G20 riot trial begins for anarchist in Melbourne

On Tuesday morning the trial of Sina Brown-Davis, an anarchist and mother of two from Aotearoa begins in Melbourne, Australia. Sina was arrested in the crackdown by the Australian state in the wake of vandalism at a stop corporate globalisation protest at the November 2006 G20 summit in Melbourne.

Sina is Ngati Whatua ki Kaipara now living in Melbourne. She faces one count of rioting in relation to the G20 protests. Sina is a long-time campaigner involved in campaigns such as the Black GST, Free Lex Wotton, Paying Respect and against the Northern Territory Intervention and against neo-liberalism in the Pacific. Now she is working to raise awareness of the devastating effects of the extension of the free trade agreement between New Zealand-Australia called the Closer Economic Relationship (CER) to the Pacific Island nations – a treaty call PACER

All the prosecution are saying she did was wave a flag and yell, and she is fighting riot charges, as well as charges of affray and criminal damage. Her trial begins on June 30.

On July 13 two men from Sydney go to trial. They are facing charges of aggravated burglary, which can carry a 25 year jail term, for allegedly walking into offices on ‘Corporate Engagement Day' with nothing more than glitter and water pistols. [ G20 Trials a Call for Solidarity ]

Solidarity Demonstration Tuesday June 30, 12:30pm at the Australian Embassy, 72 Hobson Street, Wellington. Bring NOISEMAKERS, banners, placards, etc.

Links: After G20 | uriohau blog

Background

What is G20?

A annual meeting of the finance ministers and reserve bank governors of 19 of the largest economies, representatives from the European Union and the head honchos of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) gathered at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Melbourne, Australia in November 2006.

To shore up the neo-liberal system, the giants of the G8, led by the United States, realised after the Asian financial crisis that they needed to further draw in the biggest countries of the South, such as South Africa, India, China, and Brazil into the global financial governance system.  The G20 was one attempt to do this and in effect rescue the global neo-liberal agenda, which had been -- and still is -- so favourable to the interests of transnational companies.

The theme of that year’s G20 meeting is “Building and Sustaining Prosperity” through, “policies of deregulation, privatisation, and liberalisation of international transactions [which] are important means of strengthening competition [between corporations].”

Why were people protesting in Melbourne in 2006?

In opposition to this agenda the StopG20 Collective organised to “challenge the G20’s policies that push corporate-led globalisation, neo-liberalism and capitalism onto the world’s people and ecosystems, and to present alternatives.” The StopG20 Collective includes student groups, Friends of the Earth Australia, anti-capitalist organisations, church groups, the Melbourne Social Forum, Melbourne Indymedia and the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition. Activists from anti-logging, union, Aboriginal and climate justice backgrounds converged in a mass demonstration on the first day of the G20 summit.

What was the "Arterial Block"?

The Arterial Block was a group of affinity groups prepared to use direct action to disrupt the G20 summit. Wearing white overalls to differentiate themselves from other protestors, the Arterial Block led the main march on the first day of the summit and skirmished briefly with the Australian police, damaging one police van.

They were the ones who Australian Treasurer Peter Costello, locked inside the summit at the Grand Hyatt described as "hard-core militant and violent groups who have organised for violence, trained for violence and engaged in violence against property and police".

Did the protests have an effect?

The anti-globalisation protests and riots that have beseiged every major gathering of world leaders since the Seattle riots in 1999 and recently at the London G20 summit have almost completely derailed the neo-liberal "free trade" agenda that was being foisted by rich nations onto developing nations.

• IMF and World Bank have been bankrupted

The premier item on the G20’s agenda in Melbourne, in November 2006, was the reform of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fifty Years is Enough Network describe them as two US-controlled institutions that for the last fifty years have been,

“imposing economic austerity policies in the countries of the so-called “Third World” or “global South.” Once Southern countries build up large external debts, as most have, they cannot get credit or cash anywhere else and are forced to go to these international institutions and accept whatever conditions are demanded of them. None of the countries has emerged from their debt problems; indeed most countries now have much higher levels of debt than when they first accepted IMF/World Bank “assistance.”

As David Graeber put it, "the IMF is rapidly approaching bankruptcy, and it is a direct result of the worldwide mobilization against them. To put the matter bluntly: we destroyed it. The World Bank is not doing all that much better."

• WTO negotiations lie in tatters

Another stated purpose of the Melbourne G20 summit was to get the World Trade Organisation negotitations back on track to remove barriers to free trade, (subsidised medicines, local content quotas, environmental protections, workers' rights). The ongoing mobilisation on the streets against this agenda has meant the WTO is almost completely ineffectual in creating new rules to bolster corporate wealth.

THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION- After the catastrophe (for them) in Seattle, organizers moved the next meeting to the Persian Gulf island of Doha, apparently deciding they would rather run the risk of being blown up by Osama bin Laden than having to face another DAN blockade. For six years they hammered away at the “Doha round”. The problem was that, emboldened by the protest movement Southern governments began insisting they would no longer agree open their borders to agricultural imports from rich countries unless those rich countries at least stopped pouring billions of dollars of subsidies at their own farmers, thus ensuring Southern farmers couldn’t possibly compete. Since the US in particular had no intention of itself making any of the sort of sacrifices it demanded of the rest of the world, all deals were off. In July 2006, Pierre Lamy, head of the WTO, declared the Doha round dead and at this point no one is even talking about another WTO negotiation for at least two years—at which point the organization might very possibly not exist. [ More ]