Monday, August 7, 2000
General News Online
ABORIGINES PLAN PEACEFUL PROTESTS
PROTESTS ORGANISED ON THE NET
AUSTRALIAN MEDALS WAGER
WTO MAY STEP INTO OLYMPIC DEBATE
ABORIGINAL ACCORD

Aborigines plan peaceful protests

If the pledge from Aboriginal leaders to head peaceful protests during the Olympic Games in Sydney came as a relief to organisers, the promise yesterday of various campaign groups not to steal the limelight from the indigenous people of Australia was cause for celebration among those responsible for security during the biggest sports event in the world.

The Campaign Against Corporate Tyranny in Unity and Solidarity (Cactus), campaigning against Olympic sponsors Nike, McDonald's and Coca-Cola, told reporters in Sydney today that it plans to join indigenous rights protesters outside the opening ceremony of the Games on September 15. However, it is among many campaigning groups which believe that aboriginal protests must take precedence.

"It's generally seen (that) the Olympics belongs to the Aboriginal activists and no one wants to compete with them for media attention," Jesse Wynhausen, of Cactus, said. "We'll try to get our message out, but not in a big fancy way. There might be a few surprise actions here and there."

Beyond Aborigines, the majority of protests during the Games are expected to come from anti-capitalists groups and environmentalists.

Charles Perkins, the Aboriginal leader who had promised to head a campaign of violence during the Games, in which protesters would set fire to cars and buildings, has now changed his message. Today he said: "The whole idea is peaceful, non-violent protests."

Those will involve boomerang-throwing contests and the establishment by "Protest 2000" of a permanent protest camp near Olympic Park in Homebush. Their aim to have 20,000 Aborigines marching through Sydney on a daily basis, their ambition to secure better living conditions for Australia's 430,000 indigenous people, who have a life expectancy some 20 years lower than white Australians.

A group of Arabunna Aboriginals set off on foot from Lake Eyre in South Australia six weeks ago carrying an indigenous Olympic flame. They are due to arrive in Sydney in September. and plan to host rallies when they reach Sydney in September.

CRAIG LORD
The Times

Protests organised on the net

Anti-Olympic protests are being organised on the net. Among them, People Ingeniously Subverting the Sydney Olympic Farce (Pissoff) are planning no-violent action intended to highlight how the money spent on the Games might have been better allocated.

"Hactivists" have set up their own shadow "media centre", to sabotage official Olympic websites. Various groups are coordinating efforts at the Sydney Independent Media Center, where protesters can download stories and images.

The Anti-Olympic Alliance, whose website shows Olympic mascots Ollie, Millie and Syd brandishing pistols, batons, and capsicum spray, plans to join a march from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in central Sydney to Homebush on September 15 in protest at the money spent on the opening ceremony of the Games.

Comic propaganda, meanwhile, will be provided by Realgames, which will provide online "alternative Olympic information and entertainment".

Sydney Independent Media Center
www.sydney.indymedia.org/
Pissoff
www.cat.org.au/pissoff/
Anti-Olympic Alliance and various group sites
www.cat.org.au/main.html
Realgames
www.realgames.org/index_frameset.html

Australian medals wager

John Coates, president of the Australian Olympic Committee, has predicted that the host nation will win at least 60 medals in Sydney, which would be 19 more than in Atlanta in 1996. He also believes that 20 of the tally will be gold.

Such is his confidence that Coates has wagered a bet with Jacques Rogge, of the IOC: for every medal under the predicted 60, Coates must buy Rogge a bottle of champagne. For every medal over 60, Coates gets the champagne.

Intended as a bit of fun, the move has brought criticism from some of Australia's iop coaches and athletes. Don Talbot, head of Australian swimming, a sport in which the hosts aim to win up to ten gold medals, has attacked Coates for applying unneccesary pressure on the athletes.

It is something of a tradition for Olympic hosts to outperform. South Korea failed to win a medal in 1984 but won 33, 12 of them gold, four years later when it hosted the Games in Seoul. In that year Spain won just 4 medals but in 1992, when it hoseted the Games at Barcelona, Spaniards won 22 medals, 13 of them gold.

WTO may step into Olympic debate

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) may have to make the final decision on foreign television access to the Olympic Games next month, according to Mark Vaile, Australia's Trade Minister.

His comments came in response to a threat from Pascal Lamy, the European Union's Trade Commissioner, to take the case to the WTO. Lamy believes that proposals to restrict access to Olympic Park to Australian and rights-paying media "constitutes an unprecedented restriction" on trade.

In a letter to Vaile, Lamy said that the restriction, which would stop news agencies such as Reuters from working within the Olympic Park with cameras for general news stories, as opposed to sports stories, "would appear to constitute a breach" of Australia's obligations under the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

The agreement means that Australia is "committed to open its news agency market for foreign suppliers without restrictions and on the basis of a treatment not less favourable than offered to Australian service suppliers", said Mr Lamy.

The European Commission, he added, "reserves its right to seek legal redress including, if necessary, the opening of a dispute settlement procedure at the WTO in the following weeks".

In a further restriction on best access to Olympic sport, the International Olympic Committee is committed to monitoring websites to ensure than none show video footage of action before NBC, of the US, has broadcast events to the American public at peak times in the US several hours after some competitions are finished and Australia is asleep.

NBC paid $705m for the US rights to coverage of the Games and wants to protect its investment in the face the wishes of website operators.

Vaile said there was conflicting advice whether the restrictions imposed by the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Socog) were illegal under WTO rules.

He said: "There are differing views as to whether there is a breach, and I suppose unless it is ultimately tested out in the (WTO) dispute panel we’re not to know."

Aboriginal accord

The Aboriginal Cultural Center, which is designed to showcase arts and crafts at Olympic Park, will be closed down if it becomes a venue for protest, according to a spokesman for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Socog).

Jointly funded by the New South Wales state government and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the centre was on course to become a haven for daily protests during the Games, recent Australian media reports suggested.

Trevor Close, a spokesman for a group called Protest 2000, which was aiming to organise demonstrations to highlight the plight of the Aboriginal people, had said that action would be peaceful.

However, Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue, chairman of Socog's Indigenous Advisory panel, said today that anyone protesting at the centre would be removed. "This is a site for showcasing Aboriginal arts and crafts, there are other venues for people to [protest]," she said. "I’ve always said Aboriginal people are free to protest at the Games, but not on this site."

There are about 386,000 Aborigines among Australia’s population of almost 19 million. Government surveys consistently show that the indigenous people are at the bottom of the pile when it comes to health and education, and the top of it when it comes to infant mortality, imprisonment and alcoholism.

CRAIG LORD
The Times