Parliament Invaders to receive decision tomorrow

Four human rights campaigners will find out tomorrow whether or not they will be acquitted of the charge “disturbing the legislative assembly whilst it was in session”.

The four were among nine people charged with the offence after their peaceful entry into the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly on the 14th of May 2002.

The group were protesting against the draconian “drug house” legislation which allows police to signpost a home with a 1.2 metre high fluorescent green sign declaring the home a drug house. Once the sign has been erected police can:

- raid the premises as often as they like without a warrant,

- stop and question anyone within 200 metres of the sign,

- issue restraining orders, barring people from attending the premises, and

- with telephone approval from a magistrate, conduct cavity searches on anyone on the premises.

No charges need to be laid and no convictions are required before a home can be declared a “drug house”.

Michael Paul Lambe, Robert Inder-Smith, Stuart Highway and Gary Meyerhoff argued their innocence during a 3 day hearing earlier this month. The group argued that it was their duty to protest against the "drug house" laws and the institutionalised racism in the Northern Territory, where 86% of prisoners are indigenous.

The decision will be delivered by Justice David Angel in Darwin tomorrow at 9.30am Australian Central Standard Time in the Northern Territory Supreme Court.

For more information call Gary on 0415 16 2525 or see the following sites:

Network Against Prohibition: http://www.napnt.org

People Against Racism in Aboriginal Homelands: http://www.country-liberal-party.com

War on drugs puts profits before people

Residents of Darwin will smoke a giant joint today to symbolise their ongoing resistance to the US led wars on drugs and “terrorism”.

The joint will be lit at Raintree Park at 12noon at the Network Against Prohibition’s 19th Community Smoke-In on the final day of the 3rd Darwin International Syringe Festival.

NAP spokesperson Strider said “The war on terror would have been intellectually unacceptable had the population not been softened up to accept such a logical absurdity, by the so-called war on drugs.”

“There can of course be no war on drugs or terrorism, only on people.”

“It is a human rights issue and we are a human rights organisation.”

“Because we provide needle and syringe programs in Australia we have been lucky enough to avoid the catastrophic situation now developing in Eastern Europe and across Asia, where lack of access to clean injecting equipment has resulted in a staggering 90% of people diagnosed with HIV in Russia being injecting drug users.”

In the United States, another country that fails to provide needle/syringe programs, 25% of injecting drug users are HIV positive. In 2000, HIV/AIDS was among the top three causes of death for African-American men ages 25-54.

This catastrophe could be stopped in its tracks if injecting equipment was provided to those people that need it. Countries that fail to provide injecting equipment to drug users rely on the moral authority of the 1998 UN General Assembly on Drugs declaration aiming for a drug-free world by 2008. Following the US experiment with the prohibition of alcohol this seems to be a very unlikely outcome.

This is in direct contrast to resolutions of the UN General Assembly on AIDS held in 2001 that called for the establishment of needle and syringe programs.

This needs to be evaluated in the light of the wider AIDS pandemic. Dr Ninkama Moiya, Director of PNG’s National AIDS Council Secretariat told delegates at the 16th Annual Australiasian Society of HIV Medicine conference, held in Canberra earlier this month, that AIDS is the leading cause of death in the wards of Port Moresby General Hospital amounting to 50% of all deaths.

Dr Moiya said “Poverty increases HIV transmission.”

This analysis was supported by Dr Mary Crewe from the Centre for the Study of AIDS in Africa, who also identified racism and global capitalism as factors increasing HIV transmission.

Strider said “The so-called war on drugs is unreasonably complicating the so-called war on AIDS. What we are seeing is unconscionable profiteering by pharmaceutical and medical technology companies. Western governments are bowing to these commercial pressures.”

Costing ten times as much as a conventional device, the retractable syringe is one example of this profiteering.

In PNG and Africa, where sexual activity, not unsafe injecting, is the leading cause of HIV transmission, hospitals are being forced into spending aid funding on retractable syringes. 100,000 retractable syringes are being sold to PNG hospitals every month.

It is significant that President George Bush appointed former Eli Lilly CEO, Randall Tobias, as head of the US Global AIDS initiative. One of his first acts has been to award a massive contract to a Texas based syringe manufacturer to provide retractable syringes to Botswana, Cote D'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria.

