The Dominion - Stefan Christoff

Red Square Roots

dawn — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:11:45 +0000

How austerity underpins social crisis and repression in Quebec and beyond

MONTREAL—Across Montreal little red squares, sprayed on sidewalk corners, drawn into bus stop walls, or pinned to shirts, speak to the historic nature of Quebec's ongoing political crisis sparked by a massive student strike.

 Every evening in Montreal red flags continue to fly, as people armed with a carré rouge, the red felt square symbolizing Quebec's student uprising, join nightly protest starting at place Émilie-Gamelin.

From the cold of winter to the heat of summer, Montreal's streets have been alive with protest in 2012, a battle ground between contrasting social visions.   As a vibrant social movement calls for the government to retreat on moves to hike university tuition fees, people on the streets are also fundamentally questioning the logic of austerity economics.

Protests are riding a political high that is sparking growing international attention, while the Parti Libéral du Québec is mobilizing for a serious push back in mid-August via Law 78.   Police and Sûreté du Québec forces plan to open college and university campuses on strike across Quebec by force, if students, professors and supporters move to protest the controversial legislation on site. This move would threaten to unleash legislated police wrath on the strike, clearly undercutting student assemblies and associations who continue to sustain the strike movement.

Activists are now collectively organizing, through popular assemblies and meetings across Quebec, ways to challenge Law 78 and the legislated attempt to crush the strike movement.

  “La grève est étudiante, la lutte est populaire!”, a slogan roughly translating to, “a student strike, a people's struggle,” illustrates placard signs and banners around the city. It is also a chant often heard in the streets.

Popular opposition toward Law 78 is steadfast, a law that inspired a thousand protests, turning a student strike into the largest social movement in a generation.   Emergency legislation, drafted May 2012 by the Quebec Liberal government, includes restrictions on protest, banning public gatherings inside and around university campuses, while obliging organizers of street demonstrations across Quebec to seek police approval at least eight hours in advance.

 In Quebec and globally, Law 78 has been met by widespread condemnation. Amnesty International states that the bill violates freedoms of speech, assembly and movement. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights openly criticized the bill in a June 2012 speech, saying that it restricts “rights to freedom of association and of peaceful assembly.”

 “At times when governments face a crisis of legitimacy, the state will often resort to repression,” said Aziz Choudry, a professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.

 “It's important to have historical perspective, in Canada the RCMP spied on and harassed union activists, indigenous people,” said Choudry in an interview with The Dominion. “Today in Quebec there is a movement that has been able to sustain itself for a long period of time and now that movement is facing repression and criminalization. It's really important for us to challenge this but also see it as part of a historic reality.”

 On the streets across Quebec, thousands are joining nightly popular protests against the law, banging pots and pans in casseroles protests, inspired by the cacerolazo grassroots protest tradition, that took root in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and was used more recently during the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina.  

Nightly casseroles protests illustrate how Law 78 pushed more and more people to take to the streets, not only in protest and support for the student strike, but also as a form of voicing wider opposition toward a political and economic system that is increasingly seen as predatory and unjust. 

 “In Quebec there is popular support for the student movement, so now the government is trying to break the movement with repression,” said Rushdia Mehreen, a graduate student at Concordia University and members of the social struggles committee of CLASSE. “Since the strike began there was always physical repression by police at protests, with pepper spray, rubber bullets and physical police assaults, but the students continued, so now the state is utilizing legislation to repress the movement with Law 78.

  “The Quebec government chose repression because there isn't democratic, popular support for their policy to hike tuition fees,” said Mehreen, in an interview with The Dominion. “More broadly in Quebec, people do not support the framework of austerity economics, so repression is now the response to create fear and to try to force these unpopular policies on the population."

  In Quebec the move to hike tuition fees by $1,778 over seven years, representing an 82 per cent increase per student, has been billed by government officials as part of a “cultural revolution” that is now rewriting social policy in Quebec. It's not just students who are feeling the crunch.

In the healthcare sector, the Liberal Government moved to impose a $200-per-year healthcare flat tax, or “user fee”, for all in Quebec. At the same time, the government has moved to gut corporate tax rates, making them among the lowest in the western world.  

Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand describes the policies as an effort to control public finances. But these changes occur in the context of a global drift toward austerity measures, a reality defined by a shift away from collective solutions toward societal problems, via public institutions—policies that place the burden of the ongoing financial crisis on the public sector, rather than the corporate sector, universally recognized to have sparked the current crisis.

  While working to re-engineer Quebec's public institutions, the Quebec Liberals are also pushing Plan Nord, a controversial development plan for the Northern regions of Quebec, inspired in ways by Alberta's tar sands industry, linking economic growth largely on resource extraction and drafted largely without meaningful consultation of the First Nations communities who live in the regions that the northern plan will impact. 

Popular opposition toward Plan Nord on the streets has been serious, with students joining forces with environmental group for Earth Day on April 22, a mass protest with hundreds of thousands on the streets, a key moment in the trajectory of the ongoing protest movement in Quebec. Outside the Salon Plan Nord in April, hundreds of environmental justice activists clashed with riot police. These tense protests marked a political turning point in the student strike mobilization, shifting the focus of street protests from tuition hikes toward a broader systemic critique of Liberal government policies.   

Some ask if the Quebec Liberal government's effort to control or force public institutions toward austerity has been a factor in pushing the party towards losing control.  

“Today in Quebec the government is failing to impose a neo-liberal 'cultural revolution' without force,” explains Guillaume Hébert, researcher at the Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques (IRIS) in Montreal. “And when facing a growing student movement, a historic movement, the imposition of Law 78 is all about imposing an austerity agenda by force, an agenda aiming to commercialize education but also to privatize other public institutions in Quebec.

  “Many, many people in Quebec agree on the universal right to university education, so there is a discord between the neo-liberal model and Quebec's political culture,” Hébert told The Dominion.

“So we are seeing, as in Victoriaville and on many nights in Montreal that austerity policies are being backed and pushed by state force.”

In Victoriaville, the Sûreté du Québec provincial police force fired large amounts of tear gas and multiple rounds of rubber bullets on demonstrators supporting the student strike movement, severely injuring multiple students who traveled in hundreds on buses to protest outside a Liberal Party meeting. One student, Maxence Valade, lost an eye during the police attack.   

Questions are being raised on the streets of Quebec about the limits of democracy today in the context of a historic student strike. On top of the injuries in Victoriaville, journalists at Concordia University TV have also been repeatedly pepper-sprayed and hit by police batons while filming on the front-lines at nightly protests in Montreal.

  As political commentators shift their focus to the election campaign in Quebec, discussions inside the strike movement are now turning toward the limits for activists and social movements to express themselves in an era of austerity.

  “Democratic expression has always been limited and restrained in Quebec and Canada,” said Eric Shragge, professor at the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University. “Liberal democracies are liberal to a certain point, once popular movements cross a threshold and move toward mass mobilization, repression is administered.

  “There is always a contingency plan of state violence and repression when people collective refuse the neo-liberal economic model that has been pushed for decades now,” said Shragge. “People are pushed to believe they need to find individual solutions to collective problems and that the market will bring solutions. Clearly this isn't the case and when people refuse this logic collectively on the streets, like we are seeing in Quebec, the state will eventually come in to bash heads.”

  The austerity agenda the Conservative Government is pursuing in the rest of Canada amplifies the current crisis in Quebec in different ways.   Although Quebec politicians question specifics of Canada's Conservative policies—namely the expansion of federal prisons—fundamentals of both governments' policies in relation to sustaining adequate funding for public institutions, like universities and hospitals, are similar.  

Beyond boosting policing and military budgets, the Conservative Government has cut funding in the name of 'balancing books', mirroring economic language of Quebec politicians and trends of austerity policies globally. For example, a watchdog organization responsible for monitoring Canada's spy agency CSIS was eliminated in the 2012 budget. This means less oversight for an agency with a long history of spying on and tracking the organizing efforts of social movements.

  At the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), people are drawing a parallel between repression against the student movement in Quebec via Law 78 and the back-to-work legislation imposed on CUPW this past fall.

