BY IGGY KIM
SYDNEY — Activists
planning demonstrations during the World Trade Organisation (WTO) mini-ministerial
meeting in Sydney, November 14-15, have condemned the NSW Labor government's
plans to prohibit street marches during the meeting.
The NSW police have indicated that they will to refuse to grant permits for any marches through the city from November 13 to November 16.
Organisers of a November 13 Free Movement of People march were told on November 7 they will not be granted a police permit to march to the immigration department's Sydney offices to protest against the federal government's treatment of asylum seekers.
“This directive has clearly come from police minister Michael Costa”, march organiser Mark Goudkamp told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly. “Clearly, the idea of the free movement of people is an anathema to the likes of Costa.”
Simon Butler, an organiser of the November 14 youth-led March Against the War and the WTO also condemned the refusal of the police to grant march permits.
“It's obvious that this tactic by Costa and the police is meant to intimidate people from coming out to protest against the war on Iraq and the tyrannical trade policies of the WTO”, said Butler. “It's designed to scare people away in advance and leaves it open for the police to try to provoke a confrontation on the day against an officially 'illegal march'.
“But I think it might backfire on the government. My feeling is that when people realise that peaceful protests against the WTO are effectively being banned it could encourage them to turn up to defend the basic rights of free speech and free assembly. We've submitted our march permit and we've laboured the point to the police that this will be a peaceful but vibrant march through the city. So they've got absolutely no excuse.”
Goudkamp stated that the Free Movement of People March would go ahead regardless of the police threats. “This is an outrageous stifling of the right to demonstrate. We are particularly concerned about the rights of many temporary protection visa holders who have indicated they would attend this peaceful march. We will still be marching and making it clear we won't be intimidated by this draconian proposal.”
Butler agreed that any attempt to stop the protests against the WTO had to be defied. “For the Carr government to make such an attack on our civil liberties is reminiscent of the anti-democratic, anti-street march policy of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland in the 1970s and '80s. Our response to [NSW Premier Bob] Carr and Costa's intimidation will be the same as the protesters back then. We intend to march peacefully anyway. The right to march in the streets is a right that has been won through struggle. We don't intend to give up our rights.”
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, November 13, 2002.
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