By Leigh Cookson
AUCKLAND — With less than a year to go before the 1999 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) leaders' summit here, a high-profile civil court case against the New Zealand spy agency, the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), has left many New Zealanders wondering how far the government will go in cracking down on dissent against APEC's narrow economic agenda and the extremist new right policies which it is hell-bent on pursuing.
Just before New Zealand last hosted a major APEC meeting, when APEC trade ministers met in Christchurch in July 1996, two SIS agents were caught at the home of GATT Watchdog organiser (and occasional Green Left Weekly contributor) Aziz Choudry. They had entered his house, disturbing documents, but nothing seemed to have been taken.
The bungled break-in occurred during an alternative forum on free trade organised by GATT Watchdog, a coalition of NGOs and community groups campaigning against GATT/WTO, APEC, the MAI and other free trade and investment arrangements.
Bomb hoax
After the official APEC entourage had left town, and while Aziz was away on a speaking tour with Dr Alejandro Villamar of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, his house was raided by police, supposedly looking for "bomb-making equipment".
Police also searched the home of David Small, a speaker at the alternative conference, for the same reason.
It was Dr Small who discovered the SIS agents, gave chase to them and noted down their getaway vehicle's registration number, after he had gone to Aziz's house to collect a TV and video for the GATT Watchdog forum.
A hoax device marked "Apec bomb" had been left outside the Christchurch City Council offices — after the ministerial meeting had finished — but no-one was ever found responsible for this. On the night of the botched break-in, on the orders of a senior officer, police dropped their investigation into the incident, saying that no offence had been committed.
The resulting media interest led to the vehicle registration being traced to a Wellington office called "Amalgamated Office Services", a fictitious company and a front for the SIS.
While outraged, many aware of its dubious track record were unsurprised that the SIS had broken into the house of an activist. It was just that this time it had been caught red-handed.
Cover-up
Subsequent attempts to elicit information from the police and the SIS were largely unsuccessful. Choudry and Small complained to the inspector-general of intelligence and security, a retired High Court judge appointed to investigate complaints against the SIS. He produced a June 1997 report which many saw as a whitewash.
The SIS, and the then prime minister, Jim Bolger, refused to confirm or deny SIS involvement in the affair.
It wasn't until SIS was dragged into the High Court — when Choudry sued it for trespass and breaching his rights under the Bill of Rights Act — that it admitted its operatives had entered his house that night.
Unlike the taxpayer-funded SIS, Aziz has been able to fight this case only with support from donations from the public. So far the Democratic Rights Defence Fund, set up to raise funds for the case, has brought in just over half of the estimated NZ$20,000 to see the case through.
The Choudry break-in occurred within two weeks of new legislation expanding the definition of "security" which the SIS is supposed to concern itself with. The act expanded the scope of SIS targets to include those allegedly threatening "New Zealand's economic and/or international wellbeing".
Successive governments have pushed through with enormously unpopular market reforms and policies designed to lock New Zealand into maintaining one of the world's most open economies.
Human rights
GATT Watchdog has long argued that human rights violations and the suppression of legitimate dissent go hand in hand with the market model of development that APEC promotes. The SIS break-in seemed to be par for the course for a government which was so zealously wedded to extremist economic theories, and so desperate to convince the rest of the world to follow the "New Zealand experiment", that it would not tolerate dissent.
Auckland law Professor Jane Kelsey agreed that the incident was symptomatic of a growing intolerance of dissent about the country's economic direction. When, in a submission on the new legislation, she had raised the possibility that the new definition of "security" might be used to monitor organisations engaged in legitimate critique, she was told she was "naive and paranoid".
Opponents of globalisation as far apart as Geneva and Vancouver find themselves targets of police harassment and surveillance. Swiss police raided a seminar on globalisation last month and detained 50 participants without charge.
Canada's media are currently dominated by revelations that anti-APEC activists were placed under surveillance by police and other intelligence agencies in the months before last November's APEC summit in Vancouver, and that the prime minister's office gave orders for the police to spare APEC leaders such as Indonesia's Suharto from any embarrassment by non-violent protesters.
What this meant in effect was the pepper-spraying, roughing up and arrest of dozens of peaceful protesters by Canadian police. Some were arrested for holding up cardboard signs saying "Free Speech"; others were arrested as part of a police plan to "eliminate" higher-profile anti-APEC organisers.
Appeals
In a July High Court hearing, SIS's lawyer told Justice Graham Panckhurst that Prime Minister (and minister in charge of the Security Intelligence Service) Jenny Shipley had personally considered documents about the incident and certified that producing them would prejudice the security and defence of New Zealand.
However, the judge ruled that he wanted to inspect the documents himself. But he also ruled that although the legislation had not specified the methods to be used, an SIS warrant to intercept or seize communications carries with it the implicit right to break and enter the private dwelling of a person, and indeed any other premises used by the person named in the warrant.
The next step in the case will be in the NZ Court of Appeal, possibly next month. Aziz is appealing the judgment in relation to the interception warrant, and SIS is cross-appealing against the judge's decision to inspect the documents that it does not want disclosed.
Next year's security operation for APEC will be the biggest in New Zealand history, with a budget of over NZ$18 million for security alone.
With Aziz's case still before the courts, and the SIS doing its utmost to maintain the shroud of secrecy over the incident, some hard questions are being asked about the post-Cold War role and accountability of New Zealand intelligence agencies.
The kind of stability and security which countries embracing the global economy want to display to the world can exist only where ideas which threaten to reveal that the emperor of globalisation has no clothes — and the people who promote those ideas — are vigorously suppressed.
For more information on this case, or to make a donation, write to Democratic Rights Defence Fund, PO Box 1905, Christchurch, New Zealand, or e-mail: <gattwd@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz>.