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Change Your Life! |
Ring of steel around economic summit venue |
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September 11, 2000
MELBOURNE (AP) - Police turned a city center casino and hotel complex into a virtual fortress Sunday ahead of an economic summit that protesters have vowed to disrupt. Scores of armed officers patrolled inside a steel fence erected around the Crown Casino while a helicopter hovered overhead and police divers in a boat on the Yarra River checked drainage ducts leading under the complex. Meanwhile, in a nearby park, protesters gathered for an afternoon rally ahead of the start Monday of the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit. Dozens of senior business executives and government leaders including Microsoft's Bill Gates are due to attend the summit to discuss future economic developments in Asia. The three-day event is organized by the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum, a group that brings together business and government heads to discuss the global economy. About 1,000 protesters gathered at Melbourne's Treasury Gardens park to discuss Monday's efforts to stop the forum and to listen to music. Kristen Bartram, who runs a Melbourne computer consultancy, said she planned to join Monday's protest. "I suppose my major concern about the corporations is that they don't seem to take into consideration what they are actually doing to the planet globally," she said. As an example of corporate greed, she cited claims that sportswear maker Nike runs sweatshops in Indonesia - an accusation denied last week by Nike executives. But fearing it would be targeted by violent protests similar to those that marred last year's World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, Nike closed its flagship Melbourne store on Sunday and boarded up the windows. Bartram said she would not resort to violence on Monday and police say they believe the majority of up to 15,000 protesters will be peaceful. But authorities have prepared for the worst, drafting in extra officers from rural areas and freeing up police cells. There was a highly visible police presence throughout downtown Melbourne on Sunday, including a handful of officers standing on the fringes of the Treasury Gardens rally and others guarding plush hotels being used by summit delegates. Dozens of groups, from pupils at an exclusive girls' college to homosexuals claiming they are exploited by corporate greed to Green lawmakers, plan to march Monday under the "S11" banner - the name taken from the date, Sept. 11. Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Green Party met other Green lawmakers Sunday to discuss the protests. Brown said the Greens were opposed to the growth of a new aristocracy among the multinational corporate bodies who were becoming a de facto, undemocratic world government. "We're also concerned about the impoverished people of the world not having a voice," he said. His concerns were echoed by protesters at Treasury Gardens, many of whom wore pins with the words, "Smash corporate tyranny." "I really just want to send a message to the corporations of the world that they really have no right to be the world government," said protester Chris Fletcher.
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