BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS
& LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — Anti-corporate globalisation and anti-war protesters won
a significant victory on November 13-15, when they successfully defied
a NSW government ban on protest marches during the ministerial meeting
of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which was being held at the Novotel
Hotel at Olympic Park, Homebush.
In scenes reminiscent of 1970s Queensland under the rule of premier
Joh Bjelke-Petersen's National Party government, police chief Dick Adams
announced on November 12 that all marches during the WTO meeting were banned.
The ban was imposed despite the fact that protest organisers had stated
repeatedly that the demonstrations would be peaceful and most actions would
be nowhere near the meeting site.
As Margo Kingston, writing on the Sydney Morning Herald's web
site, noted: “It meant that the only way for dissenters to the WTO agenda
to make their point to the public — a street march — had been outlawed.[Adams]
trashed fundamental civil liberties in the state of NSW.”
The announcement of the ban followed a week of a capitalist media scare
campaign about anticipated “protester violence”, which was clearly aimed
at scaring people away from the protests and demonising those that did
take part.
Despite this intimidation, successful marches were held. On November
13, the Free Movement of the People march, in support of refugees' rights,
attracted 500 people (see report on page 5) to its starting point at Sydney
Town Hall. On November 14, 1200 demonstrators, including several hundred
from interstate, marched through the Sydney CBD, protesting outside the
headquarters of multinational corporations, and the US consulate and PM
John Howard's office along the route. On November 15, 500 activists marched
for an hour to reach Olympic Park for a rally outside the Novotel.
November 14
Protest activities on November 14 got underway with around 800 mainly young
protesters gathering at 8am in Martin Place, near the Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade. They were organised in a number of blocs and contingents,
the main ones being the socialist groups, including Resistance, the International
Socialist Organisation and Socialist Alternative, as well as the Orange
Bloc, which is influenced by anarchist and autonomist ideas, the Reclaim
the Streets contingent, the Yellow Bloc, initiated by university education
collectives, and the Green Bloc.
Liz, from the Yellow Bloc, told Green Left Weekly that she was
at the protests to “connect this big meeting with the Nelson Review, full
up-front fees and funding cuts to subjects like the arts that do not make
money”. Tara, from the Palestinian Social Forum Group, said she was there
because the “WTO is an economic version of the military used against the
world and against Palestine”.
Protest organiser and Resistance national coordinator Simon Butler said:
“We are here for the same reason that 1 million people mobilised in Florence
on November 9: to oppose the economic and social terror that the WTO inflicts
on the people of the Third World and the military terror that the US, British
and Australian governments want to inflict on the people of Iraq.”
Just after 9am, the protesters defied the ALP government's ban and marched
up of Martin Place in a passionate, colourful and musical procession, chanting
“No racism, no war: this is what we're fighting for” and “No Borders, no
nations, no deportations”. One protester, wearing a George Bush mask, rode
a plastic missile inscribed with the words “Democracy, we deliver”.
At the US consulate, protesters burned a US flag and chanted “Exxon,
Mobile, BP, Shell: take your war and go to hell”. Three protesters were
dragged off by police for lying down on the pavement, naked except for
the “blood” painted on their bodies.
The marchers then made their way to Australasian Correctional Management's
headquarters, which operates Australia's refugee prisons. Passers-by waved,
shouted and tooted their support all along the way. Before they reached
ACM, more than a dozen police on horses charged a small group of protesters
who had marched down a side street. A journalist who works for the Australian
newspaper, Patricia Karvelas, was trampled by horses and severely bruised.
About a dozen people were arrested but most charges were later dropped.
For all the media hype about “violence” generated by NSW police minister
Michael Costa and the police chiefs, this was the only “incident” in the
more than six hours of protests in the city. It was provoked by the police.
They were responsible for the only serious injury to occur all day.
At 11am, the marchers arrived at Sydney Town Hall to join an anti-war
rally which had been initiated by Resistance, and supported by the Greens,
Socialist Alliance, the International Socialist Organisation and other
groups. Simon Cunich, from the Illawarra Grammar Social Action Group and
a Resistance member, told the crowd that many high school students had
walked out of class for the rally because they want to stop the war on
Iraq before it starts.
The now 1200-strong march moved off to a nearby McDonald's, where the
Socialist Alliance's Sam Wainwright spoke about the US drive to war, most
immediately against Iraq. “How can these people going to catch the terrorists?
They are the terrorists! What we need is a movement like that which
stopped the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. Such a movement is being
born, as the 40,000 people who recently protested in Melbourne against
the war on Iraq showed. We need a movement that is about the self-organisation
of ordinary people.”
When the march returned to the US consulate, Denis Doherty, an organiser
of the Walk Against the War to be held in Sydney on November 30, and Palestinian
activist Nikolai Haddad addressed the protesters.
At noon, the marchers arrived at an almost empty Hyde Park to join a
“fair trade” lunchtime rally which had been organised by some trade unions
and NGOs. By the time the speakers began, 300 more people had arrived.
Pat Ranald, from the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, told
the crowd that she believed in free trade, but that it must also be democratic.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Doug Cameron
said he was for “fair trade, not free trade”, and called for the reform
of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank by the inclusion of social
protection clauses. Drop the Debt campaigner Father Brian Gore underlined
how the ugly sisters of the WTO — the IMF and the World Bank — also “screw
the poor of the world”.
Predictably, given the government's failure to intimidate protesters
off the streets, Costa was quoted in the Daily Telegraph the next
day as saying that the “atrocious behaviour by this ratbag element who
tried to seize Sydney streets shows clearly these people came here to cause
trouble, not to protest”.
“Costa is absolutely wrong”, Iggy Kim, one of the protest organisers,
told GLW. “We were peaceful and our message of opposition to the
war and the WTO was clear.”
November 15
On the morning of November 15, 500 people marched from Flemington train
station to the Novotel in Olympic Park. All trains to Olympic Park station
had been cancelled and hundreds of riot police, some with attack dogs,
swarmed around the venue. The protesters assembled in the police-designated
“protest area”, a heavily fenced car park about 500 metres from the Novotel,
chanting and being entertained by a troupe of “anti-corporate cheer leaders”
from Lismore.
When a small group from the Orange Bloc began to shake a section of
the fence, the police charged, knocking dozens of people to the ground
and dragging others away to a portable lock-up inside the fence.
Forty people were arrested before the protesters met to discuss the
problem of being outnumbered by police in a very isolated location. They
voted overwhelmingly to unite and march back to Flemington station, then
travel back to Town Hall to hold a march.
The police, in a blatant political manoeuvre to break up the united
and very spirited “victory march” that was proceeding out of Olympic Park,
suddenly formed a human chain across the only exit road, causing fear and
panic among the protesters. Once again, however, the marchers overcame
the police provocation and intimidation and, with chants of “This is not
a police state, we have the right to demonstrate”, regrouped behind the
police lines and marched to the train station.
Commenting on the NSW Labor government's handling of the protests, Kim
told GLW: “We fought and won an important victory for civil liberties
this week. If the politicians had got away with removing our right to march
when the WTO is in town, it would have been that much easier for them to
ban any protest march in the future, whether it be against war, for workers'
rights, or in defence of civil rights. It was a mistake for some trade
union leaders and organisers of the fair trade rally in Hyde Park to pull
back from organising a march after their rally on the pretext that it might
provoke violence. They allowed themselves to be intimidated out of asserting
a hard-won democratic right. The only way to stop attacks on our civil
liberties is to defy those attacks, peacefully and in large numbers.”
From Green Left Weekly, November 20, 2002.
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