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.
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