THE
CORA FABROS SPEAKING TOUR OF NEW
ZEALAND
Peace Researcher 37 – November 2008
- Bob
Leonard
Cora Fabros, a seasoned Filipino anti-bases
campaigner, was invited by the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) to tour Aotearoa/New
Zealand from July 6-19th 2008 to help put our own campaign against
foreign bases into a global context. A major part of her brief was to show how
the issues we face are not peculiar to Aotearoa but are the result of policies
and actions of the US
government on a global scale. The spread of a great variety of types of US
bases and infrastructure, and basing agreements, in many countries accelerated
under the Bush Administration. The tour was
a great success – Cora delivered on her brief, giving the people of
Aotearoa a clear and detailed picture of US military and intelligence
intentions in the Asia/Pacific region (and globally), and, in turn, she came to
appreciate just how entangled our little country is in US war fighting and its
so-called War on Terror.
Corazon Valdez Fabros is well-known to members
of ABC. We first met her in 1990 when she was one of a number of visitors from
around the Pacific who joined our Touching the Bases Tour to protest at the
four foreign bases that existed then: the spybases at Tangimoana and Waihopai,
the Black Birch US Naval transit-circle telescope facility on a mountain above
the Awatere Valley near Blenheim (which closed in 1995), and the US naval and
air force base at Christchurch International Airport (the Harewood base). We
have been in touch with her ever since and Murray and Becky
Horton met with her during their 2007 visit to the Philippines.
Cora has impeccable credentials when it comes
to US
military bases. Her home country has a long history of military occupation by
the US,
dating back over 100 years. And the Filipino people have yet to see the end of
the US military despite the closure of two major bases in 1992, the Subic Bay
Naval base and Clark Air Base on the island of Luzon. Those closures were the
culmination of grassroots resistance over many years despite the best efforts
of successive Philippines
governments to hang on to the Americans. Cora’s major report in this issue
(Bases Of Empire: The Global Spread Of US Military And Intelligence Bases,
which was the title of her tour and which appears elsewhere in this issue)
describes how the US continues its presence throughout the Philippines, and in
many other countries, in a variety of both overt and devious ways.
A
Seasoned International Activist
Cora, who is 59, was born in Manila. She is married with four adult
children and still lives in a suburb of the vast sprawling city with her
husband Gregorio, also a lawyer. She has a long and impressive record of active
participation with the anti-bases, anti-nuclear and peace movement – over 30
years. From her CV: “[I am] currently one of the conveners of STOP the War!
Coalition Philippines, a newly –formed multi-sectoral coalition of
Philippine-based social movements, trade unions, women’s organisations,
non-government organisations, political parties, student formations and other
concerned organisations and individuals who are in solidarity with the movement
for peace and social justice…. Currently the Chairperson of the Pacific
Concerns Resource Centre (the Secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement) and a member of the
Coordinating Committee and Asia/Pacific Coordinator of the International
Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases”. It is her anti-bases
work, and in particular her role with the recently formed International
Network, that is most directly relevant to ABC. Cora keeps ABC well informed on
international bases issue via numerous reports on the NoUSBases! list server.
The list of her activities goes on at length
including her record of recent participation in conferences, meetings, forums
and fact-finding missions in a variety of roles. Her world travels in
conjunction with the above and many other activities have taken her to many
countries including Japan
(and its colony Okinawa), Italy,
Finland, Thailand, China,
Ecuador and several
countries in the Middle East. Most recently
she helped to organise, and attended, the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in Beijing in October 2008.
Highlights
Of The Tour
Cora was accompanied on the tour by myself of
the ABC who introduced Cora at meetings, provided technical background on NZ
bases, and served as tour guide along with the many local people who were
indispensable in arranging all aspects of local organisation and accommodation
(a detailed report was circulated to all supporters shortly after the
event). ABC Organiser Murray Horton was
the key coordinator of the tour, handling the myriad of details and literally
hundreds of emails and phone calls to and from local volunteers in the six
cities visited by Cora: Dunedin, Christchurch, Blenheim, Wellington,
Palmerston North and Auckland.
