BY TIM E.STEWART
BRISBANE — A car, bus and bicycle cavalcade to the March 2 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) is being planned. The meeting will be held at the Hyatt Resort at Coolum Beach on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane.
Originally intended to be held in Brisbane in October last year, CHOGM will now be held without the "fireworks and fairyfloss" of the Peoples Festival that was originally planned. The second largest gathering of heads of government outside of the United Nations, the 2002 CHOGM will be attended by Queen Elizabeth and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The CHOGM Action Alliance has been launched to coordinate protests outside the opening of the international conference. Under the theme "Drop the debt, not the bomb — Another world is possible", the protests oppose global inequality, Third World debt, and the US-led "infinite" war.
The central focus of many protesters, however, will be on defending refugee rights. The CHOGM protest is a big opportunity to publicly counter the shameless racism of Howard and Ruddock. A determined and vocal protest by a broad coalition of peace, social justice and political groups outside a meeting of world leaders could have an impact on public opinion.
"Prime Minister John Howard said that refugees hunger striking at the Woomera detention centre are 'morally intimidating' Australians", Brisbane Resistance organiser Maria Voukelatos told Green Left Weekly. "It's time for us to answer that with mass peaceful protests that call for all detention centres to be closed, and for all asylum seekers to be freed with full citizenship rights — not temporary protection visas."
Voukelatos also said that the protests would call for a treaty between Aborigines and the Australian government.
According to Voukelatos, CHOGM 2002 "should be remembered as an international summit where Australia's record of racist human rights abuses are condemned by those inside and outside."
The CHOGM Action Alliance meets Mondays 6.30pm, Conference Room, 74 Astor Terrace, Spring Hill. For more information, or to join the Resistance contingent to the CHOGM protests, phone (07) 3831 2644 or email <brisbane@resistance.org.au>.
From Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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