Protest: NZ Italian Embassy, Auckland 26 July 2001

New Zealander's march to the Italian Embassy in Auckland
to protest the unlawful battery and detention - without
redress to rights - of NZ journalist Sam Buchanan in Genoa.

Sam Buchanan is semi-blind and is being held incommunicado
in prison outside Genoa with fellow Global Social Forum
activists from Australia, Britain Canada and Ireland.

He was severely beaten along with a group of 92 people
in a Genoese school offered by the Italian authorities
to the Global Social Forum, an umbrella group for some
900 international groups protesting debt, poverty and
global apartheid of the rich G7 countries.

New Zealand strongly protests the maltreatment of Buchanan
and demands his release NOW.

Buchanan is an engineer and journalist who was sub-editor
of Capital City Newspapers and contract journalist for the
community paper City Voice. He was also a parliamentary
candidate in 1993.