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Sydney prepares lockdown for
Apec
Al
Jazeera.net
Wednesday Aug 29, 2007
Australia is putting in place the largest security operation
in its history as the city of Sydney prepares to go into lock-down
for next week's summit of Asia-Pacific leaders.
Some 21 government leaders will be attending the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation (Apec) meeting, protected by a massive security
fence around the summit venue and thousands of police and special
forces soldiers.
But the security plans were dealt a setback on Tuesday with news
that an outbreak of equine flu had forced the quarantine of all
horses in the city's mounted police department.
The announcement comes as the authorities battle to contain Australia's
first outbreak of the disease, imposing a nationwide ban on the
movement of horses.
Officials, however, denied that the inability to deploy mounted
officers would diminish security levels at the summit.
(Article continues below)
"It won't stop us being able to protect dignitaries, the
public or police at any planned protest," said Andrew Scipione,
the deputy commissioner of New South Wales police.
"The police presence will be backed up by the new water
cannon that has been purchased by the state government for use
in crowd control," he said.
'Peaceful protest'
Civil liberties groups have criticised the planned security operation,
including the purchase of the water canon, as heavy-handed.
In one case critics have likened the installation of a network
of police loudspeakers around the city to the tactics of tightly-controlled
police states such as North Korea.
The StopBush Coalition protest group, which is hoping to attract
up to 10,000 people to a demonstration during the summit, said the
authorities were trying to intimidate protesters.
"We are planning a peaceful protest but the police are making
it very difficult and being very provocative," StopBush organiser
Alex Bainbridge told the AFP news agency.
"They're basically treating us like terrorists and denying
our democratic right to protest."
In an operation eclipsing security measures for the 2000 Olympics,
some 3,500 police backed-up by 1,500 special forces troops will
be deployed for the week-long Apec meeting.
They will enforce an exclusion zone around the summit venue,
which is surrounded by a 5.5km, 2.8m-high concrete and steel security
fence.
Police say they have also cleared enough jail cells to hold 500
demonstrators and converted 30 buses into mobile holding cells
that can also be used as street barricades.
No chances
With the US, Chinese and Russian presidents attending the summit,
Andrew Scipione, the New South Wales state police chief, said
he was taking no chances with security.
"This is the biggest security event that's ever been hosted
in the history of Australia, which is why we are going to the
extraordinary lengths that we are, at a time when we are living
in heightened times of terrorism and certainly there is significant
protest activity around," he said.
Rejecting criticism of heavy-handedness, officials say they are
determined to avoid a repeat of violent demonstrations seen in
Melbourne during the World Economic Forum in 2000 and last November's
G20 economic leaders meeting.
John Howard, the Australian prime minister, told reporters on
Tuesday that "if people didn't violently demonstrate, these
precautions would not be necessary".
"But they violently demonstrated in Melbourne, police were
injured, and I fully support the efforts of New South Wales and
Commonwealth police."
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