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Issue Number 32, October 2009
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 32, October 2009
THE
SIS AND THE PHILIPPINES SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT IN AOTEAROA
- Maire Leadbeater
For me the most disturbing material in my recently
declassified NZ Security Intelligence Service (SIS) file
is that relating to my involvement in the Philippines
Solidarity Movement in the latter half of the 1980s and
the early 1990s. The documents, taken with others such as
those released to my brother Keith Locke, Green MP, and
former Philippines Solidarity Network national
coordinator (1986-91), suggest a high level of SIS
infiltration and surveillance of the movement. Keith
Locke has also received his SIS file. It reveals that,
like Maire, he was spied on since childhood (their
parents were high profile Communists) and continued until
2006, seven years after he was elected to Parliament. Ed.
The New Zealand Philippines Solidarity Network was
launched at a highly successful Conference on Philippine
Concerns in August 1984. A key driving force behind the
initiative was the late Father John Curnow, a visionary
leader in the Catholic Commission for Evangelisation,
Justice and Peace, who had visited the Philippines many
times since 1971. From the start, the network had roots
in the union movement and support from the Labour Party
hierarchy, but many key activists were drawn from the
ranks of the (since disbanded) Workers Communist League
(WCL).
Why Were We A Magnet For SIS Attention?
The 1988-89 Peace Brigade was perhaps the most ambitious
project of the Philippines Solidarity Network in that
time, and arguably one of the most effective. There were
many other New Zealand delegations visiting the
Philippines and important tours of prominent Filipinos to
this country which also interested the spies, but the
Brigade serves as a good case example to help understand
why we were the focus of such close attention.
Keith drew the short straw back then he organised
our 17 strong team and journalist David Robie to
accompany us, but then stayed back to handle the media
response in New Zealand. I made my first unforgettable
visit to the Philippines as the leader of the team. The
Peace Brigade (or Peace Caravan as it was dubbed in the
Philippines) was designed to offer international guests
from 18 countries an exposure experience to
learn more about the struggle against foreign military
bases and other linked campaigns for human rights, labour
rights and land reform. The programme culminated with the
Asia-Pacific Peoples Conference on Peace and Development
and a two day peace caravan to protest at two major US
bases: Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Force Base. Earlier
in 1988 Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials warned
Keith of the safety problems of organising visits to the
Philippines and the Labour governments Associate
Foreign Affairs Minister, Fran Wilde, even suggested that
such visits could amount to foreign intervention in
domestic affairs.1 It is fair to
assume that there was a two way flow of information of
information and intelligence between the two governments
concerning our activities.
To the casual observer we must have seemed an unlikely
combination of people: some of our group were peace
activists of long standing but many in the group were
quite new to political activity and our ages ranged from
17 to 73. No matter, we were subjected to Red scare
propaganda even before we arrived. A letter from the
Philippines Embassys Consul-General, Apolinaria
Cancio, received by tour organiser, Keith Locke, just
prior to our departure advised that if we violated any of
the terms of our visas we would be arrested and deported.
We were specifically warned not to take part in any
teach-ins, not to contact any leaders of the
banned Communist Party of the Philippines, or to incite
people to commit sedition. Unlike the delegations from
other countries, we were all searched at Manila Airport
and some of our newsletters and documents were seized.
Not long after our arrival in the country, the Manila
newspapers carried stories alleging that the Peace
Brigade was interfering in the countrys affairs.
The Chief of the then Philippines Constabulary, General
Montana, said we would be treated like common
criminals and paedophiles if we stepped out of
line. But, I think the threats merely served to ensure
that we were especially determined to participate to the
full in the Brigade programme and wear with pride the
peacenik name the Philippine media conferred
on us.
The international delegates were allocated to small teams
each with its own Filipino guide. Journalist David Robie
was attached to our team. Our guide was Del Abcede (who
later became both a member of the Philippines Solidarity
Network in New Zealand, and married to David). Our group
went to militarised Mindanao. We spent the first few days
in Cagayan de Oro, where we took part in peace rallies
and seminars, but left for Bukidnon after military police
came knocking on the door of our guest house. In
Bukidnon, we stayed in the simple dwellings of the
families inadvertently in the front line of a
counter-insurgency war. One night we camped out with a
large group of displaced people they had been
forced off their land by military operations and were
trying to get the local authorities to take some
responsibility, but in the meantime their children were
succumbing to sickness and their food was running out.
