Posted on 15-8-2003

Protest Poverty Politics In Pacific

Global Peace and Justice Auckland supporters have organised a picket
outside the opening session of the leaders meeting at the Pacific Islands
Forum this Saturday, August 16 from 8.30am at the Sheraton Hotel, Symonds
Street, Auckland.

GPJA intends to focus attention on the actions of the New Zealand and
Australian governments in using their political and economic influence to
promote free trade and neo-liberal policies throughout the South Pacific
which are producing widespread instability, poverty and misery.

These are the very policies which have so dramatically failed in New
Zealand - for example leading to one-third of our children now living in
poverty - and yet our government is trying to force them onto our Pacific
neighbours. The Pacific Islands Forum is one of the main vehicles for this
pressure to be developed. As it has been the case with market reform all
over the world, the reforms being promoted by New Zealand and Australia for
the Pacific will allow transnational corporations to
- pollute,
- hire private militias,
- confiscate customary land,
- destroy ecological habitats,
- displace indigenous populations and
- force primitive indigenous populations to abandon local culture in
favour of integration into capitalist economic systems.

It is these very policies which have produced poverty and instability
around the Pacific and from which New Zealand and Australia are now seeking
to impose a colonial military solution instead of dealing with the
fundamental issues. The Solomon Islands is a classic current example.

The protest will also focus on the Australian and New Zealand governments'
decision to send troops to join the illegal occupation of Iraq. Far from
providing positive leadership, New Zealand is helping US imperialism extend
its influence around the world and through our own back yard.