Anti-Bases Campaign

Anti-Bases Campaign

Welcome to our home page...

The Waihopai satellite spy station near Blenheim, New Zealand.

On April 30, 2008, three Ploughshares activists gained access to the base

and slashed one of the rubber protective domes with a sickle.

The giant balloon deflated slowly and draped over the satellite dish.

The rubber has since been removed and the dish is is now exposed,

directed at an Intelsat satellite and intercepting international communications.

WHAT IS THE ANTI-BASES CAMPAIGN (ABC)?

We are a Christchurch-based group with links and members all over Aotearoa/New Zealand. We concentrate on the foreign military and intelligence installations in New Zealand. There are three - the US "Deep Freeze" military base at Harewood (Christchurch Airport); and the "NZ" intelligence gathering installations at Tangimoana (Manawatu) and Waihopai (Marlborough), which are simply outposts of American Intelligence. We have specific demands on all three – that Harewood be demilitarised; and the others closed ASAP. We demand the abolition of the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which operates Waihopai and Tangimoana. We have built up information on the whole gamut of the ongoing US-NZ military and intelligence relationship.

WHAT DOES THE ABC DO?

We engage in research, education, publication and direct action. We have run campaigns on all these three installations, concentrating on Harewood and Waihopai. Historically, we have organised actions such as the 1990 Touching the Bases Tour, in which people from New Zealand and throughout the Asia/Pacific region visited all three bases. In the past, we have sent representatives to actions in Australia, the Philippines and the US. We have hosted overseas experts here, most recently Canadian ex-spy, Mike Frost, in 2001. We actively network with a wide range of groups.

We have campaigned and made submissions on all the various pieces of legislation giving expanded powers to the spies, such as the Terrorism Suppression Act, which takes NZ in the direction of a police State; the Crimes Amendment No. 6 Act, which gives the Police, SIS and GCSB extended powers of electronic spying; the GCSB Act, which entrenches this agency; and the various SIS Amendment Acts, which extended the powers of the SIS and exempted them from any legal action which may have arisen from the Choudry case having exposed their illegal actions dating back decades. Ever since we first discovered plans to build Waihopai, back in 1987, we have campaigned against it, organising numerous non-violent direct action national demonstrations. We research all aspects of these bases, specialising in Harewood and Waihopai, and have developed an expertise in researching NZ and allied intelligence agencies. We publish Peace Researcher, an authoritative journal on these subjects, and a record of our activities. Sixty issues of Peace Researcher have been published since 1983.