The New Zealand government will be hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Auckland in November 2021. This inter-governmental forum of 21 Pacific Rim countries has spent the last 30 years promoting its neo-liberal agenda, an agenda of endless capitalist growth at the expense of workers, communities and the environment.
According to the government, “APEC 2021 will be the largest international event ever hosted by the New Zealand Government.” They are expecting presidents and prime ministers from across the Pacific: presidents of the USA, Russia, China and Indonesia to name but a few.
Planning for the mega-get-together of warmongers is already in full swing. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade is taking the lead with organising events. A key component to their planning is the recent introduction of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC 2021) Bill to parliament, giving the police, army and security guards a significant increase in temporary powers.
We have been here before. 20 years ago, New Zealand hosted the APEC summit in Auckland. Back in early 1999, the government amended the Arms Act 1983 by temporarily inserting sections 65A – F which authorised “[authorised] foreign personal protection officer to carry and have possession of firearms.”
But the current proposed legislation goes a lot further than a change to the Arms Act. There are five key sections to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC 2021) Bill:
- the cops can authorise members of the army to assist the police – which is essentially a militarisation of every-day life
- the cops can authorise ‘appropriately trained’ people to assist them. This section refers to Australian cops and ‘employees of a New Zealand government agency’ (which is about as vague as you can be) but also – and here it gets more interesting – ‘people commonly known as security guards, who are called crowd controllers’. So basically the security guards that have been assaulting activists at blockades in recent years such as the Petroleum Summits or the Weapons Expo will be working hand-in-hand with the cops as private mercenaries
- ‘Foreign protection officers’ (think VIP security guards for visiting presidents and prime ministers) can be armed (just like in 1999)
- police can create ‘security areas’ giving them a whole heap of power including shutting down roads, public places, privately owned places and removing and searching people in those areas
- and finally, the Bill allows the police to use W-ECM – ‘Wireless electronic countermeasures’. This basically means using massive ‘jammers’ to stop anyone using cellphones or radios (the example given is a presidential motorcade where “there is a chance this technology will block your signal for a few minutes, after which it will return to normal”)
20 years ago, Peace Movement Aotearoa encouraged their supporters to make submissions against the government’s desire to amend the Arms Act to allow foreign secret service agents and others to carry firearms during the APEC meeting. While it appears this legislation will pass again, we can use this time to connect with each other, strategise and articulate our collective criticism of APEC and what it stands for. Submissions close on 12th February 2020 and it’s easy enough to use parliament’s submission form for a brief rant.
More importantly, the organised left in Aotearoa needs to start a serious discussion around how we can counter the neo-liberal and neo-colonial rhetoric that will be shoved down our throats for the next two years.
