http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/mar2001/queb-m02.shtml
Canada mounts biggest-ever security operation for Summit of the Americas
By Keith Jones
2 March 2001
The Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Quebec City April 20-22,
has become the object of the largest security operation in Canadian history.
While much of this operation is cloaked in secrecy, flagrant violations of
basic civil liberties have already come to light. Moreover, by transforming
Quebec City into an armed camp, the authorities hope to marginalize and
stigmatize opposition to the summit and to the big business agenda pursued by
its 34 participating governments.
Publicly, government officials are admitting that 5,000 police drawn from
four different police forces—the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the
Quebec Provincial Police and the municipal police forces of Quebec City and
neighboring Ste.-Foy—will be mobilized for the summit. The police will be
charged with keeping protesters quarantined far from the summit site and
ruthlessly suppressing any transgression of the law by the summit's
opponents. To this end, all five of the RCMP's riot control detachments are
being deployed to Quebec City and the Quebec provincial government has
ordered that 500 inmates be temporarily transferred from a local prison, so
it can serve as a detention centre for persons arrested during anti-summit
protests.
The authorities are taking extraordinary steps to ensure that the most lowly
summit participants, let alone US President George W. Bush and the 33 other
state presidents and prime ministers who are slated to attend, do not
encounter or even come within earshot of any anti-summit protests. The
downtown core of Quebec City—an area of several dozen blocks that contains
the summit meeting site and the hotels where the participants are to be
housed, as well as numerous shops, office, and residences—is to be fortified
and transformed into an exclusion zone.
A 4.5 kilometre-long and 3-metre high metal fence anchored in concrete will
be built around this entire area and during the summit only those with police
passes will be permitted entry. Three types of passes are being issued: one
for those attending the summit, another for those who live within the
exclusion zone and a third for those who work in the zone. Depending on
whether the Quebec government decides to give civil servants who work at the
provincial legislature and the various ministries that are likewise situated
in the no-go zone a holiday for the duration of the summit, up to 25,000
workers and residents will be compelled to obtain police passes and have
their movements monitored during the summit.
The police are conducting security checks on those requesting passes for the
exclusion zone. Bibiane Bernier, manager of a souvenir store at a hotel where
some summit-related activities are to take place, told the Canadian Press
that the RCMP have been carrying out detailed security checks on the store's
employees. “They called one of our employees who'd moved five times in recent
years, and asked, ‘What were you doing? Why did you move?'”
These measures have been defended by Quebec's Security Minister in stark
terms. “As the proverb goes,” Serge Menard told reporters, “if you want
peace, prepare for war.”
Civil liberties groups have pointed out that the exclusion-zone represents an
unprecedented constraint on people's right to use city streets and other
public places. Canadian Civil Liberties Association general counsel Alan
Borovoy added, “The further the protesters are, the less viable their protest
will be.”
The RCMP have visited organizations involved in anti-summit activities,
including church groups, to question them about their plans and to encourage
them to inform on any group or individual they suspect might disobey the
police's strict rules as to where protests will be permitted and how
protestors must act. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has also been
paying unannounced visits to anti-summit activists.
These pressure tactics have already had one desired outcome. Eager to
demonstrate to the establishment their respectability, the trade unions have
announced that their protest demonstration will be staged well away from the
perimeter of the exclusion-zone.
In the run-up to the summit, the local police and government are seeking to
instill a climate of fear and intimidation. On at least two occasions, police
have detained persons handing out anti-summit materials in the Quebec City
are. In the first case, police said that if more than two people distributed
materials together they would be considered an unlawful assembly. This week,
the suburb of Ste.-Foy followed the lead of Quebec City and passed a
municipal bylaw that makes it illegal for anyone in a crowd to wear a mask,
scarf or otherwise cover any part of their face, and this in a city where
sub-freezing temperatures are a common occurrence in late April. Not only
does the Ste.-Foy bylaw give the police the power to immediately arrest
anyone even partially covering his or her face, it overturns the presumption
of innocence and says that those who obscure any part of their face must
prove that they did so for a valid reason.
Such draconian measures point to the authorities' hostility to basic civil
liberties and eagerness to give the state powers that can be invoked so as to
justify clearing the streets of those opposed to government policy.
With the full support of Canada's Liberal government, the United States
intends to use next month's summit to reinforce its longstanding economic and
geopolitical domination of Latin America by pushing for the creation of a
hemispheric free trade zone.