  “In Canada, repressive legislation is targeting the right to strike, imposing heavy, heavy fines on unions for fighting back and undercutting collective bargaining,” said Aalya Ahmad, a writer and activist in Ottawa who works at CUPW.

  “Imposing working conditions and wages on workers through back-to-work legislation, first with the postal workers, then with Air Canada workers, is an attack on civil liberties,” said Ahmad, in an interview with The Dominion. “In Quebec Law 78 is part of this broader political environment, illustrating an incredible attack on students and professors, it's essential for unions and people in Canada to support the struggle in Quebec against Law 78 because our struggles are connected.”

  At the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in Toronto, activist John Clark argues that both the conflict on the streets and scale of the protests in Quebec only signal the beginning of a larger conflict in society.   

“What is now happening is that post 2008 crisis and with the system hovering on the edge of a toilet bowl, the pace of austerity is being massively accelerated,” said Clark in an interview with The Dominion. “In the end there are only two ways to regulate a population, you can either meet their needs within limits, or get out the billy clubs.”  

“In Canada, the cutting edge of the resistance to the austerity agenda has come-up in Quebec. Even observing from the outside we see how shocking and unprecedented the repression of the state has become,” said Clark. “But I think Quebec is only the starting point, for both the resistance and repression, this will spread from coast to coast.”  

“The scale of this economic crisis is only beginning to assert itself and the austerity agenda is only getting started,” said Clark. “There is going to be a profound conflict in society in the near future and we need to be ready.”

  Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, musician and community activist who contributes to the Media Co-op, follow him on Twitter at Spirodon.

No à Loi 78!

CBC misrepresenting Quebec student strike?

Tim McSorley — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:22:52 +0000

Coverage of yesterday's demo leaves more questions than answers

MONTREAL—CBC coverage of yesterday's Quebec student protests in downtown Montreal was driven by a painfully obvious bias against the student strike.

Across Quebec, over 55,000 students are currently on strike to protest Quebec government plans to raise post-secondary tuition fees by $1,625 over the next five years.

News reports via CBC yesterday, when 15,000 students marched in Montreal, consistently failed to scrutinize violent police actions against striking students, and the station's coverage bent towards the austerity-driven logic of the Quebec government's policy to hike tuition fees.

CBC television cameras and reporters were on the ground yesterday to cover the massive student protest but failed to convey the real story, missing the full message of the student protesters and misreporting facts on police actions.

CBC News Now host Reshmi Nair's live national commentary on the student protest is important to highlight.

In this clip Nair describes live footage from Montreal via Radio Canada, broadcast as thousands of students, who had been marching throughout downtown all afternoon, converged around Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge, leading to a temporary blocking of bridge traffic.

Montreal riot police were on location and began forcefully clearing student protesters from the bridge and surrounding public streets. As police move on the protest, using batons and pepper spray against students carrying protest signs, Nair announces that the "police are fighting back."

Police were "fighting back" against what exactly?

"Fighting back" with pepper spray against a widely popular student protest?

Is employing batons and peppery spray against young students holding placards justified?

Certainly more balanced ways for CBC to report on unfolding events were possible.

Unfortunately this example points to larger systemic failures in CBC's coverage of the current Quebec student strike.

A lead article on CBC.ca gave the first quotes and focus in the report to a few individual students voicing support for tuition hikes and opposition to the strike. Also, this CBC post does not quote a single student participating in the strike, failing to document one voice from the thousands protesting in downtown Montreal streaming past multiple on-location CBC reporters.

Additionally, CBC coverage has widely focused on comparing Quebec tuition fees to the rest of Canada, an argument that misses the Quebec specific context to the protests.

Key historical events central to the current protests, like the major Quebec-wide student strike in 1996, which featured mass street protests that lead to an almost decade-long freeze on tuition hikes in Quebec, is largely being excluded from CBC coverage. Without clear facts on past strikes—collective student action that secured relatively lower tuition fees in Quebec—CBC is failing to provide critical context to the current story.

Students across Quebec are motivated by victories of past strikes like the protests in 1996, but also the 2005 strike when students confronted an attempt by Jean Charest’s Liberal government to slash $103 million from bursaries granted to students. Again in 2005 Quebec students successfully forced the Quebec government to back-down after months of street protests and direct actions.

CBC is also failing to address broader questions on increasingly inaccessible university education across Canada, an issue that current Quebec protests should inspire people across Canada to consider.

Tuition fees are going up coast-to-coast, rising in many cases to levels that make post-secondary education inaccessible for many, a reality illustrated in a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on university education in BC. Is this a reality that Quebec should move toward?

In a CBC live report from Montreal yesterday, reporter Dan Halton was equipped with statistics on tuition fees from across Canada, listing off the differences in tuition across the country. In doing so, he completely failed to address the central issue that Quebec students are striking to fight for: sustaining an accessible post-secondary education system.

"As it stands now Quebec has the lowest tuition fees in the country," declared Halton, finishing off the report, missing the broader point of the protest.

Implied by the CBC reporting that compares Quebec tuition fees to the rest of Canada is that Quebec students should accept proposed tuition fee hikes, given that people in the rest of Canada are paying more for post-secondary studies.

If fewer and fewer people in Quebec or Canada can access university education due to tuition hikes, increasingly a fact today, what impacts will that reality have on the collective social health?

Key to the current student strike in Quebec is a broader political struggle for accessible or even free university education as a political principal rooted in social justice.

Certainly governments are able to find billions of dollars for military spending, like the controversial billions the Conservative government is moving to spend on fighter jets, so why is the financing for more accessible or even free public universities not being explored?

CBC coverage on the Quebec student strike seems to completely side step more meaningful questions about the direction of post-secondary education in Quebec and in Canada.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based musician and writer who contributes to the Media Co-op. Stefan is on twitter @spirodon

This article was originally published by the Co-op média de Montréal

Student strike Montreal 2012

Kanesatake and a Canadian Mine

Tim McSorley — Wed, 11 May 2011 05:58:38 +0000

Controversial niobium mine is receiving little public attention

MONTREAL—Only minutes up the road from the focal point of the 1990 Oka Crisis, Niocan Inc. plans to set up an underground mine for the extraction of niobium, a rare element used in high-grade steel production.

Despite the past history of tensions and widespread opposition to the current proposal within the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, the proposed mining project has remained under the radar: even as the company continues to lobby government officials and push forward with the project, little media or mainstream political focus has been paid to the issue. Residents of Kanesatake, though, are not letting their guard down in the face of the mining project.

“A very short-sighted vision drives this mining project that will impact the land and environment for future generations, but the government and Niocan only see dollar signs,” says Ellen Gabriel, a celebrated activist from Kanesatake. “Our community has been resisting for over 300 years and our rights are not recognized, particularly our rights to the land, but we have every right to defend this land.”

As the site of the Oka Crisis, Kanesatake has already served to ignite a generation of protest and action within Indigenous communities. If the Quebec government grants permission to open the mine against the will of Kanesatake, the potential political implications are serious.

“Quebec's government holds no jurisdiction to grant mining permits on traditional Mohawk lands,” Sohenrise Paul Nicholas of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake told The Dominion. “We are opposed to the mine and are willing to defend the land...A mine is not [an] appropriate project for our traditional lands.”

Voices opposing the project highlight the long-term environmental impacts of underground mining, a process that will use large amounts of water from local aquifers and affect an estimated 25 square kilometres of fertile agricultural lands.

“One immediate concern is environmental,” says Nicholas. “A major mine operating in a mixed residential and agricultural area is not acceptable. Beyond permanently altering the natural landscape, the mining process will disturb high concentrations of radioactive elements within the land.”

Radium and polonium—both radioactive—have been measured in elevated concentrations within the underground ore body that Niocan Inc. is proposing to mine, a process that may lead to large volumes of radioactive waste.

Many Mohawks also oppose the mine on the basis of their collective water rights.

“A mine like this will be detrimental to our water table and our health in general,” says Nicholas, in an urgent tone. “About 90 per cent of our homes in Kanesatake use well water every day, and once those aquifers are disturbed for mining use there is no guarantee that our water will be safe anymore.”

