Protests mark APEC
By Jon Land
Human rights and solidarity activists' protests at the APEC summit, November 22-25 in Vancouver, Canada, focused on the failure of governments in the Asia Pacific region to deal with human rights problems caused by economic development. The Vancouver Province referred to the protests as "among the largest in recent Vancouver history".
East Timor solidarity activists held mock war trials of Suharto in Vancouver and other cities. They demanded that Suharto be prevented from entering Canada because of his government's 22-year occupation of East Timor.
On November 25, a vocal protest of 300 students and others from the East Timor Alert Network marched to the APEC summit site (the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia) to "arrest" Suharto.
Sixteen people were arrested after scuffles with police, including two Indonesian security agents who were spying on anti-Suharto protesters. Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas stated prior to APEC that any Indonesian nationals protesting at the summit would have "measures taken against them".
Later the same day, a 3000-strong protest marched on the university. Many demonstrators were angry at the arrest of an anti-APEC activist the night before.
Police, attempting to arrest another activist, used pepper spray to disperse the crowd. Thirty-eight people were arrested, many protesters were temporarily blinded and one person was hospitalised. There was another 1500-strong rally in downtown Vancouver in the evening.
A five-day alternative forum, the People's Summit, involved 1000 participants from solidarity, women's, indigenous and labour organisations. Jose Ramos Horta was the keynote speaker at the opening on November 19.
The meeting discussed a number of human rights issues, such as workers' rights, child labour, women's rights and poverty. It also presented the Canadian government with a petition to seek a commitment from Suharto that Indonesians attending the protests would not be detained, harassed or prosecuted when they returned home.
Canada's secretary of state for Asia, Raymond Chan, responded to the anti-APEC protests and People's Summit by claiming that his government had attempted to put human rights on the agenda, but was resisted by Asian governments. The reason it wasn't there, he said, was that "human rights and social agendas" should not be allowed "to stall the progress of APEC".