Solidarity with G20 arrestees! Stop the Neo-liberal free trade madness in the Pacific

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

In November 2006, people took to the streets of Melbourne to confront the G20, a meeting of the world’s most powerful finance ministers whose policies perpetrate suffering and violence in countless communities around the world every day. Since that protest, Victorian and Federal police have carried out a vast operation of surveillance and arrests, raiding houses at dawn and slapping protestors with ludicrous charges and repressive bail conditions. This is a campaign of intimidation and part of an attempt to criminalise protest. The legal process for those charged after the G20 protests moves slowly on.

On Tuesday 30 June 2009, the trial of activist Sina Brown-Davis will begin. 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.

PACER-Plus will lead to business closures and job losses

PACER-Plus will undermine access to essential services

PACER-Plus will strip Pacific governments of policy options they could use to stimulate industry and employment

PACER-Plus will give unprecedented rights to foreign corporations

PACER-Plus will undermine indigenous rights to land

PACER-Plus will lead to more expensive medicine and education materials

PACER-Plus offers a lot more for Australia and NZ than it does for the Pacific

"Australia and NZ remain unrepentant for their brutal suppression of indigenous independence movements in the Pacific. They rationalized such behavior as enhancing the welfare of the Islands and the human development of their people – just as they justified similar behavior towards indigenous peoples in their own countries

Read more here: http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2008/03/g20-jail-court-police-investigation.html