Over the past decade Niocan Inc., based in downtown Montreal, has been lobbying to set up the controversial project amidst agricultural lands just outside of Montreal. Highly unpopular in both Kanesatake and surrounding Quebec communities like Oka, the contested mining project is uniting local farmers and Mohawks in an anti-mining struggle.

“Local farmers living close to where the mine would be situated are totally opposed and are expressing outrage that this mine would position itself right in the middle of the farming area,” Kanesatake resident Walter David told The Dominion in an interview at his Moccasin-Jo coffee and tea shop in Kanesatake. David says he has seen a solidarity develop over the last decade through joint opposition to the Niocan mine. “Agricultural workers are growing many fruits and vegetables on these lands just beside Montreal. Do we want toxic chemicals entering our food and water supply?

“Today we are supporting the farmers and the farmers are supporting us.”

Points of opposition to the mine put forward by Mohawk activists in Kanesatake and community residents in Oka are similar, even if disagreement over fundamental land rights in the area exist. It is a fascinating political solidarity, born from opposition to corporate mining, in an area historically shaped by territorial conflicts.

Recently, Quebecois community activists collected thousands of signatures for a petition they delivered to Quebec's National Assembly. Arguing that “there is a blatant conflict in using land in the Oka area for both agricultural purposes and the establishment of a niobium mine,” the petition calls on the Quebec government to “protect the important agricultural, residential, recreational and environmental areas in the Oka region against any current or future mining development project in the area.”

Representatives for Niocan continue to lobby to mine niobium, a highly lucrative element actively extracted from mines only in Canada and Brazil and used for aerospace, military and industrial machinery. Any new mine could result in revenue to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year. The immediate economic gains for a company seeking to extract the element from Indigenous lands are clear.

A final decision on whether to grant permission to Niocan Inc. for the mine is forthcoming from Quebec's Environment Ministry, although the decade-long negotiations have lead to two separate reports from Quebec's Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE).

On water, a 2005 BAPE report concluded that the “ground water pumping required for operating the mine would lead to lowering of water levels in the deep aquifer...it could also lower the ground water table and the level of certain wetlands,” impacting “agricultural water supply.” Pollution stemming from the mine “could trigger contamination of ground water,” it said.

Despite these findings, progress toward the establishment of the mine continues, as local residents work to raise awareness and struggle against the project.

“We have had conversations; it is an issue that we will deal with,” Hubert Marleau, interim Chairman of the Board and CEO of Niocan, said of land disputes involving the Mohawks of Kanesatake.

“In Canadian history there have been many cases where things were not so easy,” said Marleau. “In the end things worked out and people were happy.”

But not everyone agrees with Marleau’s rosy assessment.

"Well, this is a selective view of Canadian history," says Clifton Nicholas, a community activist and videographer from Kanesatake. "Throughout all of Canada's history we were never given a fair shake."

The debate about Niocan's niobium mine points to a larger context of simmering land conflict across Canada. In recent years, Indigenous people from coast to coast have taken to the front lines to oppose industrial development on traditional territories. These areas, like the one where the proposed Niocan mine will be situated, are often officially classified by Canadian or provincial authorities as crown lands open for private development, even though they have been long held by local Indigenous communities and are sometimes subject to ongoing land claims, legal challenges or disputes.

Community activists and traditional leaders opposing development on “disputed” land are facing increasing state repression, including the arrest of six Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) elders in Northern Ontario, police repression of community leaders of the Algonquin of Barriere Lake in northern Quebec, and the ongoing fight by the Sinixt Nation against logging on traditional lands in BC.

The future of Niocan's pending mining operation in Kanesatake remains unclear; however, if recent history and the historic 1990 land-rights standoff are any indicators, Niocan is set to face fierce, community-led resistance if the project moves forward.

"No means no and Niocan Inc. needs to understand this,” says Nichloas. “Nothing the company says will change our position; we do not want our traditional lands to face [an environmentally destructive] mining project that goes against our wishes."

For more information on Niocan and Kanesatake visit MiningWatch Canada's resource page http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/home/country/canada/quebec/kanesatake-niocan.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, community activist and musician who contributes to The Dominion. Stefan is at http://www.twitter.com/spirodon.

Mohawk Flag

Canada’s Conservatives to Push for Iran Sanctions

dru — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:00:31 +0000

Israeli nukes not a concern

MONTREAL—In the lead-up to the G8 summit in Canada, Conservative politicians in Ottawa are pushing publicly for increased sanctions on Iran.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has indicated he will lobby for severe sanctions at the elite summit, to take place June 25-27, 2010.

“Canada will continue to use its G8 presidency to focus international attention and action on Iran,” a representative of the office of Minister Cannon told The Dominion. “We believe that further sanctions authorized by the United Nations Security Council are needed.”

China’s reluctance to back US attempts to introduce strict sanctions on Iran has set the stage for the upcoming G8 summit to serve as gathering where the US and Canada will unite in favour of a more hard-line position on Iran. China holds a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, but it is not a member country of the G8.

The Conservative government’s plan to utilize the upcoming G8 summit as a platform to apply pressure on Iran is central to its intervention strategy in contemporary Middle Eastern politics. Often left out of the global political drama surrounding the Iranian government’s relationship to nuclear power is the region’s only current nuclear power: the Israeli government in Tel Aviv.

At the recent US Nuclear Security Summit, President Barack Obama pushed for world leaders to scale back major nuclear development, and build an increasing global consensus in support of sanctions on Iran.

What sanctions...accomplish is, hopefully, to change the calculus of a country like Iran, so that they see that there are more costs and fewer benefits to pursuing a nuclear-weapons program,” Obama said at the summit.

Also absent from serious scrutiny at the summit was the massive US nuclear stockpile or any criticism of the Israeli nuclear program. “As far as Israel goes, I’m not going to comment on their program,” said Obama. The Canadian government has issued no criticism of the existing Israeli nuclear arsenal, even though they have pushed for Iran to end its nuclear program. The fact that Israel is left out of the discussion is not an accident, according to Shourideh Molavi, a Toronto-based Iranian writer.

“Canada is moving toward a second phase of a major foreign policy project they have already started, which is to develop deeper ties with Israel, in regards to security and military policy,” said Molavi. “So when it comes to Iran they want to use the G8 as a platform to push for sanctions within this framework.”

Canada’s intense support for the Israeli government has shaped a new era of Canada-Israel relations. Ottawa has arguably emerged as the staunchest pro-Israel capital in the world.

“Canada is so friendly that there was no need to convince or explain anything to anyone,” said right wing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, after a recent meeting in Ottawa with Canadian Foreign Minister Cannon. “We had amiable talks in a supportive atmosphere...we need allies like this in the international arena,” he said.

Beyond talk of sanctions, Iran is currently experiencing major turmoil. Massive protests swept across the country last summer after an election widely seen as tainted led to the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Social movements globally expressed solidarity with the protest movement in Iran. Political leaders in Europe, the US and Canada also backed the protest movement.

“With Iran in the picture, Ottawa is using any avenue they can to build support for sanctions on Iran, including manipulative positions towards the protest movement in Iran,” Molavi told The Dominion. “Canada is claiming that they support the people in Iran, while pushing for sanctions that will impact the poorest people in the country first.”

Canada’s attempts to lock in sanctions on Iran contradict the demands of leading dissidents in Iran, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
“We oppose military attack on Iran or economic sanctions because that’s to the detriment of the people,” Ebadi said in March 2010.

Canada’s appeal for “further sanctions” on Iran will be in the media spotlight during the Toronto G8 summit.

It will be critical for grassroots movements organizing in opposition to the G8 summit in Canada to identify the major gaps between the push by G8 leaders for sanctions and the anti-sanctions positions of Iran’s most vocal opposition leaders.

