[asia-apec 997] The Real APEC Scandal 1/2

[Jonathan Oppenheim]

Copyright Saturday Night Magazine Ltd.
February 1999. Cover Story.

THE REAL APEC SCANDAL: Why did Suharto think he could push Canada around?
Because he understood our place in the new global economy better than we do
by Naomi Klein

On big document days at the RCMP Public Complaints Commission last fall, a
table was set up on the third floor of the Plaza of Nations Conference
Centre in Vancouver to distribute the latest stacks of evidence to
reporters. On these mornings, the journalists covering the inquiry, myself
included, would crowd around the commission clerk stationed behind the
table and each pay fifteen dollars or so to cover photocopying costs - "I'm
sorry it's so high," she would say, "it's just that there are so many."
Then, in the few minutes before the hearings got started, we would flip
through the pile, hoping that hidden somewhere in the hundreds of pages of
confidential police and government documents was a smoking gun. On most
days, this was an exercise in frustration. More often than not, there was
nothing in the documents at all - nothing, at any rate, that we were
looking for. No offhand remark by a police officer about an urgent phone
call from Jean Chrétien. No minutes from a meeting where it was officially
decided to throw out the RCMP policy manual in order to appease a dictator.
Nothing about whose idea it was to use so much pepper spray.

        After it had been thoroughly mined for whatever quotes seemed
usable - a line here, a line there - that day's pile of evidence would be
carried into the APEC document room, a cramped little cubicle across the
hall from the Complaints Commission hearing room that contained nothing but
a phone, a chair, and a desk, on top of which sat eleven stuffed white
binders. Before the inquiry was sent into suspended animation in late
October, more than 3,000 pages of documents had been deposited in this
room: declassified e-mails from various government ministries and
ambassadors, minutes from diplomatic meetings, letters sent to foreign
heads of state, handwritten notes about security walk-throughs,
risk-assessment reports, and transcripts of police radio communications.
The room sat empty most of the time, disturbed only by the occasional
reporter with a dead cellular battery who would pop in to call the office.

        The real action, or so we thought, was taking place across the
hall. That was where, beginning last September 14, a panel of three
commissioners and a throng of journalists sat listening to testimony about
the use of police force at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit
held at the University of British Columbia in November, 1997. As every
Canadian with a television knows, RCMP officers subdued protesters, many of
them university students, by hosing them with pepper spray and hauling them
off in police vans. The commission was convened to determine whether the
force used by the police was excessive.

        What brought the APEC protest story back into the media spotlight
last September was the release of a series of letters and memos revealing
that in the months leading up to the summit, the Canadian government was
involved in high-level negotiations with the Indonesian government over
whether or not Suharto, then the president of Indonesia, would be coming to
Vancouver at all. According to the documents, Suharto had been preoccupied
with the idea that he would be confronted by anti-Indonesian protesters
during his visit to Canada - an unacceptable "embarrassment." The Canadian
government, the documents showed, took this concern extremely seriously,
making concessions that put the RCMP under extraordinary pressure and may
have led directly to the pepper-spray incidents.

        With this new information, the RCMP crackdown at APEC - originally
dismissed as run-of-the-mill heavy-handed policing - suddenly became an
international whodunit: Who gave the orders to clear the students out? Who
wanted the protest signs taken down? Whose idea was it to use pepper spray
as crowd control? Was there ever a real security risk at APEC at all?

        Unfortunately, the documents that the government has subsequently -
and begrudgingly - released hold no definitive answers to these questions.
The Prime Minister's Office and the RCMP have been extraordinarily
unco-operative with the Complaints Commission, invoking the "national
security" and "international relations" defence to block out large sections
of text in the few directly relevant documents they have produced. (A
typically lucid passage: "United States Secret Service demands to [blank].
Secret service demands for [blank]. Secret Service demands to [blank].")
Then there are pieces of the puzzle that are missing entirely. For
instance, even though there are at least three separate occasions in the
documents when Foreign Affairs officials suggest that Jean Chrétien place a
call directly to Suharto, his office denies that such a phone call ever
took place - but so far has failed to produce the phone records that might
prove that claim.

        In the absence of a more complete account of what happened behind
the scenes at the APEC Summit, what has been released looks an awful lot
like a smokescreen. It's a classic strategy used by governments under fire:
deflect media criticism of your unwillingness to release damning documents
by burying the media in paper - every document but the ones they want.
Thanks to the voluminous evidence submitted by the RCMP, for example, we
now know that "Fred Yehia of National Glass has contacted us on numerous
occasions regarding extra tickets for official APEC events for members of
his family." We also know that "The unscheduled golf game created added
demands on ERT [Emergency Response Team]." That "the condition of the
Forces inventory of armoured limos is extremely poor. . . [and] kept two
mechanics busy full time." And that the "portable bathrooms at BC Place did
not materialize."

