[asia-apec 383] Re: GATT Watchdog Media Release on APEC '99

[Gatt Watchdog]

Path: corso!gattwd
From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: GATT Watchdog Media Release on APEC '99
Message-ID: <LFNi4D1w165w at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 97 17:50:56 +1200
Reply-To: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog)
Organization: PlaNet Gaia Otautahi

                         MEDIA RELEASE

For Immediate Use

13 March 1997

"Unprecedented Security" for 1999 Auckland APEC Meeting: Government Dirty
Tactics Warning

A Christchurch group which organised an alternative international forum on
free trade and protest action during last July's APEC Trade Ministers Meeting
in Christchurch warns that the New Zealand government will use "dirty tactics"
to put down dissent against opponents of APEC in Auckland in 1999.  It also
warns of massive disruption to the lives of ordinary Aucklanders in order to
present a "false image" of New Zealand society to the international officials
and media expected to be present for the APEC meeting.

GATT Watchdog spokesperson, Aziz Choudry says: 
"While the question of foreign security services carrying arms to protect
overseas APEC Leaders is an important one to raise (NZ Herald 13/3/97), people
need to ask some hard questions about the lengths to which our own government
will go to provide "security" for visiting VIPs,and to mask the true social
costs of over a decade of domestic trade and investment liberalisation and
free market reforms.  The New Zealand government has shown itself to be
intolerant of dissent about its free trade, free market economic model.
There has been little genuine public debate about the merits or otherwise of
free trade."

"APEC is anti-democratic, unaccountable and driven by the interests of big
business.  Anyone who may in any way try to expose the myths of free trade
is likely to be labelled a "threat to national security" by the government.
The kind of stability and security which the government wants to offer
visiting dignitaries to the 1999 meeting and potential overseas investors
is a Clayton's version.  It is not based on open debate, genuine participatory
democracy and equality.  It is built on secrecy, economic extremism, and the
exclusion of increasing numbers of people from taking part in determining the
kind of development that they want for themselves and their children."

GATT Watchdog, a non-governmental group which advocates fair trade and lobbies
against unrestricted trade and investment liberalisation is writing to the
Minister in Charge of Security and the Minister of Police seeking assurances
that people engaged in legitimate protest activity against APEC will not be
targeted with anti-democratic tactics by intelligence agencies and the Police.

Mr Choudry was at the centre of what has now been revealed to be a bungled
Security Intelligence Service (SIS) operation the night before the APEC Trade
Ministers Meeting began.  His house was broken into by two intelligence agents
while he was organising the "Trading With Our Lives" alternative forum on
free trade.  The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is currently
investigating his complaint against the SIS.  Mr Choudry's home, and that of
Corso official and academic Dr David Small (who gave a paper at the forum)
were subsequently searched by Police allegedly looking for "bomb-making
equipment", after a hoax device marked "Apec bomb" was discovered outside
Christchurch City Council offices.  Neither men had any involvement in the
"bomb" incident and suspect SIS involvement in the matter.

"Last year's operations directed against GATT Watchdog make us believe that
the Government is far more concerned about people voicing alternative views
on free trade than it is in "terrorist" threats.  Our only "crime" was to
challenge the APEC agenda as promoting socially unjust and environmentally
unsustainable outcomes.  New legislation passed last July gives the SIS a
carte blanche to surveill any group or individual considered to be a threat
to 'national security".  "Security" is now defined as "the making of a
contribution to New Zealand's international well-being or economic well-being;
and the protection of New Zealand from acts of espionage, sabotage, terrorism,
and subversion, whether or not they are directed from or intended to be
committed within New Zealand".  Given that one of the government's central
tenets is a commitment to market reforms and through GATT and APEC, trade and
investment liberalisation, it seems that those who challenge this economic
recipe are deemed to be threats to security and fair game for SIS surveillance
and harassment.  And the heavy-handed tactics of the Police at CHOGM and ADB
meetings show that they too are being used to provide the muscle to protect
New Zealand's free market economy".

Mr Choudry, who has attended alternative forums on APEC organised by
non-governmental organisations held at the time of the last two APEC leaders
summits in Osaka and Manila says:

"If preparations for previous APEC Leaders Summits are anything to go by, the
New Zealand government will bend over backwards to accommodate the whims of
APEC leaders and to showcase the New Zealand "economic miracle" - at the
expense of local people.  We are told that the final bill for hosting the 1999
Summit will exceed $28 million.  But the true cost will actually be much
higher.  It will be borne by ordinary people whose rights to determine their
own futures have been steadily eroded by successive governments which have
handed over control to transnational investors backed up by faceless,
undemocratic bodies such as the World Trade Organisation. APEC Leaders Summits
have been accompanied by human rights abuses.  Will Auckland be any different?
In Manila last year, tens of thousands of urban poor were forcibly relocated
and their homes demolished prior to the APEC Summit so that the government
could present a false impression of "economic growth" and prosperity.   Will
the homeless and people in the poorer suburbs of Auckland be trucked out to
Hamilton so that they will not create "eyesores" and proof of the existence of
poverty in New Zealand for the important visitors to see?  Will anyone who
opposes APEC and its free trade agenda be detained as a preventive security
measure or smeared as "terrorists and subversives" as the Ramos administration
sought to do last November in the Philippines?"


For further comment phone Aziz Choudry (GATT Watchdog) at:
(03) 3662803 (w) or (03) 3484763 (h)


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    GATT Watchdog, Box 1905, Otautahi (Christchurch) 8015, Aotearoa
          (New Zealand).  Ph 64 3 3662803 Fax 64 3 3484763
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