Security out in force as world leaders meet

Black Hawk helicopters

Four Black Hawk helicopters and two police helicopters will be part of the security crackdown. Photo: Kitty Hill

A RELATIVELY small group of university students, left-wing demonstrators and human rights activists will be confronted with one of Australia’s biggest security operations in Perth during next week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

As organisers of the CHOGM Action Network prepare for what they hope will be about 1000 protesters, police and the military are set for the largest gathering of world leaders in Australia.

Australia’s elite military force, the SAS, have been hurtling above Perth in Black Hawks on training runs for weeks, and earlier this week, eight Hornet fighter jets flew across Australia from NSW to be on hand in case of a major attack.

Security arrangements will even include mobile phone jamming devices – designed to prevent terrorists or other attackers from co-ordinating or remotely setting off bombs for diplomatic convoys and other events.

Then there will be the hidden presence of police intelligence officers and the security agency ASIO, who have spent months monitoring the various ”interest-motivated groups” – security speak for protesters.

Not only will they have significant dossiers on university students and other activists, they will maintain a covert presence during the week-long event.

It is all enough to leave the organisers of a peaceful protest nervous but the CHOGM Action Network spokesman Alex Bainbridge says they are not daunted.

”We’re confident and happy, we’re buoyed by the fact that we’re marching on the side of justice and human rights, and secondly, we’ve had a fair amount of liaison with the cops and despite the arrests last week, which we don’t agree with, it’s not been a fractious relationship.”

Last week three people were arrested after police accused them of spray-painting the word ”protest” on public property in Perth but protest organisers claim police also confiscated their mobile phones and asked them detailed questions about their plans for CHOGM.

”When they arrested me they kept saying ‘we know more than you think’, and suggesting that I had been under surveillance,” one of those arrested, Colleen Bulger, said last week.

There are also concerns the presence of the Sri Lankan delegation, which will include the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, may provoke protest action.

Mr Rajapaksa’s administration stands accused of gross human rights violations during the final stages of a three-decade-long war against the Tamil separatists, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The CHOGM Action Network will be involved in a march on Friday, which will at one point enter the event’s ”security zone”, though it does not expect to clash with police.

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