Stefan Christoff is a regular contributor to The Dominion and is at
http://www.twitter.com/spirodon.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

Lawrence Cannon at CTBTO

Thousands Protest Fee Hikes in Montreal

dru — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:23:52 +0000

Students, community groups, unions oppose privatization of pulic services

MONTREAL—Thousands took to the streets of downtown Montreal yesterday to protest the Quebec Liberal government's 2010 budget. Quebec's grassroots student union l'Association pour une solidarite syndicale etudiante (ASSE) joined forces with a wide coalition of community organizations, bringing forward a public critique of a budget that introduces fee hikes for cornerstones of the public sector, including health-care and education.

"This budget is bad because it attempts to introduce major changes to the public nature of Quebec society—a move towards people paying for public services," outlines Marie Blais, vice-President of the Federation nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Quebec (FNEEQ). "Education and health-care are public rights, not products that we purchase as citizens."

Key to the critique of the Quebec budget is a proposed obligatory health-care fee for Quebec residents, fixed to increase annually toward a $200-per-year flat tax by 2012.

"Today's budget rests on the backs of the most vulnerable in Quebec," said Christian Dubois of political party Quebec Solidaire(QS). "The health-care tax is regressive, if you are making $15,000 per year, you will pay the same amount in tax as someone making $300,000 per year—a fundamentally unequal and unjust social equation."

Quebec's public health care infrastructure has faced increasingly tight budgets since the current Liberal government came to power. As waiting rooms in Quebec's major hospitals often remain jam-packed, the government has moved to increase the role of public-private health care partnerships, instead of increasing public spending.

Since coming to power in 2003, Quebec Premier Jean Charest has faced successive protests, the largest in 2005 when an estimated 100,000 students went on strike across the province, staging protests across Quebec and carrying out direct actions in Montreal. The strike marked a major victory for Quebec social movements, helping to end the government's plan to cut $103 million from the student loan and bursaries program.

A tradition of popular protest has played a key role in shaping government policy in Quebec. Social movements exercise street-level democracy rooted in extensive networks of community organizations, workers unions and student federations that that can be traced back to the massive social movements born in the 1960s and 1970s. These groups helped to build Quebec's strong public sector, which cushioned the blow of the recent world economic crisis.

"The economic crisis was created by the corporate sector and now Charest has placed the public sector into a corporate economic vision of privatization that created the global financial crisis," QS' Blais told The Dominion. "It is unacceptable to propose an economic plan that basically considers public institutions within a corporate model."

"We want to ensure accessibility, not privatization. It is simple that with higher fees fewer people in Quebec will go to university and access proper health care."

For more information, visit l'Association pour une solidarite syndicale etudiante (ASSE).

Stefan Christoff is a regular contributor to The Dominion and is on Twitter at @spirodon.

Students Demonstrate Against Charest Budget in Montreal

Seul la Lutte Paie

Giving Algonquins a Good Rap

dru — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:14:21 +0000

Hip-hop artist Samian rants for reserves

MONTREAL—Algonquin hip-hop artist Samian raps about the realities of life on First Nations reserves in Quebec. With a growing following on reserves and in Quebec's cities, he's also struck a chord with hip-hop communities everywhere.

Exploding the classic political binary of Quebec's two solitudes, Samian raps about Indigenous people and their history in the province. His chart-topping hit "La Paix Des Braves," a duet with Quebec hip-hop crew Loco Locass, appeals for solidarity between Quebecois and Indigenous people. Samian's recent collaboration with Sans Pression on their single "Premieres Nations" helped cement his role as a key voice in the Montreal contemporary hip-hop scene.

Stefan Christoff sat down with Samian to discuss contemporary hip-hop in Montreal and the ways the genre is increasingly speaking to, and representing the struggles of, First Nations communities in Quebec, in Canada and throughout the Americas.

Hip-hop's origins in New York City were rooted in rhymes that addressed social injustices, especially the racism and social exclusion faced by African-Americans. Today in Canada, Indigenous people face similar systemic social exclusion: racism, incarceration, substandard housing and medical options and poverty. Hip-hop is increasingly used as a response to this reality and artists are rapping about the social injustices faced by Indigenous people. Can you talk about how your work relates to the history of hip-hop as a socially conscious art form? How do you connect your work to hip-hop history?

Hip-hop has always been an art form through which people have made demands, appealed for change and denounced the social injustices faced by African-Americans in US ghettos. Certainly the history of African-American struggle in the US, like we saw with the Black Panthers, is tied to hip-hop music [and] culture.

Indigenous people in Quebec, in Canada, have lived through a history of oppression like African-Americans. Today we are still calling for justice, and hip-hop is a vehicle to call for this change. As an artist, I love hip-hop because it allows for free expression: You can talk about whatever issues are important to you. Hip-hop is a space for me to express myself on many subjects, to denounce injustices. It's also a space to propose positive solutions for social ills, and to reflect on the world around me.

What are you trying to make people more aware of through your music?

Our reality, the life on the reserves, the fight to retain our culture, the fact that we are struggling to keep our language. Also I want to make people aware that Indigenous people have a rich history and culture that is ignored by the mainstream.

Through hip-hop we are opening people's eyes to our culture and also to our long, long history on this land. I want to speak to youth in Quebec who don't always learn about real indigenous history in the school system. Quebecois and Indigenous peoples' history in Quebec are interlinked. This relationship between our cultures has shaped what we know to be Quebec today, and who we are. Sadly our Indigenous history is often shoved to the side because it shows an underlying brutality in the national narrative.

Many Montrealers don't know about the situation facing Indigenous people on the reserves here and in Quebec. In this context, how do you see hip-hop as a way to educate people about the Indigenous reality here? How do you address these issues in your music?

I think my music has the biggest impact on the reservations. The music sparks the spirits of the new generation on the reserves, and gives youth pride in our culture, and in our language.

But for everyone in Quebec, I hope my music inspires a more open spirit towards the realities faced on reserves, because people need to wake up to the difficulties and poverty we experience. The mainstream media don't address our situation thoroughly, so I am trying to communicate our reality. Simply put, there are two different realities, two different worlds, two different experiences of life in Quebec—one on the reserves and one off the reserves.

In Quebec, we have a national slogan: Je me souviens. But really, what do we remember in Quebec? In Quebec we forget some of the biggest parts of our own history. How was Quebec and Canada founded? What ever happened to the people who originally lived here? Why does the world forget that there are over 500 languages spoken across Canada, and not just English and French? So much about our history has been hidden or erased, and so young people never learn about the first peoples. These are all questions that—incredibly—aren't well answered in our schoolbooks. The government is also directly responsible for the lack of knowledge about our history, because Indigenous culture and history is not a priority, and not taught seriously within the public school curriculum.

Recently, I looked up "Algonquin" in the dictionary and was shocked. The definition read something like "a people that don't exist." I was shaken to the core after reading this—how absurd. I am an Algonquin artist today in Quebec, I exist and my people exist. Today, after thousands of years, we are still on this land as Indigenous people. We are still here and are gathering strength; my hip-hop verses express a pride for Indigenous people in Quebec.

As an artist, your hip-hop is unique and has struck a chord in Quebec. What do you think makes your work compelling to so many different audiences?

I wrote poetry before ever thinking about rap. I eventually fell into rapping almost as an accident. Today I work with amazing musicians who are able to complement my verses with music. I think the relationship between my verses and the musicians that I collaborate with has become richer with time.

My second album is much deeper musically than the first album, and now it feels like things are constantly developing for me in exciting ways as an artist. All my first songs weren't written with, or for, specific music, so now that I work with musicians in developing my verses, the creative process has changed a lot.

At the root, I am an artist, not a politician. My songs are about real issues, but I address those issues as an artist. Many people say that my work is really political, but actually I know nothing about the political world. I address issues that are important to me.

But you are linked to grassroots political movements. Do you mean you aren't tied to the world of politicians and government?

I am interested in speaking out against injustice and trying to build towards solutions that solve those injustices. I'm not at all interested in official politics or political parties. Actually there hasn't been a major politician in North America, in the US, or in Canada who has proposed something really good for First Nations people. No proposal deals with the historical injustices we faced and the contemporary situation.

Perhaps we could look to Evo Morales in Bolivia as an example?