Embarrassing Governments In Philippines & NZ
I had asked to visit Bukidnon, Mindanao, because it was
the site of New Zealands major aid project to the
Philippines at the time, the Bukidnon Industrial Tree
Plantation. The project had attracted criticism locally
on account of the failure of the project managers to
consult effectively with the local Lumad tribal people,
the impact of the project on ancestral land claims and
the likelihood that the forestry infrastructure would be
used by the military to tighten their grip in the area.
Our hosts arranged meetings for us from the local
Governor, barrio captains, tribal leaders and local
householders. Our visit stirred controversy in the
Philippines and anger back home, especially from then
Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fran Wilde, who
later tried to discredit two Lumad tribal leaders while
they were making a speaking tour of New Zealand.
While in Bukidnon we also interviewed a number of people
about a secret base believed by NZ peace researcher Owen
Wilkes* to be a scorekeeper
base designed to detect and record nuclear explosions. We
were not able to visit the heavily guarded base but later
at the Manila Conference the claims about this base
caused a major media stir. *Roland
Simbulans obituary of Owen Wilkes, focusing on
Owens significance to the Philippine anti-bases and
anti-nuclear movement, is in Kapatiran 25/26,
December 2005, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo25n26/Kap25n26Art/art113a.htm - Ed.
After the exposure we all took part in the Manila
Conference, and then in a two day caravan or convoy which
ran the gauntlet of heavily armed military barricades and
checkpoints to protest at the giant US Subic Naval Base
and Clark Air Base. We never quite made it to Subic, but
took part in an all night vigil and concert outside
Clark. It would be hard to understate the strategic
significance of the Clark and Subic bases, they were
sited to ensure US control over the choke points between
the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and served respectively as
headquarters for the US 13th Air Force and a key port for
the US 7th Fleet. The bases had served as springboards to
intervention in South East Asia (Vietnam, Korea and
Thailand) and further afield to Iran and Yemen. At the
time their role was seen as essential to preserving
strategic superiority over the former Soviet Union in the
region.
For me the Brigade was a life changing event, perhaps
because it was the first time I experienced at first hand
the power of a mass peoples movement of resistance.
The comprehensive network of cause oriented
groups such as Gabriela and Nuclear Free and Independent
Philippines, the workers, peasants and student coalitions
worked in unison to ensure the success of all our
activities. When I look back on it must have been some
kind of miracle that we achieved all that we did, making
it through eight military checkpoints to take up position
outside the Clark base. As we prepared to depart we
international delegates took part in a media conference
where we condemned the military repression we had
witnessed. The US bases not only placed the Philippines
as a future flashpoint for nuclear conflict, but they
also represented US intervention in the wider sense. The
US declared the Philippines independent in 1946, but the
presence of the bases was seen as a strong signal that
colonial control had not ended. Getting rid of the bases
was seen as an essential part of regaining Filipino
sovereignty over an economy dominated by US
transnationals.
It Was All A Communist Plot, Apparently
The Cold War was still very much intact and in the
Philippines, the dictator Marcos had fallen but his
successor, Cory Aquino, presided over a military-backed
government with only a thin veneer of democracy. Those
calling for genuine social change, land reform, labour
rights and an end to human rights abuses lived daily
under threat of arbitrary arrest or worse, and
Red-baiting was an essential tool in the
regimes armoury. On the other hand the civil war
between the Government backed by vigilante squads and the
Communist New Peoples Army (NPA) was ongoing in the
rural areas of most provinces, and in some quarters the
possibility of a full scale revolution, or another
Vietnam was contemplated. The Philippines was
in the sights of extreme Rightwing groups such as the
World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and it was widely
reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
was supporting covert actions against the NPA. The US was
determined to retain its bases in the Philippines, beyond
the lease expiry date of September 1991, as an essential
element of its ability to project its power into the
Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
If you were around in the 1980s when New Zealands
nuclear free stand was under vociferous attack, you would
remember that there was a plethora of Rightwing think
tanks, foundations and anti-Communist organisations that
worked closely together. Their agenda was to sow fear of
the dire consequences of the ANZUS*
crisis which could leave us open to Soviet
political manipulation. Naturally these
institutions, like the Hoover Institute and Heritage
Foundation focused on the Communist threat in the
Philippines, and so it was to be expected that this
anti-Communist hysteria would not spare New
Zealand-Philippines links. In December 1988, not long
before our tour began, New Zealands Ambassador in
the Philippines had to defend a simple aid project about
sewing machines because the charity funded, Samakana, had
a connection to the womens organisation Gabriela,
declared by some to be Communist affiliated.2
*The 1951 Australia New Zealand
United States (ANZUS) Treaty was the bedrock of NZs
defence alliance with the US. NZs membership did
not survive the 1984-90 Labour governments nuclear
free law, which remains in effect today, despite several
changes of NZ government since then. A side effect of
NZs expulsion was that it ended the use of US
military bases in the Philippines for training purposes
by the NZ military. The ANZUS Treaty continues, minus NZ,
between the US and Australia. It was invoked by John
Howard, the then Australian Prime Minister, immediately
after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.
