[NYTr] APEC security leaves bitter taste in Sydney

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

BBC - Sep 9, 2007 via rick kissell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6985775.stm

APEC security leaves bitter taste in Sydney

By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney

After Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympics, a compelling case could be made 
for holding the games in the city every four years, such was the
panache and energy which pulsated through its staging. After APEC, most 
Sydneysiders are saying "Never again".

One of them is Christopher Brown, the normally good-humoured head of
TTF Australia, a powerful tourism and transport lobby group which had
lent strong support to Sydney's hosting of the 21 Pacific Rim leaders.

Like many, he is incensed by what he regards as the needlessly 
aggressive and restrictive policing, which carried a heftier security 
price tag than the 16-day-long Olympics and led to the construction of 
the 5km ( three mile) "great wall of Sydney".

"I'm so embarrassed and annoyed. Where was the sense of proportion? We 
replaced Olympic volunteers with riot squads," he says.

"Somebody in the security operation got very carried away with their
own self-importance, and nobody in the state or federal government 
counterbalanced them.

"It was totally and utterly disproportionate."

'Iron fist'

Consider the experience of Greg McLeay, a 52-year-old accountant and 
father of three.

On Friday, with his 11-year-old son looking on, he was arrested by the 
police in the central business district. Thrown in jail under special 
Apec powers which allowed the police to hold people without bail, he
was strip-searched and forced to spend the night locked up with a drug
addict.

His offence? Crossing the road incorrectly during Apec near a 
cordoned-off area.

 From demonstrations of its new high-powered water cannon to night-time 
exercises involving riot police, the New South Wales police were 
determined to show they were ready for large-scale protests with the 
possibility of turning violent.

But had they war-gamed against the wrong kind of protests?

In court this week, when they successfully persuaded a judge to
re-route the largest protest march of the week, they argued 20,000
demonstrators would turn up. In the end, though, only about 5,000
showed up, taking part in an overwhelmingly peaceful protest.

Similarly, they had cleared hundreds of prison cells, in anticipation
of filling them with protesters. In the end, there were 17 arrests. Two 
police officers were injured - one was hit by a dart.

At the tail-end of the protest on Saturday, many marchers and 
journalists were mystified by the appearance of riot squads, backed up 
with the ominous presence of the water cannon.

As the Sun-Herald noted: "Police ruled Sydney's streets with an iron 
fist."

But the paper's headline "Police Rule" could just as easily have read 
"Overkill".

"They had geared up for so much trouble, it almost became a 
self-fulfilling prophecy," says Christopher Brown.

Police under fire

For many Sydneysiders, comedians from the already popular The Chasers 
War on Everything have become folk heroes - they managed to breach the 
million-dollar security set-up with a few shiny black hire cars, some 
wrap-around sunglasses, a few fake passes, a colour printer and a 
handful of bonnet-mounted Canadian and Australian flags.

Almost 5,000 New South Wales police officers, 1,500 defence personnel, 
450 federal police, teams of sharp-shooters, patrol boats zipping
across the harbour, Black Helicopters swooping above - all upstaged by
11 members of a TV comedy show.

This is not the first time in recent months that the Australian police 
have copped an enormous amount of flak.

There was the fumbling handling of the Mohamed Haneef case, which 
involved an Indian doctor arrested and then released over the failed
car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow. The Australian Federal Police
were labelled the "Keystone Cops", by no less a figure that the state
premier of Queensland.

Similarly, this is not the first time that the authorities have been 
criticised for over-zealous policing.

Ahead of the Ashes tour by the England cricket team, Morris Iemma wrote 
to the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair asking him to identify 
known hooligans travelling with the "Barmy Army".

Then there were the decisions to ban the Barmy Army's trumpeter and ban 
Mexican waves - all of which seemed like the over-enforcement of the 
"Killjoy Act".

Prime Minister John Howard, a proud Sydneysider himself, may pay a 
political price for APEC, even though many of the security arrangements 
were put in place by the Labor-controlled New South Wales state
government.

Trailing badly in the polls, he hoped the summit would boost him ahead 
of the upcoming federal election.

With the signing of the Sydney Declaration, a rather vague statement on 
cutting greenhouse emissions, improving energy intensity and increasing 
forestation, John Howard has gained some much-needed green credentials
- even if environmentalists claim the statement is largely worthless 
because its targets are non-binding.

But he has also done a very dangerous thing: hosted and been the 
figurehead of a summit which was deeply unpopular with the residents of 
Australia's largest city, where his own increasingly marginal 
constituency resides.