Cora gave eight
principal talks on international bases issues and did many media interviews
ranging from local newspapers and community radio and television to student
news publications. She also visited the
Waihopai spybase and attempted to visit the base at Tangimoana (in the lower
western North Island; Palmerston North is the
nearest city). Media interviews were conducted near both bases, although close
access had been denied because of the events of April 30, the deflation by
Ploughshares activists of one of the domes covering a satellite tracking dish
at Waihopai (see my report in this issue on a recent Blenheim court appearance
by the three “Domebuster” defendants). The two spybases are NZ’s most important
contribution to the US
military’s ability to wage war in other people’s countries, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq, with resulting massive
civilian casualties and social disintegration.
Two of the three
Waihopai Domebusters met with Cora during her tour. Adrian Leason attended her Wellington talk. Peter Murnane
had a special two hour meeting with Cora and Bob in Auckland to talk about legal issues
surrounding the upcoming court case resulting from their actions at Waihopai.
Cora was particularly interested in the philosophical basis for high-profile
Ploughshares actions in a number of countries including the US and the UK. She is a lawyer but her
expertise does not extend to the kinds of legal arguments that might be raised
in the case of wilful fence and dome damage at a spy base.
Attendance at Cora’s
main talks varied from very low to a peak of about 50. Perhaps it is
symptomatic of the very challenging foreign bases issue that in cities that
should show the greatest concern about nearby bases the turnout was pathetic. Christchurch hosts the US Air Force base at Harewood, in
operation since the late 1950s and the only such foreign base within a city
anywhere in Australasia. That long history has
made the base just about invisible to the people of Christchurch – it is part of the woodwork.
Only about a dozen members of the public attended Cora’s talk. Blenheim is only
some 25km of nearly straight road from the Waihopai spy base. Three people
attended the talk along with the usual small contingent of ABC people and local
organisers. In our long experience of campaigning in Blenheim against the spy
base, we have found that the town is conservative and almost totally
uninterested in the base, except as a Government employer of local people.
Blenheim also hosts a nearby NZ Air Force base at Woodbourne, about halfway
down the road to Waihopai. You might expect military folk to be fairly
unquestioning of the spy activities in the neighbourhood.
The liveliest meeting
in terms of numbers was in Wellington
with almost 50 members of the public in the audience. And, as in the other
centres, they were very concerned about Cora’s message. They responded with good questions after the
talk and with spirited discussion about local and international implications of
US imperial ambitions. We ABCers never really know what to expect when we put
on a meeting or an action in Wellington.
Cora’s reception was excellent. In the past we’ve been known to get
disappointing support, apart from the steadfast local core who are tuned into
the issues and can be counted on to help us.
Attendance in the
other centres was 20 in Dunedin and Palmerston
North, and 30 at Cora’s first talk in Auckland.
Her second talk there the following night drew a similar number of very
enthusiastic listeners including several Filipinos keenly interested in the
resurgent US
military involvement in their home country.
NZ’s Foreign Bases Don’t Fit Usual Basing Pattern
Prior to her arrival
Cora was only slightly familiar with our own foreign basing situation, which is
of course rather minor compared to that of countries such as the Philippines and Japan. But as we progressed around
the country, visiting the bases (from a distance), and speaking to many concerned
people, Cora realised that our two intelligence bases were something new in her
experience. They didn’t fit into the main types of bases with which she was
familiar internationally and which she described in detail in her talks. She
emphasised in her talks that although our foreign bases are rather obscure, and
out of sight of most New Zealanders, they were anything but “fringe issues”.