        Thus far, the smokescreen seems to have worked. Without a smoking
gun, the attention of the media and the opposition parties has moved on,
mostly to the commission process itself. The downfall of Solicitor General
Andy Scott; CBC reporter Terry Milewski and his e-mails; Commission Chair
Gerald Morin's dramatic resignation - each has taken its turn as the story
of the week. The fading interest in the documents in favour of more
personal subjects is perfectly understandable: for all their physical heft,
the papers sitting stoically in their white binders in Vancouver are
remarkably flimsy as evidence of a conspiracy to abridge Canadians' civil
rights.

        And yet, hidden within those binders, there is a story - though
it's a story very different from the one we have been looking for. If you
take the time to read through the vast pile of APEC documents, past the
large censored passages and the golf-game schedules, what emerges is a
story of a country being forced to face up to its changed place in the
world. It's a story of money and power and the global economy. And it's a
story that, for Canadians proud of their country's history, is often
painful to read. The portrait these documents paint of our nation is one
that only a few Canadians have seen, and one that is sharply at odds with
the way we have always liked to think of ourselves, our country, and the
place we occupy on the world stage.




Since the end of the second world war, Canada's international self-image
has been tightly bound up in the idea that our nation is a "middle power" -
not a superpower, granted, but one notch down. Though Canada has always
lacked the population, military might, and riches to make a name for itself
in either war or trade, Canadian politicians and diplomats, beginning in
the late 1940s, found a way for Canada to play a relatively big
international role, by focusing their energies on what the Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade now refers to as "the projection of
Canadian values around the world." Canada, it was determined in a somewhat
grandiose, often patronizing manner, would be a global moderating force,
reining in the hot tempers and authoritarian impulses of the U.S., the
U.K., China, and the Soviet Union. At the same time, we would encourage
those smaller, impulsive, disorganized Third World countries to live up to
their potential by becoming more democratic and respectful of human rights.
When any of these intemperate forces found themselves in a dispute, Canada
would offer itself up as an "honest broker." Canadian leadership in the
area of peacekeeping and international development, though erratic, allowed
Canadians to think of their country as a player in the same league as the
most powerful nations in the world.

        For the most part, we still think of ourselves that way. In
contemporary grade-nine history textbooks with names like Canada: A Growing
Concern, students are taught to imagine our country as a force to be
reckoned with. "Although Canada was not one of the 'Big Five,' " Allan Hix
and Fred Jarman write, "it was only one rung down on the international
ladder and had become a major middle power."

        Canada's new strength is in what Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd
Axworthy calls our "soft power." "I believe that Canada has the potential
to be one of a group of influential countries which will steer the course
of future events," Axworthy writes in a typically upbeat article in the
spring, 1997, International Journal. "However, to secure this position,
Canada must effectively cultivate and wield what has come to be called
'soft power.' "

        Apparently, this New Age mélange of information technologies,
information access, and international mediation will allow Canada to beat
out countries with hard power the way paper beats rock. Soft power,
Axworthy writes, "blurs, even counters, the perception of traditional power
assets, such as military force, economic might, resources, and population."
This soft power is increasingly connected, in the rhetoric of the
Department of Foreign Affairs, with trade. Canada's push for democracy and
human rights abroad is now supposed to occur less at the United Nations and
more on trade missions. This is the doctrine known as "constructive
engagement," and it has been used to justify Canadian trade with repressive
régimes including China, Cuba, Indonesia, and even Burma, on which both the
U.S. and the European Union have imposed stronger sanctions than Canada
has.

        When it came to constructively engaging with Suharto's Indonesia -
one of the most brutal dictatorships of the past fifty years - the theory
was that at, say, a meeting with President Suharto about securing mining
rights for Canadian companies, Prime Minister Chrétien would quietly lean
over and push for the release of a jailed union leader. Presumably, Suharto
would take this to heart, not only because of Canada's economic involvement
with Indonesia, but also because of Canada's secure place in the family of
nations, and its reputation as a respected middle power.




But buried in the white binders of the APEC document room is a very
different picture of Canada's relationship with the world. The APEC
documents - read in their entirety - clearly demonstrate that the whole
idea of Canada as a middle power, acting as the world's conscience, is
nothing short of a national delusion. The fact is that as the APEC Summit
approached, we weren't leaning over and whispering to the Indonesians about
their more repressive tendencies - the Indonesians were leaning over and
shouting at us about our more democratic ones. Over and over again in the
letters, memos, and minutes stacked up in the document room, it is
Indonesia doing the pushing around, and Canada pliantly offering itself up
to be pushed.

        The newspapers have reported that the Indonesians were upset about
a nationwide poster campaign that the East Timor Alert Network (ETAN) had
launched portraying Suharto as a wanted criminal, and about the fact that
East Timor liberation leader José Ramos Horta was scheduled to speak at the
parallel People's Summit to be held in Vancouver during the APEC Summit.
What the reports do not convey is either the extent or the tenacity of
Indonesian pressure on these matters. The documents reveal that at least
half a dozen different officials in the Canadian government were approached
by the Indonesians and their emissaries. Axworthy was warned directly by
the foreign minister of Indonesia that if "these groups could not be
controlled," Suharto would not be coming to Canada. At a meeting in
Vancouver, a team of Indonesian diplomats "complained forcefully and at
great length" about their protocol concerns, threatening that Canada's
failure to meet with their conditions "would have 'severe impact' on
bilateral relations." The Indonesians made their demands known through
every available channel: a representative of the Philippines government
passed on one veiled threat; another document reveals that the Indonesian
consulate in Vancouver directly presented to the RCMP officer co-ordinating
APEC security a list of "approximately 100 questions for which [the
Indonesians] wanted written answers."

