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For Immediate Release: Thursday, September 13th, 2012
Lansdowne, VA - Actress, producer, and activist Q'orianka Kilcher was detained after filming a tense stand-off with police caused by concerned citizens displaying protest banners at the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiation at the Lansdowne Resort in Virginia, site of the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations taking place this week. Kilcher, who starred as Pocahontas in the Oscar-nominated film "The New World" opposite Colin Farrell and Christian Bale returned to Virginia, the location and birthplace of Pocahontas to try to help shine a spotlight on the highly unconstitutional secret TPP meetings being held at a Virginia luxury resort. In a statement prior to her arrest, Q'orianka Kilcher stated "the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated in secret to hide the content, because these agreements would never see the light of day if US citizen and congress would be allowed to see the secret documents. While hundreds of corporate advisers have access to the information contained within these documents, the American public and even members of Congress DON'T. "This sort of secrecy is highly undemocratic and not only a direct blow to our democracy but a complete disregard of all the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution to avoid exactly this sort of thing." Recently leaked documents show that the 11 country agreement will expand corporate intellectual property rights, endangering access to generic drugs, and will empower foreign corporations to challenge environmental and consumer protection laws in international tribunals that supersede the authority of domestic courts. Similar investment rules in the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement have allowed a US investor in a metal smelter to sue the Peruvian government in an international tribunal for refusing to grant the smelter a third extension on remediating one of the world's ten most toxic sites. Kilcher was arrested in 2010 for chaining herself to the White House fence during a visit by Peruvian President Alan Garcia. In 2009, Garcia's legislative degree to turn indigenous lands over to logging mining, oil extraction, and plantation agriculture interests under the pretext of implementing the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement sparked an indigenous uprising which was met by a deadly police crackdown. "In a time where people around the world and here in the US are struggling for more democracy and corporate accountability, the fact that this set of agreements and set of global enforceable corporate rights and laws are being negotiated with absolute secrecy is a complete blow to our democracy,” continued Kilcher. "Apparently the TPP members are not only sworn to keep the content of the TPP agreements in absolute secrecy but also committed to squelch any and all efforts of US citizens to have their voices heard." Q'orianka is the founder of Youth4Truth - Youth Leadership Alliance and Action Hero Network. -30- |