Brutality Canada Police Brutality O Canada

by Helen Forsey
April, 2001
 
April in old Quebec City - it wasn't supposed to be like this. That beautiful, historic town on the cliffs above the St. Lawrence became a war zone last week, thanks to the expensive and elaborate efforts of our Liberal government to suppress dissent, and clear the way for their corporate buddies to force their version of "free" trade down all our throats.

What those of us who disagreed with that agenda got in our throats instead, was the burning, choking poison called tear gas. What we saw when we could open our streaming eyes again was the lines of riot police, like the storm troopers from Star Wars, advancing on peaceful protestors and shooting more canisters into the middle of the crowd to blind more people as they tried to flee, stumbling, through the stinging clouds.

The tens of thousands of us who went up to the wall last Friday and Saturday were not out for "a good time" or to "blah blah blah." Most of the Canadians among us went because we thought we had a country, believed we had important things to say and felt we had a right to be heard. Our "democratic" government saw it differently, and they used our money to put up a seven-foot wall and line it with riot police to keep us out.

Imagine the Bush-Chretien gang deciding to hold a meeting in Ottawa and building a wall along the Rideau River from Sussex Drive, through neighbourhoods, to the Rideau Canal and Dow's Lake, then back to Lebreton Flats and Wellington Street. To get into downtown you'd have to have an official pass saying, in effect, that you agreed with whatever the government wanted. If you didn't have that pass, and went within blocks of the wall, you'd be met with tear gas and riot police, in some spots with water cannons and rubber bullets as well.

That is what our government did in Quebec. And no normal decent person could be in the presence of that Wall of Shame without wanting to take it down. The authorities needed to ensure the safety of visiting chiefs of state, yes, however detestable most of them may be. But there are other ways of doing that. What they did instead was outrageous, brutal, unforgivable..

Before my friends and I left on Saturday evening, we went to drop off our extra food at "Graffiti Park" - a space beneath some overpasses where a free food kitchen had been set up, and where protestors gathered to recover from the police attacks and try to find their friends. At 9:00 p.m. the area was alive, almost festive, as the people - most, but not all of them young- drummed, talked, ate, even danced, celebrating resistance and preparing to return to the wall to bear witness once again. Looking up we could see the flashes of the police weapons, the clouds of gas advancing ever closer down the cliff, and low over our heads the police helicopter - its roar a brutal accompaniment to the young people's drums. A few hours later, I'm told, it was all gone - the kids teargased from the helicopter, and the park, with its kitchen, bulldozed into the ground.

Hey, I didn't want to write this. I wanted to write about the issues - the secret content of what those chiefs of state were plotting behind that wall, that mega-amalgamation pact of greed and despotism which they call prosperity and democracy, and which is known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA. For me now, that stands for "Forces of Tyranny And Abuse", and I don't feel I have a country any more. So right now while I mourn and rage, that other analysis of how the FTAA will affect us in our rural communities will have to wait for a future article.

See some more of Helen's photos:
 
Church steps
 
Crowd gassed
 
FNU banner
 
Girls peeing
 
Graffiti park
 
Man gassed
 
People keep on smiling
 
Police truck

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This page created May 15, 2001