        Even more revealing than the extent of the Indonesian pressure is
the reaction this pressure elicited from the Canadians. The documents show
representatives of our government frantically scrambling to comply with
Suharto's wishes. A letter from Axworthy to Indonesian Foreign Affairs
Minister Ali Alatas states that "security measures being implemented for
the duration of the [summit] will not permit demonstrators on any sidewalks
immediately adjacent to the Hotel Vancouver [where Suharto was staying] or
on any access route into the Hotel. I can assure you that they will not be
permitted in close proximity to the President." RCMP Staff Sergeant Peter
Montague reports on an advance meeting he conducted with the Indonesian
APEC delegation: "I assured them that if there was a demonstration on a
major motorcade route, we would take an alternate route to avoid potential
embarrassment. . . . They asked me several times to repeat this assurance
and I did."

        Briefing notes for Chrétien on a letter to Suharto state that:
"Your letter to Indonesia's President Suharto contains additional language
acknowledging his personal concerns and stressing your determination that
all arrangements will be taken to ensure an uneventful stay in Vancouver."
Jean Carle, the prime minister's director of operations, and Robert
Vanderloo, an APEC Summit organizer, are described in one document
seriously discussing bringing extra trees to the UBC campus to make sure
the leaders wouldn't catch a glimpse of anything unpleasant. An e-mail from
an RCMP inspector refers to "Jean Carle and Robert's request to have
demonstrators pushed back a bit further than originally planned. In
addition, Robert is considering placing plants/trees at the foot of gate 4
so that when the leaders depart, they will be surrounded by trees etc.
(esthetically pleasing)." Documents refer to Peter Donolo, director of
communications for the prime minister, being "cautious about anything which
may cause discomfort to the PM's guests." And Jaggi Singh, the man the
police had singled out as the most radical of the ETAN activists, was
pre-emptively arrested on the UBC campus before the anti-Suharto
demonstration was scheduled to unfold.

        What is most striking about the documents is that they do not
contain a single example of any Canadian government official standing up
proudly in defence of Canada's democracy - "leading by example," as the
rhetoric of constructive engagement would have it. Not only does Suharto
get his way on several key issues, but the Canadian government puts up
absolutely no resistance - the prospect of fighting for "Canadian values"
is never even raised. On the rare occasions when the Canadians refuse a
particularly outrageous Indonesian demand - like denying Ramos Horta a visa
to enter the country - one has the impression that our officials are not
standing up for Canadian laws so much as cowering behind them. For
instance, Jean Chrétien's "talking points" for a meeting with Suharto
instruct him to explain that, "In the case of Ramos Horta, the Canadian
government had no ground under Canadian law and regulations for preventing
his entry to Canada or his participation in the Summit." Hardly a
principled rebuff.

        Even Axworthy goes out of his way to distance himself from the more
uncomfortable results of living in a country where free speech is
constitutionally enshrined. According to the minutes from his meeting with
Indonesian Foreign Minister Alatas, Axworthy "apologized for the poster
campaign [by ETAN]. . . . It was outrageous and excessive and not the way
Canadians behaved."

        This is a long way from the days when Prime Minister Lester B.
Pearson asserted that "our foreign policy must not be timid or fearful of
commitments but activist in accepting international responsibilities." One
can scarcely imagine a nation more timid and more fearful than the Canada
depicted in the APEC documents. Ours, it would seem, is a very soft power
indeed.




So how did Canada, at a summit of world leaders held on our soil, wind up
playing handmaiden instead of host? Is it because, as the opposition
parties insist, the Liberals are too cowardly to "get tough" with
dictators? Is it because, as the free-trade opponents say, the government
was too busy protecting the investments of mining companies to give much
thought to civil liberties? There's no question that Canadian officials
could have stood up more forcefully to Suharto, but even if they had, the
basic power dynamic would have remained unchanged. We would still be left
with the question of why Suharto was so casually reckless in his
relationship to us, and why our representatives were so clearly frightened
in response. Canadian politicians were so uniformly servile that their
servility seems almost to have been an expression of official government
policy. Are we missing something here?

        Maybe we are. Maybe we have been looking in the wrong place.
Perhaps the discrepancy between Canada's self-image and the reality of the
rather sorry-looking country on display in the APEC document room has less
to do with Jean Chrétien's apparent fondness for dictators than with the
falling price of wheat; less to do with diplomacy than with radical shifts
in the global hierarchy. The truth is, when Indonesia's leaders looked at
Canada during the preparations for APEC, they did not see a potent middle
power. They saw an inferior power, an economic weakling - more dependent on
Indonesia than the other way around.

[more...]




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