manila summit.