Strider said “Governmment and industry leadership is clearly taking us to a place where the Network Against Prohibition does not wish to go. We identify a crisis in leadership.”

“The voice of the users should be listened to. We know something that well meaning non-users in government don’t know. We know that using drugs is a part of life and protected by the universal declaration of human rights on any reasonable interpretation of the document. It is wrong to criminalise people who think this way.”

For more information contact the Network Against Prohibition on 0415 16 2525 or see the following links:

Syringegate – the real story behind the retractable syringe http://www.napnt.org/arse/syringegate.html

UNAIDS 2004 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic http://www.unaids.org/bangkok2004/report.html

US Global AIDS initiative http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/od/gap/

The 3rd Darwin International Syringe Festival http://www.napnt.org/sf/2004contents.html

NT activists await Supreme Court decision

Four human rights activists facing jail for a protest in the Northern Territory Parliament now face a tense wait for an appeal decision against the conviction to be handed down by the NT Supreme Court.

After 3 days of submissions in the NT Supreme Court, Justice David Angel reserved his judgement.

Gary Meyerhoff, Robert Inder-Smith and Stuart Highway, all members of the Network Against Prohibition and Mick Lambe, the coordinator of the anti-racism group People Against Racism In Aboriginal Homelands, were among a group of nine people who invaded the chamber of the NT Legislative Assembly on the 14th of May 2002.

The group were protesting against the Labor Government’s “drug house” legislation and continued racism in the Northern Territory.

A marathon 16 day hearing in the Darwin Magistrate’s Court saw senior cabinet ministers and opposition members appear in the witness box. The activists were found guilty and sentenced to between 14 and 21 months jail.

For further information call NAP on (08) 8942 0570 or see:

NAP: http://www.napnt.org

PARIAH: http://www.country-liberal-party.com

Retractable Syringe trial putting young people at risk

Injecting drug users, including young people, will continue to be put at risk by Michael Wooldridge’s trial of Retractable Syringes in Australia’s Needle and Syringe Programs.

The trial of Retractable Syringes at Sydney’s Kirketon Road Centre is set to continue after the ethics committee overseeing the trial dismissed a complaint into the conduct of the trial.

The Darwin chapter of the Network Against Prohibition submitted a complaint on the 17th of August to the Human Research Ethics Committee of the South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service outlining major concerns about the trial.

The concerns included the fact that volunteers in the Trial are being asked to test this experimental medical device on themselves, without adequate supervision or facilities and that the private company conducting the trial, the Research Forum, failed to warn participants of possible harms associated with injecting drug use such as vein collapse, complications associated with injecting into arteries, "dirty hits", impact on the immune system, overdose and the risk of arrest and incarceration by police.

Trial documentation reveals that there are no safeguards to prevent young people from participating in the trial or accessing these experimental retractable syringes when they inevitably find their way onto the streets.

In their complaint, The Network Against Prohibition argued that the trial breaches the Nuremberg Code, drawn up in 1946 during the Nuremberg Trials, in which 23 Nazi physicians went on trial for crimes committed against prisoners of war.

Professor Terry Bolin, chairperson of the ethics committee, told NAP that the committee “agree that the study is not in breach of the Nuremberg Code” and that “The Committee feel that no further investigation is necessary and therefore no action will be taken in this matter.”

NAP Spokesperson Gary Meyerhoff said “We are appalled that the ethics committee have not taken our concerns seriously. The trial of retractable syringes is being conducted at the behest of business interests, including Ritract, the Australian company lucky enough to have former health minister Michael Wooldridge on its staff.”

Meyerhoff said “We will continue in our attempts to have this dangerous profit driven trial abandoned and to have the corrupt Michael Wooldridge brought to justice.”

The Network Against Prohibition will be asking the ethics committee to review its decision and will also lodge a complaint with the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

Complaints will be lodged with the ethics committee that approved the Victorian component of the trial. Retractable Syringes are being trialled at two locations in Victoria; Melbourne Inner-city Needle Exchange (MINE) in Collingwood and Southern Hepatitis, HIV/AIDS Resource & Prevention Service (SHARPS) in Frankston.

For more information or to arrange an interview call NAP’s Gary Meyerhoff on 0415 16 2525 or the chairperson of the ethics committee Professor Terry Bolin on (02) 93823587.

Further information on Retractable Syringes can be found at: http://www.napnt.org/arse/syringegate.html