Ed.
Red-baiting NZ Media Cooperated With SIS
There had also been some rather lurid headlines in the
New Zealand Sunday papers about New Zealanders spending
time with the NPA during their solidarity visits to the
Philippines: Guerrilla Thrill Trips: Kiwis pay to
join Filipino jungle fighters.3
When we returned from the Philippines, journalist Bernard
Moran, who was becoming a regular at Rightwing
conferences on the Communist threat, gained some new
ammunition to use in vitriolic articles in the former
Catholic paper New Zealand Tablet. He had previously
written of a Communist conspiracy that was driving church
aid projects in the Philippines. The piece he wrote about
our Auckland meeting to report back on the Brigade was a
distorted account that zeroed in on the presence of
Trotskyites and their subversive literature
in the sacred confines of the St Benedicts Church
crypt.4
It is clear from the SIS documents that the late John
Kennedy, the editor of the Tablet, passed information to
the SIS. One such report included detailed information
about the finances, and the political affiliations of
Philippines Solidarity Group (PSG) members in Auckland
and Wellington.5 Bernard Moran also
submitted an article in early 1987 to the Washington
based journal National Interest in which he wrote (not
very accurately) about me. Flatteringly he dubbed me a
pivotal person in the NZ peace movement.6
Fortunately, the Red-baiting articles were
far outweighed by key articles by David Robie who was
then working freelance and had many Philippines articles
accepted by the mainstream media (nationally and
regionally). He continued to cover the Philippines
political situation, human rights issues and the bases
debate over the next few years. In 2009 David Robie
applied to the SIS for any file it held on him. He
received a reply like many others saying
that the SIS neither confirms nor denies that he was the
subject of a file. Ed.
SIS Spies In Meetings In All Main Centres
Hardened activist that I am, I confess to being shocked
to discover the extent to which there were
sources or SIS spies present at many of the
meetings of the Philippines Solidarity Groups in
Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland. Bear in mind the
context that these were generally small, relatively
informal meetings held frequently in the homes of
activists. National meetings which were often held in a
relaxed marae setting are also reported on in detail.
To give just one example of SIS penetration of a
Christchurch Philippines Solidarity Group meeting in a
private home, Maires file included a three page
detailed report on a meeting held in May 1990. It says:
Source borrowed the correspondence folder and
copied its contents. This means that the spy was in
a position of trust. Since writing this article Maire has
extensively researched the historic Philippines
Solidarity minutes and correspondence which are archived
at the University of Canterburys Macmillan Brown
Library. As a result she is confident that she has
identified the spy in Christchurch. We dont plan to
publish the name as it wouldnt mean anything to
anyone anyway. Ed.
This of course raises the question about the extent to
which our SIS was passing on information to counterparts
in the Philippines, and perhaps using information gained
from the Philippines to refine their surveillance of us.
There is no direct proof of this as communications from
or to other intelligence agencies have all been excluded
from the released information. Every broad social justice
movement, such as the anti-nuclear movement or the
anti-apartheid movement, has participants from a range of
Left parties. Most of us are glad to harness
everyones energy for the common cause but that is
not how the SIS sees the situation! The Left affiliations
of those present at meetings and seminars were all
carefully recorded. Tellingly, John Curnow is recorded as
warning at a Christchurch Philippines Solidarity meeting
that people should not make jokes about supporting the
New Peoples Army. He, himself, had been interviewed
a couple of times by the SIS, who tried to tell him he
was being hoodwinked by the WCL.7
Tracking Visitors To Both Countries
The SIS also did its best to monitor all visits of New
Zealanders to the Philippines listing all the full
names and dates of birth of members of the Peace Brigade
after they had obtained their visas.8
My return flight times are also included in a much later
handwritten note9 with the comment:
There is no trace of any travel during 1990.
