The Guardian 12 September, 2007
APEC: Failed economic policies
protected by police state powers
"How does taking away my rights and freedoms protect my rights and freedoms?" was a rhetorical question carried on one of the thousands of placards at the rally and march in Sydney on Saturday September 8. Sydney had been in lockdown mode for the previous five days, with road blocks and five kilometres of concrete and steel wire fencing excluding the public from the north of the central business district.
Draconian police state powers applied in "restricted" and "declared" areas. Snipers peered from the roofs of a number of city buildings, including the out-of-bounds Opera House. The lives of tens of thousands of people were disrupted: all of this for an APEC meeting of 21 government leaders with no suggestion of any terrorist threat.
"I have absolutely no doubt that minority groups will engage in a level of violence not previously experienced in Sydney", said Chief Superintendent Stephen Cullen, the head of the NSW Police Riot Squad, as though that justified the lockdown and overkill response to peaceful protests.
It was more like a military exercise where state and federal police, ASIO, private security, the military and other state agencies trialled integrated operations and used the public of Sydney and protestors in particular to test their operations. It was a demonstration of power and an opportunity to practice the shutting down of a city and crowd control.
On Saturday, the largest of a number of protest actions, the 15,000-20,000 demonstrators were all fenced in along the march route from the Town Hall to Hyde Park, this time by wall-to-wall police and paddy wagons (refurbished public transport buses turned into mobile prisons that can hold 140 people).
The protesters came despite a fear campaign by government and police.
The NSW Government’s new $600,000 water canon prowled the surrounding streets, and police dogs were waiting in the wings. The military were also ready to test their new powers to intervene in civilian matters.
Student actions on the previous Wednesday focused mainly on Bush and APEC — and the Friday protest in Hyde Park took up the question of free trade, human rights in the region and US imperialism. Relatively few placards at Saturday’s large demonstration made reference to APEC. Many people were using the demonstration as the last chance before the federal elections (due within 4 months) to make their voices heard and express dissent over a range of issues.
Trade unions, environmental, peace, solidarity, Greens, Communist Party, Socialist Alliance and other groups and many individuals and families marched.
They spoke out against the war on Iraq, called for Australian troops to get out, opposed the sale of uranium and the development of a nuclear industry in Australia, called for the closure of the US Pine Gap spy base, the repeal of WorkChoices anti-union legislation and for the defeat of the Howard Government.
Many protestors raised climate change, democratic rights, "Cage Bush, not Sydney", refugee rights and much more. Some groups directed their protest at specific government leaders at APEC such as from the Philippines, Burma and Chile, where trade union and human rights are abused.
"Not much civility from police chiefs, but scant civil disobedience" was the headline of an article by Tom Allard, National Security Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald (8-9-07). He was right. The lines of police, their abrupt and aggressive manner when the odd pedestrian tried to continue along Park Street beyond the wall of police was intimidating and provocative to say the least. Even under such oppressive conditions the people maintained a peaceful, carnival atmosphere.
Pedestrians on the pavement and protestors marching along were locked in, forced along the route and into Hyde Park. The police were armed with guns, mace gas, batons, a host of other gadgets and knuckle-duster gloves. Many of them had removed their ID badges so that they could not be identified later in the case of complaints.
Eighteen people were arrested on the day, some for the most minor of misdemeanours — one man spent the night in the lockup for apparently walking across the road in the wrong place.
Human Rights Monitors had 30 observers at the rally and march on the Saturday. There were an additional 40 solicitors and barristers providing legal advice for the week leading up to and including the main protest.
During the protest Monitors observed the disproportionate use of force for minor offences such as offensive language. The police exercised powers that only applied in a "restricted" or "declared" area, when they were not in such an area.
The march had been banned, by court order, from entering such areas. The Monitors will be issuing an interim report shortly detailing their concerns. An independent inquiry has been called for, but so far the government is resisting it. The police are currently investigating themselves.
Earlier in the week, 11 members of the public broadcaster ABC’s satirical comedy program, The Chaser’s War on Everything, were arrested after they were waved on through two security checkpoints in a mock cavalcade carrying Canadian flags. This humiliating (for those responsible for the $170 million spent on APEC security) prank provided comic relief to angry Sydney-siders, sick of all the disruptions, and it made headline news around the world.
Comments by the new NSW Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, were more worrying. Scipione suggested the comedians were fortunate not to have been shot by snipers.
Other arrests included a man who squirted tomato sauce on a pro-US banner and another individual who apparently used bad language.
PM’s bad week
What Prime Minister John Howard hoped would be a week of grandstanding and vote-winning glory, hobnobbing with world leaders from the US, Japan, Canada, Russia and China did not go so well.
In fact Howard did not have a very good week at all. He did get his TV and front-page media photos waving and smiling with his close chum and fellow war criminal George Bush. This might have been a vote winner 10 years ago, but at the moment Bush is as unpopular as Howard with the Australian people, as the anti-Bush placards of protestors demonstrated.
Howard will not have won any votes from this "security" overkill, the uncalled-for disruption and $300 million plus APEC bill.
Before APEC had finished, Liberal Party infighting over whether Howard should lead them into the elections had hit the airwaves. Public opinion polls indicate that Labor is set for a landslide victory and that Labor leader Kevin Rudd is streets ahead in the popularity stakes.
Rudd stole the show from Howard, welcoming Chinese President Hu Jintoa in fluent Mandarin at a public function and later holding private discussions with him, also in Mandarin. "You speak perfect Chinese and you know China inside out", Hu told Rudd. "I highly appreciate that". Such a remark would have been noted by big business who see the economic importance of China with its huge markets and rapidly expanding need for mineral resources. Rudd worked as a diplomat in China from 1986 to 1998.
Bush spent much of the week in the shadow of Hu, who gained respect, even from the China-bashing mass media, as an important, confident and capable world leader. Howard was also caught in a contradictory position with Australia’s economic interests lying with China but his government’s policies tying Australia militarily and politically to Uncle Sam’s coat tails (see China story). He found himself trying to reassure President Hu that the secretive talks between Australia, the US and Japan were not aimed at curbing China’s influence.
His rather hollow reassurances were undermined when a spokesperson said something about managing China.
Howard and Bush did not get it all their way in the final summit document, despite the use of bullying tactics. They were forced to accept the inclusion of references to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto. (see editorial). They are not having much success in trying to bypass the Kyoto Protocols which both leaders still refuse to sign.
The APEC communiqué reads like an exercise in diplomacy, with vaguely worded statements about what topics were discussed and "aspirational" goals that are not binding. The few targets that are set are long-term and in fact fall short of the commitments made by many present at the summit.
Howard and Bush did not get any agreement on the formation of a free trade area, just the scheduling of more talks about its feasibility. They had hoped to make some progress on this proposition, as a fallback position to the collapsing Doha round at the World Trade Organisation. The WTO negotiations resumed last week, at the same time as APEC was meeting.
While the formal APEC sessions delivered little, the various sideline bilateral and other meetings were far more important. Australia signed off on a $45 billion deal for gas with China, with Woodside Petroleum the main beneficiary. The deal with Russia was for uranium, worth $1 billion, also adding to the profits of the mining corporations.
Howard used APEC to announce Australia’s commitment to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a project of the US to promote the use of nuclear energy worldwide. He also signed up to a treaty on Defence Trade Cooperation with the US, giving the US military industry greater access to Australian markets and further integrating Australia’s military and other security forces with those of the US. It includes reference to exports for "combined military or counter-terrorism operations".