Published by: World Tibet Network News Friday, November 21, 1997

Economists and political leaders will get the most attention, but across downtown the people's summit will hear voices of dissent.

Vancouver Sun, 19 November 1997

Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, was imprisoned for 33 years in Chinese prison and labour camps because of his support for an independent Tibet. He says he survived at times by eating mice and worms, and was tortured with an electric baton. Released from prison in 1992, he fled to India.

Muchtar Pakpahan, an Indonesian trade union leader, lies ill under military guard in a Jakarta hospital. He was imprisoned in 1994 after a huge workers' rally in Sumatra, and in 1996 was charged with subversion. His union, the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union (SBSI) has been banned by the government, and many other trade unionists languish in Indonesian jails. The minimum wage in Indonesia is scarcely $2 a day.

Gyatso's suffering will not be brought up when Chinese President Jiang Zemin speaks to the $1,000-a-plate APEC Gala Sunday night. Nor will Pakpahan be mentioned when Prime Minister Jean Chretien sits down for dinner Monday with Indonesian President Suharto and 16 other leaders.

But Gyatso will appear at an alternative summit at the Plaza of Nations, and SBSI's acting leader Tohap Simanungkalit will speak on Pakpahan's behalf. The people's summit, a seven-day open forum of speeches, workshops and demonstrations which ends Nov. 23, is intended to highlight what's been called "APEC's missing agenda." The summit will put the spotlight on violations of human rights and labour rights around the Asia-Pacific regions, issues that are banned from the official APEC agenda.

The conference will feature a keynote speech tonight by 1996 Nobel peace prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, a long-time critic of Indonesia's often brutal occupation of East Timor. Ramos-Horta was forbidden by the Philippines from attending last year's summit in Manila.

APEC brings together a more diverse array of countries than any international organization outside the United Nations. Liberal democracies like Canada and New Zealand sit side by side with a monarchy (Brunei), a one-party dictatorship (China) and several countries where trade unions and a free press are treated as dangerously subversive.

As Warren Allmand, head of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, recently put it: "APEC has no unifying philosophy except economic gain.

"They refuse to put on the table anything other than business issues," Allmand said.

The people's summit, in contrast, will present "the voices that will not be heard and will not be listened to at the table," said Diana Bronson of the centre.

Among issues to be raised are press freedom, the arms trade, cuts to public education, labour rights, poverty, the environment and the "corporate agenda" of the 18 APEC economies.

The people's summits have become a fixture of the annual APEC meetings. The first, held Kyoto in 1994, warned in its statement that APEC "has actually contributed to the erosion and suppression of basic internationally recognized human rights throughout the region."

The Canadian government has tried to walk a delicate line between ignoring these issues altogether to keep countries like China and Indonesia happy, at the same time as acknowledging Canadian advocacy groups.

Ottawa quickly disabused these groups of any hope that human rights might be included on the official APEC agenda. Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific Raymond Chan announced in January that human rights would be avoided because there's no consensus in APEC on the issue.

"There are appropriate forums on different issues," Chan said. "Some issues like human rights and social development might impede the progress on economic and trade issues."

But having laid down that dictate, Ottawa spent the next several months trying to make up with Canadian labour and human rights groups. It agreed to put two union representatives on the Canadian delegation and offered $100,000 to the people's summit. The B.C. government is throwing in another $100,000 in kind by allowing the event to be hosted at the Plaza of Nations. Trade Minister Sergio Marchi and Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy will also be meeting with people's summit representatives.

But that hasn't done much to placate APEC's skeptics. Mary Rowles of the Canadian Labour Congress called the gestures "small progress in a process that's fundamentally anti-democratic."

Rowles' criticisms are mild, compared to the members of the No! to APEC coalition, who are holding a three-day conference Nov. 21-24 and a rally Nov. 25.

The coalition is part of the people's conference against "imperialist globalization," which broke off from the people's summit last year.

The coalition is expecting about 150 delegates from many APEC countries to show up.