Waihopai and
Tangimoana are not like main military bases that cover vast areas of land in
places like Japan and Guam and
Okinawa. They are not staffed by Americans,
civilian or military (although Americans are often directly involved). They
were built with our tax dollars, and the spybases are run by New Zealand employees of the
Government Communications Security Bureau at our expense (the GCSB was created
in 1977; successive Governments have spent more than half a billion dollars on
it). But as Cora made clear, and the ABC states over and over again at every
opportunity, these are effectively foreign bases because they do not primarily
serve New Zealand’s
interests. In particular, the raw intelligence gathered at Waihopai by spying
on international communications satellites over the Pacific, goes in large part
straight to the US National Security Agency (NSA) in Maryland and thus into the
maw of the US government, which has been in active war-fighting mode ever since
the horrors of September 11, 2001.
Reflections On The Tour
The ABC considers
Cora’s tour was very successful. Of course, it is impossible to know the real
impact of a speaking tour of this kind. The issue of foreign bases in New Zealand
does not bring out the crowds. Over 20 years of protest, research, and
education by the Anti-Bases Campaign and many others, including Nicky Hager’s groundbreaking book “Secret Power”
(1996) which exposed Waihopai, Tangimoana, the GCSB and the American Echelon
global spying system to the world, have drawn little more than sporadic and
limited attention to the bases issue in New Zealand. This is not to say our
efforts have not had impact within both the GCSB and the international spy
establishment. Inside their cocoon of secrecy the spies would have been shocked
by Nicky’s revelations, as told to Nicky by the disaffected spies themselves.
Nearly annual protests at Waihopai have kept the spies and their nasty business
before the public and in the media, however briefly. Without that activity it
is very unlikely that such spying, such blatant violations of privacy and human
rights, would ever have seen the light of day in this little country. The
recent and very neat bit of sickle-surgery by Ploughshares that took the wraps
off a spy dish at Waihopai was an inspired piece of non-violent direct action
that gained international attention and exposure of the issues of spying. Their
courageous but reasonably easy breach of Waihopai security will have made the
GCSB look like a bunch of clowns to the Boss Spies in the US National Security
Agency.
Cora Fabros’ speaking tour was
an important contribution to our ongoing anti-bases efforts and a great success
in terms of direct education for those who attended her talks and those who
read and listened to her many media reports. It was a networking success,
bringing Cora into contact with our own foreign bases and those who try to
expose them, and with many other individuals and organisations that need to
hear Cora’s message and to spread it widely. The world’s sole remaining
superpower is flexing its muscles by spreading its military might and influence
around the globe, wherever it can gain a foothold with military visits, ship
visits, bases of various kinds and duration, and creative new agreements that
effectively bypass processes of democratic approval in the “invaded” countries.
Cora told us about all this, and about local grassroots resistance that is
gaining momentum in many countries. Waging war requires spying in order to
locate targets for so-called smart weapons. Some of that spying is done by
bases like Waihopai. We are currently seeing the tragic results in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US cannot function as a superpower
without foreign bases. Cora has helped us to see the links more clearly.
Cora returned to the
Philippines with fresh first
hand knowledge of a new category of US
base imperialism: the spybase with a geographic location well suited to spy on
a vast area of the globe and then reported mindlessly and dutifully and
directly back to Big Brother in the US. She is now an enthusiast, an
international ABCer, carrying the message of our foreign bases struggle to the
wider No Bases network.
Good News From Ecuador
As a very positive
postscript to the topic of grassroots resistance, in October 2008 Cora
forwarded to ABC a message from Ecuador:
“Dear No Bases friends. We are happy in Ecuador today because our new
Constitution was approved by about 64-69%. YES! This means that Article 5,
which prohibits the installation of foreign military bases, has been approved
by Ecuadoreans. We feel that there are many positive issues in the
Constitution, and the one related to military bases is very important, thanks
to international support, the No Bases Network and the International Conference
held in our country (that was the 2007
conference which founded the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign
Military Bases. Ed.). We have to continue working to ensure through our
participation that we can continue influencing policy and decisions”.