Darwin protests against APEC
BY LARISA FREIVERTSDARWIN — Media mongrels, APEC staffers and plainclothes police watched guardedly as 60 people gathered in Raintree Park on June 7 in a lively protest action against the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting of trade ministers. The APEC meeting was the largest meeting of trade ministers since the Millennium Round of trade liberalisation talks was abandoned in the wake of mass demonstrations in Seattle in November.
The trade ministers, representing 21 countries in the region, pressed the World Trade Organisation for an early relaunch of the Millennium Round, although they bickered about what exactly should be discussed within it. The protesters outside, however, rejected the call for a new round, saying that the "free trade" policies enforced on poor nations by previous rounds had damaged the environment and undermined democratic rights and workers' living standards.
The NT Environment Centre's Mark Wakeham spoke told the protesters about the many environmental protection laws that had been undermined by WTO agreements, and Peter Johntson from Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor said that the trade ministers' meeting symbolised what was wrong with trade liberalisation. It hands power to unelected and unaccountable elites and bureaucracies, he argued.
Other speakers included representatives from the Democratic Socialist Party, Resistance and the International Women's Day Collective. Fair Trade hosted a "Fair trade, not free trade tea party".