BY TIMOTHY KERSWELL

BRISBANE — Premier Peter Beattie's February 12 media statement, entitled “50 reasons not to protest this years' Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting” (CHOGM) is a deceptive attempt to prevent people from joining the March 2 protest at Coolum.

Beattie quotes a mass of statistics to “prove” that CHOGM helps to reduce poverty in the Third World.

But while CHOGM has paid lip service to “helping small countries respond positively to the challenges of globalisation”, it does not call for the cancellation of all Third World debt, a fact which Beattie fails to even mention.

Many Third World countries are completely crippled by the need to make debt repayments — on debts which grow every year, as even the interest is unpayable. Yet debt is not even on the CHOGM agenda. Without debt cancellation, Third World poverty will continue to grow.

Resistance, which will attend the CHOGM protests, is calling for three things: Cancellation of Third World debt, a treaty with Indigenous people and freedom for refugees in Australia. If the Australian government does not meet the last two, we are calling for its expulsion from the Commonwealth.

In his release, Beattie does not mention any of these demands — implying that protesters just disagree with the existence of the Commonwealth. Protesters are not attempting to shut down the meeting. Resistance wants the international community, and Australian people, to pressure the Howard government to reverse its policy of mandatory detention.

CHOGM has taken anti-racist positions before. Its stance against South African apartheid was influential in ending that system and currently Fiji is suspended from the Commonwealth due to the racist actions of former dictator George Speight. Yet now, while the Australian government is exposed before the whole world as a racist nation — a persecutor of refugees — CHOGM is silent.

The Australian government's failure to negotiate a treaty with Indigenous Australians is further evidence of institutionalised racism, for which it should be suspended from the Commonwealth.

That is why people should protest at CHOGM — because together we can take a stand against racism and Third World exploitation.

[Timothy Kerswell is a member of Resistance. Protesters will be meeting at noon on March 2, at the corner of David Lowe Way and Warran Road, Coolum (outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel). To travel on a bus from Brisbane, phone (07) 3831 2644.]

From Green Left Weekly, February 20, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

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