'Freedom' brings harsh reality, conference told

By Lousia Cleave

Rising unemployment, lower wages and high student debt are among the harsh realities of free-trade agreements and policies favoured by Apec, international anti-Apec groups told a conference at the weekend.

Speakers from the United States, Canada, South Korea and Japan gave examples of the effect that policies such as removing trade restrictions had on their countries.

The Alternatives to the Apec Agenda Conference, organised by the Apec Monitoring Group, was attended by 150 people concerned about the impact of such policies on ordinary people.

Jaggi Singh, a youth activist with No-To-Apec in Canada, said the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico had caused an exodus of manufacturing jobs in his country.

Free-trade regimes had also resulted in cuts to welfare, and Canada's Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, part of the Apec delegation in Auckland, was responsible for those cuts, Mr Singh said.

"The cuts ... are borne disproportionately by groups like women and aboriginal peoples."

Reiko Inoue, of the Pacific Asia Resource Centre in Tokyo, said Japanese people were suspicious of economic liberalisation. It had resulted in industries such as car-makers shifting to other Asian countries and Japan importing machinery parts rather than exporting them.

Suicide rates were high in Japan because of unemployment, which had reached 4.9 per cent, she said.

"In exchange for exports of industrial products, we have abandoned our own culture. Now we eat everyday products imported from other countries: soya beans from the United States and vegetables and fresh fruit from New Zealand."

American film-maker and academic Saul Landau and South Korean activist Changgeun Lee had similar stories of negative outcomes of liberalisation.

"Corporates see people as either consumers or producers and the rest are irrelevant," Mr Landau said.

"We have to push hard to make human rights inclusive and the right to a decent salary and living conditions as important as elections."