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From: info <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 12:03 PM
Subject: [mobilize-globally] Canada mounts biggest-ever security operation for Summit
of the Americas
Subject:
[CTRL] Canada mounts biggest-ever security operation for
Summit
of the Americas
Date:
Fri, 2 Mar 2001 22:24:44 EST
From:
William Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To:
Conspiracy Theory Research List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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 forcesthe Royal Canadian Mounted Police
(RCMP), the
Quebec Provincial Police and the municipal police forces of Quebec
City and
neighboring Ste.-Foywill 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 Cityan 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 residencesis 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.
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