[Laughing] Today Bolivia is an exception in the Americas, because Morales is an Indigenous president! In Bolivia, Indigenous people are the majority, while in Canada we are such a small minority today.

In Bolivia the government of Evo Morales signed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into the national constitution. Here, Stephen Harper refused to sign the letter or even vote in favour of the charter at the UN. Harper made that apology for residential schools, but he voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The government in Canada wants us to remain in an unequal position and as a minority, with no political power. Indigenous people live in Third World conditions right here in Quebec and throughout Canada. So, is Canada progressive? In the US there is an African-American president; could you ever imagine a First Nations prime minister in Canada? Indigenous people in Canada should take inspiration from the African-American struggle, which won many rights for black people in the US. Actually, we need to wage a similar struggle in Canada, a civil rights struggle.

Can you talk about the concerts that you've given in Indigenous communities across Quebec? Do you feel different about the concerts that you give on reserve and those in the city?

Actually my concerts on reservations are really, really special for me. I feel that the most meaningful impact from my music is on the reserves. To meet youth on different reserves and to connect with youth, to talk about their realities—this is a big source of inspiration for me. I can connect strongly with this, given that my own experiences are linked.

My work tries to project the true voice of First Nations people: Those on the reserve that I meet who are always struggling to survive, struggling for justice... I hope my music inspires youth to dream louder and create a better future.

This interview originally appeared in the Hour.

For more info, visit www.samian.ca.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based community organizer and journalist who regularly contributes to the Hour. He can be contacted at christoff@resist.ca.

Kisakiin

Slingshot Rhymes from Palestine

dawn — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:22:04 +0000

An interview with filmmaker Jackie Salloum on Slingshot Hip Hop

MONTREAL—Palestinian hip hop is on the rise, gaining popularity around the world as the international movement against Israeli apartheid picks up steam.

Palestinian culture has been expressed for generations through the words of celebrated singers such as Fayrouz or Marcel Khalifé, but in recent years rap has emerged as a strong contemporary cultural expression from Palestine.

Slingshot Hip Hop is a documentary film that chronicles the emergence of Palestinian rap in the past decade, in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Palestinian communities living inside Israel. Palestinian hip hop artists have connected with the socially conscious roots of American hip-hop culture and translated the spirit of groups like Public Enemy to the refugee camps of Palestine.

As a film Slingshot Hip Hop is a moving portrayal of young Palestinian artists struggling to tell the Palestinian story of dispossession while also struggling to find voice within their own society. Filmmaker Jackie Salloum, based in New York City, began creating Slingshot Hip Hop after first making a video to accompany DAM’s celebrated track Min Irhabi (Who’s the Terrorist?).

Salloum’s film has been warmly received around the world, making the official selection at the Sundance Film Festival, and winning awards at numerous festivals, including the Audience Choice Award at both the Beirut International Film festival and the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.

Salloum spoke with journalist Stefan Christoff on the heels of another North American tour of DAM, the first Palestinian rap group featured in the celebrated documentary. The tour will include multiple stops in Canada.

Stefan Christoff: During the last Israeli attack on Gaza, wondering if you were in contact with the Palestinian rappers in Gaza featured in the film, living through the bombings, wondering how that period was for you and the hip hop artists in Gaza.

Jackie Salloum: Phone lines in Gaza were down so it was difficult to remain in touch during the war, but sometimes it was possible to connect online. Reaction from the hip hop artists in Gaza was basically horror.

Palestinian rapper Ibrahim from Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza basically has seen everything during his life, but insisted that this war was the worst they ever had seen in their lifetimes.

Ayman, a member in Palestinian Rapperz, was on the phone speaking with me during the war and quickly Israeli tanks surrounded his apartment, the phone line cut. The next day we got news that Ayman’s house was hit by four Israeli rockets; Ayman’s house was destroyed completely and his father martyred.

I was fixed on Al Jazeera throughout the war on Gaza throughout the day, felt completely crazy watching the war happen, feeling that it was impossible to make it stop immediately. It was a horrible time for me and millions around the world.

Christoff: Slingshot Hip Hop weaves together stories of hip hop artists from throughout Palestine, wondering if there are any particular moments that stand out for you from making the film while filming in the different areas in Palestine.

Salloum: Filming in 1948* stands out, working with Palestinians who hold Israeli passports, it was clear that Palestinians from different regions have preconceived notions about each other that are surprising, as they can’t visit each other due to Israeli occupation and travel restrictions.

Having an ability to move around Palestine, given my US passport, really was striking, as the artists featured in the film simply couldn’t move around. It is impossible for Palestinians living in Palestine to move between their different territories: the West Bank, Gaza and inside Israel.

In Gaza I would tell the rappers that I was planning next to visit Akka next for example and it was really sad to see their faces knowing that they simply couldn’t travel with me. Although even with a US passport it still was very difficult to enter Gaza at all.

Christoff: Recently Slingshot Hip Hop screened in different countries in the Middle East, wondering what the reaction was to the film?

Salloum: Slingshot Hip Hop screened all over Syria this year, again and again audiences surprise me with a lack of knowledge on the travel restriction that Palestinians face, their inability to travel between different territories. People in Syria were particularly surprised about Gaza, as the images that people in Syria are use to viewing about Gaza are images of Palestinian suffering, not Palestinians rapping.

Generally when media covers Gaza it is after an Israeli attack, so these images of war from Gaza are the images that people are use to seeing in the Middle East, on Al Jazeera for example. In Syria many were surprised to see Palestinians having fun and that Palestinians in Gaza even had facilities to hold a hip-hop concert.

It was great to see that even Arab audiences, in Syria, Jordan, were seeing something new about Palestine as the film was intended both for western audiences and also audiences in the Middle East.

Christoff: Music commonly tied to the Palestinian struggle are anthems in the Arab world from celebrated classical musicians such as Fayrouz or Marcel Khalifé, but Palestinian rap brings a new generation of Palestinian cultural expression to the world. Wondering what the reactions have been to the film, Slingshot Hip Hop as a celebration of Palestinian rap, a new wave of Palestinian culture?

Salloum: Actually so many are very excited to see this new face of Palestinian culture.

In Palestine one thing that was beautiful at the screenings, that is different than in North America, is that hip hop shows reach people of all ages, you have both youth and grandparents coming to the same concerts. In Palestine so many young people were so excited about the film; often youth felt that hip hop was a way for people outside, around the world, to understand their struggle.

Actually the older generation is very happy that the younger generation in Palestine has found a new way to express themselves and the Palestinian cause, which is hip hop.

In Dubai and Jordan, there were DAM fans lined up outside the screenings, especially in Dubai as DAM attended the screening, fans who knew every word to every song which was so exciting. Clearly Palestinian rap has connected with people across the Middle East.

In Syria a grandfather came up to me who loved the film and was very emotional, explaining that he hadn’t returned to Palestine since being driven out in 1948 and it was very emotional for him to see the different parts of Palestine today in the film and the music of the Palestinian youth.

Christoff: Back to the US, Slingshot Hip Hop was a reviewed by Harry Allen in Vibe magazine. There is this connection drawn throughout the film between Palestinian hip hop and American hip hop culture, the origins of US hip hop culture, Public Enemy, and Tupac Shakur. Do you find this parallel important today?

Salloum: DAM folks were originally not into hip hop as the image they saw on TV was commoditized hip hop, but then when Tamer from DAM first heard Tupac videos on TV everything changed. Tupac videos featured images that looked just like his ghetto in Palestine. Tamer looked up Tupac online, read the lyrics and felt a connection, feeling that Tupac could have been from Lyd, the town that DAM is from. This launched DAM, this was the trigger.

At screenings in the US many people ask if hip hop in Palestine could become more commercialized as in the US But in Palestine the reality for hip hop is so different. Palestinians are living under military occupation and there aren’t major corporations interested in trying to make corporate or commodify Palestinian hip-hop culture. Palestinian hip-hop has remained grounded.

Actually one thing that has impressed me was that when Palestinian hip hop artists talk about Arab women, they are very respectful and actually rap about women’s rights. DAM has been extremely supportive of Arab women MCs starting up as hip hop artists in Palestine.

