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A socialist newsweekly published in the interests of working people
Vol. 64/No. 37October 2, 2000


Cops assault protesters in Australia
 
BY DOUG COOPER AND ALASDAIR MacDONALD  
MELBOURNE, Australia--Thousands protested the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting held at Melbourne's Crown Casino, September 11-13. The three-day demonstration was modeled after the 1999 protests in Seattle at a meeting of the World Trade Organization. Most news coverage focused on cops roughing up people who attempted to blockade the entrances to the casino where the meeting was being held.

Student, environmental, community, political, and religious groups participated from all over Australia. The action was marked by the protectionist and Australian nationalist political perspectives of the main organizers of the event. Many individuals who did not necessarily support these views came to protest the brutalities and social crisis arising out of the world capitalist economic crisis. Estimates of the crowd ranged from 6,000 to 10,000.

In existence for some 30 years, the WEF meets at the beginning of the year in Davos, Switzerland. Heads of state, capitalists, and academics attend. It also organizes a midyear forum in either Singapore or Hong Kong. This year the Asia Pacific Economic Summit of the WEF was moved to Melbourne to tie in with the September 15 opening of the Olympics in Sydney.

In addition to the hundreds of cops surrounding the casino behind concrete and steel barricades, many more patrolled the nearby central business district. The willingness to use force was summed up by Deputy Police Commissioner Neil O'Loughlin after blockaders prevented about one-quarter of forum participants from entering on the first day. "The city was held to ransom yesterday and we'll use whatever force is necessary to maintain public order."

Police attacked with batons and trampled blockaders with horses to clear the gates on the second and third days. Few arrests were made and about 200 were roughed up or injured. Away from the gates, the protest had an almost festival-like air.

A few individual unions supported the blockade, but the Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) took its distance from the civil disobedience tactics. Instead, the VTHC organized a rally and march September 12 from its hall to the protest site. Publicity for the rally put forward a nationalist and procapitalist view, calling for "Australian jobs and the human rights of workers all over the world." It stated, "We must speak out about the lack of regulation of global capital, the damage of free trade and the irresponsible behavior of Multinational Corporations."

Some 5,000 workers joined the march, chanting "Fair trade not free trade." VTHC Secretary Leigh Hubbard joined in condemning the cop brutality, calling it "the worst savagery by police in 25 years."

Sharan Burrow, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, addressed the World Economic Forum and then the union rally on September 12. The overall perspective of reforming capitalism advanced by protest organizers was summed up in a report from the Melbourne Age. According to the paper, Burrow told the WEF the solution is a "worldwide corporate code of conduct to ensure human rights are upheld and basic standards of health, education, and nutrition are met. Ms. Burrow suggested this could be funded by a tax on international currency transactions." This view was shared by many protest organizers.

Doug Cooper is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia. Alasdair MacDonald is a member of the Young Socialists.

 
 
 
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