SIS Headquarters also supplied a list of Filipino
visitors to New Zealand since 1984. The names on the list
have been withheld but the rationale is interesting:
It is as comprehensive as our records will allow.
It was compiled because of the frequency of such travel,
the number of visitors with National Democratic Front
(NDF*) or New Peoples Army (NPA) traces,
and, lastly because of the growing links between
anti-nuclear groups and indigenous peoples of both
countries. We had hoped to carry out a similar
study of New Zealanders travelling to the Philippines but
owing to the volume of travel and the difficulty of
keeping track of their movements, this has not proved to
be feasible. Instead we have concentrated on a few
individuals who have established good links with the
Philippines and who appear to be regarded as valuable
contacts by the Filipinos themselves.10
*The National Democratic
Front is the political coalition of underground groups
waging the armed struggle, including both the Communist
Party of the Philippines and the New Peoples Army.
Ed.
Sometimes the sources were rebuffed: We were
unfortunately unable to have source coverage of the PSNA
hui on 27-28 September 86. So the SIS mounted
surveillance to record some of the comings and goings but
only three vehicles were seen to enter the venue and one
female cyclist aged about 35 with black hair.
The only other thing to note was that one of the
participants came out on Sunday morning at 0900 hours
to purchase a newspaper from the local dairy and
walk around the block for about 15 mins. This man
was sporting a full beard and has had his hair
permed. He was accompanied on his perambulations by a
male aged about 25-30, dark hair, pale complexion.11
By the time of the 1990 Lumad tribal and Touching the
Bases tours (six Filipinos participated in the latter),
it seems that SIS interest was waning, as reporting is
sparse.
The lessons? I dont think any of this covert
activity had an adverse effect on the powerful
international anti-nuclear campaign for the US bases in
the Philippines to be closed. In 1991 the Philippines
Senate voted against a treaty allowing the United States
forces to remain for a further ten years. The Mount
Pinatubo volcanic eruption that year effectively ended
the life of the Clark Air Force Base and in March 1992
the last carrier group pulled out of Subic Bay. The
Philippines solidarity movement in this country declined
in strength for a few years, until Murray Horton (who was
also a Peace Brigade stalwart) and the Christchurch group
took over the national coordination task. Now, it is good
to see that the network is growing again and focusing on
the new US integrated global presence and basing
strategy* as well as on the
appalling human rights and poverty situation. *For
details see Peace Researcher 37, November 2008,
Bases Of Empire: The Global Spread Of US Military
And Intelligence Bases, by Cora Fabros, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr37-1721.html - Ed.
Lessons For Future Security In Our Movements?
Of course we should not forget the possibility that any
movement for social change can be infiltrated whether by
the SIS or possibly the Police (it was revealed, in
December 2008, that activist Rob Gilchrist
had been a Police spy and agent provocateur inside
various activist groups for a decade, operating in
Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland. For three detailed
articles about him, see Peace Researcher 38,
July 2009, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/prcont38.html - Ed.).
But it would be counterproductive to let this get in the
way of free communication or make us less welcoming to
new members. The publicity around the release of SIS
files to many veteran activists has given a new
opportunity for a campaign against all spying on social
justice and political activists of all stripes. The
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights guarantees to all of us the right to freedom
of opinion and expression
and to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.
Maire Leadbeaters SIS file, of course, covered
more than her involvement in Philippines Solidarity. For
details on its spying on her as a peace activist, see her
article Activist Annals in Peace
Researcher 38, July 2009, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr38-178b.htm . Maire was a leading figure
in PSNA in the 1980s and remains an active member, in
Auckland.
1 Dominion Post, 8/5/88
2 Dominion Sunday Times,
21/2/88
3 Sunday Star,
8/5/88
4 Metro, July 1989,
Bernard Moran and Communist Conspiracy.
5 SIS District Office
Southern District to Headquarters, 27/5/86, Keith Locke
file.
6 SIS District Office Northern
District, Original on Bernard Andrew Moran 27/4/87,
extracted/copied by (name withheld), on 28/5/87, Maire
Leadbeater file.
7 NSIS District Office Southern
District to Headquarters, 8/6/90, Maire Leadbeater file.
8 NZSIS, 9/1/89, Maire Leadbeater file.
9 NZSIS, 7/12/90, Maire
Leadbeater file.
10 Headquarters (Counter-Subversi-on)
to District Office Northern District & District
Office Southern District 10/8/88, Keith Locke file.
11 NZSIS District Office Southern
District to Headquarters, 9/10/86, Maire Leadbeater file.
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