Christoff: There are literally thousands of films today in the world about Palestine, wondering what drove you specifically to make a film on Palestinian hip hop?

Salloum: Actually never planned to make a film on Palestine. While studying fine arts at NYU and most of my art focused on challenging stereotypes of Arabs in the media, my art merged with politics and pop culture.

In 2002 was listening to public radio and heard Min Irhabi (Who’s the Terrorist?) by DAM and flipped out because Palestinians were using hip-hop. Quickly looked up the song online and found out about other groups in Palestine using hip hop, this was so impressive. It was an entirely new cultural expression in Palestine going on.

I then translated Min Irhabi to English and made a music video for the song about the massacres that were going on in Jenin at the time in 2002. Then showed the video during my open studio at NYU, my studio was packed and people were really, really impacted by the video. People were coming up to me in tears explaining that they didn’t know that this was happening in Palestine and were asking for more information on the situation in Palestine.

I asked people why this song and video impacted them more deeply than my other work. People explained that Min Irhabi hit them because hip hop comes from the heart.

Palestinian rap wasn’t something contrived, it simply expressed the circumstances facing Palestinian youth. Seeing this powerful reaction and also speaking to professors who encouraged me to make a film lead to Slingshot Hip Hop; however, I really had no idea how long and how difficult making a feature length documentary film was in reality.

Slingshot Hip Hop also changed my experience with Palestine. Today, you travel to Palestine and see so many Palestinian homes being demolished, the Israeli wall being expanded, so many youth are being killed, the situation just seems horrible, actually worse and worse with each year. But after working on this film and seeing the rappers working to make change on the ground through culture showed me a much more positive and resilient expression of Palestinian culture, it gave me hope for Palestine.

*"Filming in 1948" means filming inside Israel's 1967 borders, which Palestinians often refer to as 1948 lands.

For more information on Slingshot Hip Hop visit: http://www.slingshothiphop.com/.

Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer.

Slingshot Hip Hop Poster

Palestinian Organizer Imprisoned after Tour of Canada

dru — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:54:20 +0000

Interview with Abdullah Abu Rahme of Bil'in's Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements

MONTREAL–Bil'in, a village in Palestine, has become a celebrated symbol of the Palestinian popular struggle against the Israel's "separation wall" built in the Palestinian West Bank. Each Friday, Bil'in villagers gather to peacefully protest the wall.

Demonstrations in Bil'in have attracted global attention and often face severe violence from Israeli military forces. Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahma, a Palestinian community activist from Bil'in, was killed last April after being struck at close range by a teargas canister. Abu Rahma was the 18th Palestinian to have been killed by the Israeli army during popular demonstrations against the apartheid wall in Bil'in and throughout the West Bank.

Bil'in is also known to people in Quebec and across Canada after village representatives launched a lawsuit against two Montreal-based companies involved in the construction of Israeli-only settlements on Bil'in lands. In June 2009, members of Bil'in's Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements visited Canada, touring 11 cities across the country.

In recent weeks Israel's military has been carrying out night raids on Bil'in, targeting members of the Bil'in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements with arrest. Among those arrested was Mohammad Khatib, a member of the Committee.

Khatib is a key Palestinian community activist from Bil'in. Khatib has been detained by the Israeli military for almost two weeks—a political prisoner, according to other Palestinian activists.

Khatib now joins an estimated 8,000 Palestinian prisoners currently detained by Israeli authorities. According to a recent report from Amnesty International, many Palestinian prisoners “face medical negligence, routine beatings, position torture and strip searches by Israeli prison authorities.” The Palestinian prisoner population includes over 400 children and over 100 women.

Last month, Abdullah Abu Rahme visited Canada for a national speaking tour with Khatib. On August 3, Israeli soldiers raided several homes and arrested Khatib. He is currently in prison with no charges.

Dominion: Abdullah, can you first give us an update on the ongoing night-time raids on Bil'in and the arrest of Khatib?

Abdullah Abu Rahme: During the past months, Israeli soldiers have been following closely activists from Bil'in, arresting [multiple] members of the Bil'in Popular Committee. Israel wants to arrest us all because of our ongoing popular protests and because we are standing against the apartheid wall and settlements.

In the last months Israel has been working to build more settlements on our land, and we as Palestinians are trying to stop Israel from colonizing our land. They are trying to stop our struggle by arresting us.

Mohammad Khatib is known in Palestine and around the world for [organizing] the popular, non-violent struggle in Palestine, in Bil'in. Mohammad was arrested on Monday morning and this week an Israeli judge asked the Israeli military to release Mohammad, but they are still holding him without charge.

Can you talk about your protest movement in Bil'in?

For over four years we have been protesting each Friday in Bil'in, our struggle, our protests include Israeli activists and many internationals from around the world. Bil'in is struggling to have the Israeli wall removed from our land, to stop the construction of settlements and to end the occupation.

In the last weeks we have been calling on many people to come to our village to protest with us in Bil'in because the Israeli army has been raiding our village at night and is now putting us in jail.

Israel's wall is confiscating our land, actually more than half of our land in Bil'in... [as] farmers we need our land [which is] agricultural land. Israel is [planning] to build settlements on our land and they actually built East Matityahu on our land.

If the Israeli military continues to arrest us and put us in jail we will see more Israeli and international activists coming to protest with our children every Friday, even if we are in jail. Bil'in will continue on with our struggle.

Mohammad Khatib from Bil'in was arrested this week—Mohammad who spoke at Concordia University and who also toured Canada in June. Bil'in's tour in Canada was focused on mobilizing support for your lawsuit in Canada against two Montreal-based companies building settlements on your land but also to build support for your weekly protests against the Israeli "apartheid wall." Abdullah, could you describe for people the Israeli wall on Bil'in's land?

Abdullah Abu Rahme: Israel's wall in Palestine is around 770 kilometres long and [annexes] around 12 per cent of the land of the West Bank. This land is rich with water resources which are very important for Palestine but with the wall the water is directed towards Israeli settlers, to the settlements.

In addition to stealing our water the land [annexed] by the wall is mainly rich agricultural land on the Palestinian side of the [1967] Green Line. In Bil'in's case, more than 50 per cent of our lands are behind the wall, around 2000 dunams [about 500 acres] of our land, which are rich lands for agriculture and lands with water. Actually Israel is planning to build settlements on all the lands of Bil'in [which have been] stolen by the wall.

It is becoming more and more difficult for us in Bil'in. We need our farm lands. We are being pushed to leave Bil'in, to another city or another country. This is a new Nakba for us, but we will never leave. We refuse to leave and want to stay on our land.

Back to Mohammad Khatib, who visited us recently in Montreal: What are you calling on people in Canada to do to respond to Mohammad's arrest?

Mohammad is my friend not only from the Popular Committee but from school, from university. He has two daughters and two sons, small children, who are sad about Mohammad's arrest. The whole village is sad. Mohammad has spoken in many countries about Bil'in's struggle: in Germany, in France, in Canada, in the US, in Italy, in Spain, presentations to call on people to come and celebrate with Bil'in.

In Palestine also Mohammad has given many lectures calling on people to join the popular protests, to use non-violence protest against the Israeli occupation.

To all the people in Canada, who know Mohammad and who don't know Mohammad, we are asking you to protest and to send a message to Israel to release Mohammad from prison.

We call on all people to join with Tadamon!, who have supported us in Canada and helped us with our legal case; contact Tadamon! and all our friends in Canada to organize protests to call for Mohammad to be released. To hold actions outside the Israeli embassy in Canada, to also collect money to [help us] pay our legal bills for our legal case in Canada.

People in Canada should [send] a message to the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv to support us in Bil'in, to call on Israel to free all our prisoners. Canada's Foreign Minister should do something to support our case in Bil'in.

Can you describe for us how Mohammad was arrested?

On Monday at three in the morning a [large] number of soldiers, around 200 soldiers with masks and painted faces, entered our village, surrounding our homes, the homes of the members of Bil'in's Popular Committee.

Israeli soldiers surrounded Mohammad Khatib's home and entered his home violently and took Mohammad in front of his children violently.

