Brutality Canada Police Brutality O Canada

Is this just bravado or do they have plans to start bombing the protesters from the sky this time? No need to worry about grizzly bears then, eh?...No, but don't make jokes like that cause we predicted the teargas in Quebec...-ed

RCMP can handle G8, Mounties say

By JEFF GRAY
Globe and Mail Update
July, 2001

As protest groups vow to demonstrate at next year's Group of Eight summit in Kananaskis, Alta., the RCMP says is will be able to secure the remote mountain site.

"We're confident," said Constable Guy Amyot of RCMP media relations in Ottawa. "There's no doubt in our minds."

RCMP personnel were on hand as observers at the Genoa summit, where clashes between protesters and police injured more than a hundred and one demonstator was shot and killed. Constable Amyot said Mounties had met with Italian officials in Genoa in hopes of learning from the experience there.

But staging a summit of world leaders in a remote Rocky Mountain tourist village is sure to be different than holding the event in a major urban centre. Previous G8 or G7 meetings in Canada have been held in Halifax in 1995 and in Ottawa in 1981.

"It's hard to say if it will be easier or harder," Constable Amyot said, adding that RCMP planning for the event is in very early stages.

But at least one security consultant says the forest and mountains around the location could make it easier for terrorists to strike.

Alan Bell of Globe Risk Holdings Inc.*(see below) said the prospect of eight world leaders in such small place will make an attractive target. "Any one who puts a conference in a [remote place] is breaking a lot of the rules," said Mr. Bell, who advised Calgary police police before last summer's World Petroleum Congress.

Meanwhile, human-rights group Amnesty International, weighed in Tuesday on the fallout from last week's summit in Genoa.

The group urged Italy to respect the rights of protesters detained during demonstrations at a Group of Eight summit last weekend and to allow them access to lawyers and relatives.

The London-based international human-rights organization said some foreign nationals arrested during the summit in the Italian city of Genoa had not yet been able to contact their consulates, lawyers or families.

"Amnesty is concerned about the lack of access to consulates and lawyers and we call on Italian authorities to immediately ensure the rights of the people deprived of their liberty in the last two days of the G8 are enforced," Amnesty's Western Europe researcher Nerys Lee told Reuters.

More than 200,000 people took the streets in Genoa during the G8 summit, but a core of activists bent on violence clashed with police and caused millions of dollars of damage.

One protester was shot dead and more than 230 people were injured during two days of violence. Police arrested 280 protesters, many of them foreign.

With a report from Reuters News Agency

*"Globe Risk Holdings Inc. was incorporated to operate within the higher echelons of international security and to assist government, law enforcement agencies, and the private sector in combating the increasing threat of criminal and terrorist groups. We provide security-consulting services to international mining, energy and exploration companies operating in high-risk areas of the world." From the Globe Risk Holdings web site.

Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law.

Send your comments and stories of police brutality to: ruitsdawtah@Hotmail.com

This page created July 30, 2001