Also the soldiers came to other people's homes, arresting others also from the Popular Committee in Bil'in. Israeli soldiers beat Mohammad and the other Palestinians badly. Israeli soldiers put a knife to the neck of some people in our village demanding information about Bil'in's Popular Committee.

For more information visit: http://www.bilin-village.org

Stefan Christoff is an independent journalist and community activist.

Mohammed

Torture, a Canadian Value?

dru — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:56:06 +0000

Ottawa's complicity in torture merits a national discussion

MONTREAL—Each year in June the UN marks the International Day in Support of Torture Victims. However, numerous UN member states continue to practice torture—in many cases, openly. Political contradictions here abound, nuzzled between the horror of torture as a politically administered reality and the apparent international consensus in opposition to torture.

Canada is one country where political links to torture in recent years are unmistakable.

From the haunting testimonials from Canadian Omar Khadr who remains at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, to the widely documented torture of Canadian Maher Arar in a Syrian prison, torture is key in Canada’s political relationship to the world since 9/11.

"Today, a very specific narrative on torture is circulating in Canada," outlined Sherene Razack, professor at University of Toronto and celebrated author of multiple books on race issues in the law.

"The narrative that torture works and that it is necessary is gaining prominence more than it ever has before—claims that have really gone unchallenged in the popular media, which is really very dangerous for our society," she told The Dominion by phone.

Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian who can speak directly to Canada’s take on torture.

Abdelrazik was imprisoned in Sudan, where he was tortured. He is now at the epicentre of a grassroots campaign that recently pressed the government to repatriate Abdelrazik from Sudan, a citizenship right denied by successive Canadian governments.

According to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, "every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada." These rights were denied to Abdelrazik. In June, after six years in exile, he returned to Montreal when a key ruling from a federal court judge forced the government to respect Abdelrazik’s right of return to Canada.

"I traveled to Sudan to visit my sick mother; without telling me, agents from CSIS recommended to Sudan that I should be arrested," explained Abdelrazik. "I was thrown in prison because Canada asked, imprisoned [and] beaten. I was tortured."

Beyond the false intelligence from Canada leading to Abdelrazik’s imprisonment and torture in Sudan, the direct role that the Canadian government played in Abdelrazik’s torture is the most arresting factor in his case.

"The Canadian government knows that Sudan tortures prisoners but it did not help me," outlined Abdelrazik. "Instead, the Canadian government sent CSIS agents to interrogate me in the prison."

Today, Abdelrazik is demanding redress from the Canadian government.

"I want those people who play a role in this matter to face justice, not because I seek revenge," Abdelrazik explained to the press shortly after returning to Montreal. "I want this not to happen to any Canadian."

Abdelrazik is now struggling for a full restoration of his citizenship rights in Canada. Due to claims that Abdelrazik maintains associations to Al-Quada, radical allegations which have never been proven in court, Abdelrazik remains on the United Nations' terrorist watch-list. This prohibits him from holding a bank account or accepting any kind of financial assistance, including employment wages in Canada.

Denying Abdelrazik a passport was a clear breach of Canada’s Citizenship Act, and serious criticism has been leveled against successive Canadian governments for it.

Abdelrazik's case is one example of how the Canadian state is turning its security arsenal against citizens. Another is the government's "security certificate" program, currently directed towards five permanent residents of Ontario and Quebec.

In 2003 Canadian security forces seized Adil Charkaoui in a highly publicized arrest, issuing a security certificate against him. This sparked a popular campaign across Canada to abolish the legislation, which allows the indefinite detention and eventual deportation of terror suspects without a public presentation of evidence.

After more than four years in prison, without ever knowing the charges against him, Charkaoui was released on severe conditions, including wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.

In 2006 Charkaoui launched a successful challenge to the security certificate, condemned by the UN Committee against Torture and in the Supreme Court of Canada, which deemed the legislation unconstitutional. In response, the Conservative government revamped the legislation in 2007, introducing a "special advocate" into the certificate process, maintaining the fundamental structure of the legislation, which was reinstated in 2008.

Today, Charkaoui remains under threat of deportation to Morocco, a country where he could face torture. Canada’s attempts to deport Charkaoui to Morocco are in violation of Canada’s commitments under the UN Convention against Torture.

Canada’s security certificate legislation is another key to understanding Canada’s relationship to torture in recent years.

"In Canada, when the security label is applied to people, their humanity is automatically degraded and torture becomes a possibility," explained Mary Foster, an activist with the Peoples Commission Network, a community coalition opposing Canadian immigration and security policies which undermine human rights. "The trends towards normalizing torture works towards dehumanizing our society, pushing people to think more about their own individual security and not about our collective security."

Canada has also come under harsh criticism for its treatment of Afghan detainees, many of whom were tortured.

In 2008, after torture testimonials were collected from multiple prisoners, Amnesty International launched a lawsuit against the Canadian government which would permanently halt the transfer of Afghan detainees to Afghan prisons.

"In Afghan prisons torture is rampant and systematic, [and] in our view it's very likely that a good number of those who are transferred from Canadian custody into the Afghan prison system will end up being tortured," explained Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International's section in Canada, in 2008. "If the risk of torture is a real one, which Amnesty believes it is, it's incumbent upon Canada and it's actually a matter of international legal obligation not to hand the prisoners over."

Amnesty’s case on Afghan torture is now pending at the Military Police Complaints Commission, which launched a series of public hearings on the issue last month.

The hearings are centered on whether Canada knowingly transferred prisoners to torturers in Afghanistan.

In Ottawa, the Conservative government is attempting to secure a court injunction to halt public hearings scheduled to continue this fall.

Other tales of torture, told by Canadians Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, who were tortured in Syrian prisons, are accompanied by silence from Canadian officials.

"As a nation we need to face up to the reality of our complicity in torture," stated Alex Neve of Amnesty International, whom The Dominion reached by telephone.

Canada is a signatory to the 1984 UN Convention against Torture. Even so, the actions of Canadian governments contradict the anti-torture convention.

"Torture itself, as well as stories about torture, are actually meant to teach us something," said Razack. "Stories meant to teach us who belongs to the national community and who doesn’t, so you get massive numbers of people who think that Muslims do not belong to the national community and are not deserving of their fundamental rights—and that really is the damage of torture."

Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer.

Torture as a Canadian Value

Canada's Deadly Trade Deals

dawn — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 05:30:15 +0000

An interview with Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center

MONTREAL–One of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first major foreign visits after being elected in 2006 to his first minority government was to Latin America and the Caribbean. The trip aimed to promote a Canadian foreign policy focused on establishing "new partnerships in the Americas."

Canada has aggressively pushed to establish trade agreements in the Americas, and in pursuit of this signed bilateral trade deals with Peru and Colombia in 2009. Concurrent with the push towards more trade pacts in the Americas, Canada has cut the number of nations receiving bilateral aid through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Today's Canadian foreign aid policy sees a smaller number of countries being targeted for aid through the Conservatives' "countries of concentration" policy, which limits aid to 20 nations. The policy focus centres on trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, while aid to African nations, including Kenya, Cameroon and Rwanda, has been cut.

These shifts in policy are seemingly influenced by Canadian corporations that hold significant sway over government economic policy, such as mining, oil and gas corporations.

Bilateral agreements in the Americas signal this important shift. Canada’s trade agreement with Colombia has been the subject of intense criticism from labour unions in both Colombia and Canada.

The current Colombian government is embroiled in political scandals over ties to right-wing paramilitary groups that target and assassinate labour activists, Indigenous people, and members of popular and community movements. Human rights activists argue that a bilateral agreement with Canada lends international legitimacy to Alvaro Uribe's government in the face of such gross breaches of human rights.

"As for labour rights and the freedom of association, the FTA [with Canada] is a shameful reward for government and managers when it comes to violating these rights, forgetting more than 2,700 murdered unionists and letting their killers go unpunished,” outlined a February 2009 declaration to the Canadian government from Colombia’s major trade union federations.

Canada’s bilateral negotiations with Colombia come at a time when a similar US-Colombia trade accord has been halted in the United States by Congress due to concerns expressed by US law makers about human rights violations in Colombia and its government's connection with such activity.

US trade policy in the Americas was a major topic in the recent US elections. During the final campaign debate, Barack Obama slammed attempts by the Bush administration to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Colombia:

“Labour leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis [in Colombia] and there have not been prosecutions,” he said.

Despite the open concerns south of the border, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pushed forward the Canada-Colombia deal.

Canada’s accord with Colombia is rooted in the same free market economic policies enshrined in NAFTA, which have been the subject of opposition from labour unions and peasant associations across Mexico, the US and Canada for over a decade.

Resistance by social movements successfully halted the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, which would have seen a single trade zone throughout the hemisphere.

The governments of Canada and the US have since shifted their focus to creating bilateral and regional trade deals in the Americas, spelling out a new policy battleground for the upcoming years that will undoubtedly be fought out both on the streets and within the halls of power.

In the interview that follows, Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center based in Mexico City, outlines some specific economic and social impacts of existing free trade agreements on Mexico and throughout the Americas.

Stefan Christoff: First, can you outline the social and economic impacts of NAFTA as related to migration from Mexico to the US, and also within the contemporary context of the push by the US towards bilateral agreements?

Laura Carlsen: NAFTA marked the first time that there was a major trade agreement between two developed countries, including the largest economic power in the world and Mexico, a developing country, which presents major challenges in negotiating a free trade agreement.

Despite the inequality between the economies of Mexico and the US in regards to size and productive capabilities, the agreement basically delivered tremendous privileges to transnational corporations in the US to the detriment of Mexico.

Since NAFTA has been in effect we have seen serious damage done by the accord on Mexican society. There have been serious impacts on people in the countryside and also to small-to-medium size industries throughout the country, leading to growing rates of unemployment and a doubling of the rate of migration from Mexico to the US. The economic impacts of NAFTA have created serious internal displacement and forced migration.

Christoff: Similar trade policies to NAFTA in Latin America have played a major role in forced migration. Could you address, for example, how the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) has impacted migration?

Carlsen: The CAFTA agreement is also going to lead towards increased outward migration. All the Central American countries have been going through an economic restructuring along the lines of these free trade agreements, leading to free trade zones where assembly workers are dealing with [working] conditions that are very bad and wages that are very low.

People are displaced from the rural areas in large numbers due to foreign imports upsetting local market values, creating the conditions for forced migration.

Essentially these [trade] agreements lock in an export-oriented model of development, a model which according to other experiences in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, benefits a very small group of people while causing serious dislocation for many social sectors.

Along the Guatemala-Mexico border a couple of years ago, most of the people waiting to cross into Mexico were then going to move on to the US: farmers who had been displaced by imports, or by growing corporate control over prices of commodities such as coffee; farmers who could not make a basic living from harvesting their crops.

CAFTA will only increase this process of displacement, as the foreign businesses that move in work on an export-oriented farming production model, not employing a huge amount of local people, while the economic benefits are directed towards a very small social sector.

Often it is claimed that such agreements bring in foreign investment, however the lived experience is that foreign investment doesn’t come pouring in the minute you sign an agreement. On the contrary, the economic impact is generally negative. In the majority of Latin American countries subject to such trade agreements, we are seeing a net outflow of capital.

Christoff: In your time within regions impacted by NAFTA, can you outline how this agreement has impacted people, specifically small farmers and peasants?

Carlsen: It is best to examine a specific town; for example, a village within the Mixteca Indigenous region in Oaxaca, in the mountains where many families live [through] a combination between subsistence farming and selling corn on the regional market.

As NAFTA came into effect, we began to see large amounts of subsidized, cheap agricultural imports, specifically corn, coming in from the US, causing domestic prices in Mexico to dive.

For local farmers who rely on selling small amounts of corn to survive this was a devastating shift in the local and regional markets in Mexico, which undermined their ability as family farmers to survive.

Given the US corn imports, the Mixteca region in Oaxaca has become one of the major out-migration regions in Mexico, with townships that are showing negative population growth, specifically due to out-migration to the US.

Many local farmers in Mexico who used traditional farming methods, working often without mechanized equipment, without fertilizing chemicals, were displaced by NAFTA, given cheap US imports.

It was clear that such farmers would face displacement even before the agreement was signed. A US trade representative outlined at the time of NAFTA’s signing that US trade analysts were expecting around three million local farmers in Mexico to be displaced by the agreement. It was argued that these farmers would move into more modern and competitive industries, particularly the industrial corridors that were being constructed in the countryside, often by foreign corporations.

However, in reality, the massive displacement happened, in the millions, but the new jobs never arrived to Mexico, so people were left with nothing. Today, many local farmers are simply growing corn to survive. Often women are left on the farms with the family to survive while the men travel to the US to work. Major rural displacement caused by NAFTA has been very clear.

In villages within Oaxaca and throughout the country, many, many people are migrating to work in the US due to trade policies that have made survival at home impossible. Traditionally, there were always regions in Mexico where workers would travel to work in New York City or LA—this was a labour circuit—however, traditionally, this was a much smaller migration and most often the migration wasn’t permanent.

Mexican workers would travel to the US to work during the harvests and then travel back to Mexico to work, however given that the border has been so hardened and militarized today, the migration to the US tends to be much more permanent. [This was] exactly the opposite result to the expressed intentions from US officials on why the border with Mexico was hardened.

Displacement has spread throughout Mexico, as the inability to make a decent living is now impacting multiple regions as a result of such trade policies.

Christoff: In examining the impacts of free trade on peasant communities in Latin America, do you have reflections on the reactions from social movements in Peru and Colombia to the US push for bilateral accords with these two nations? Do you think that bilateral deals with the US will have similar results to regional trade accords in Latin America?

Carlsen: Many of the general tendencies that we see in NAFTA basically hold to bilateral agreements; there have been few substantial modifications.

Democrats in the US claim that the Peru agreement is a new model for trade agreements, given there are a couple of clauses concerning labour rights and public health. However, the agreement is still based on the same trade model.

Essentially this agreement—like NAFTA—is based on a forum of development in which a developing country opens up markets completely, while granting a whole series of privileges to foreign investors and [hoping] that economic development trickles down to weaker social sectors.

However, this economic model ensures that there is no trickle down, while a country loses the ability to maintain national development policies that also support the weakest in society.

Peru’s bilateral agreement with the US includes clauses for the privatization of social services, despite the fact that throughout Latin America, in other countries, privatization policies often lead to cutting off access to basic social services for the poorest.

So the key point is that these ‘free trade’ policies, in Central America, in Peru, in Mexico, equal increased inequality. Essentially, such trade agreements drive the gap between the rich and poor to grow.

Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer. This interview was originally produced in audio format for the Fighting FTAs project, an international project that provides a global picture of free trade agreements (FTAs), and insight into struggles being waged by social movements fighting back.

Oaxacans stand up and fight back

More Than Just a Beef

dawn — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:22:28 +0000

South Koreans push back against Free Trade Agreements with Canada, US

MONTREAL–Since the collapse of the last round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003, Canada and the US have rapidly signed several bilateral trade accords.

South Korea, a major Asian economic power and the fourth largest in the region, has recently signed a major bilateral accord with the US and is currently negotiating a similar deal with Canada.

Social movements in Korea have vigorously opposed the country’s succession into the WTO since the mid-1990s and have actively mobilized in opposition to the more recent bilateral trade initiatives.

Opposition from Korean peasant movements to 'free trade' policies gained international attention in the September 2003 Cancun meetings when Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae took his own life in protest while holding a sign reading "WTO kills farmers."

Hundreds of thousands participated in street protests in Seoul this past summer to oppose recent changes to US-Korean trade policy that was to allow US beef to re-enter Korean markets. Sale of US beef had been banned in Korea since the discovery of Mad Cow Disease in some US cattle. Recent protests in Korea against US beef imports mark the largest anti-government protests in decades.

Opposition to US trade policy in Korea extends past US beef, to the recently negotiated US-Korea bilateral trade deal - after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the largest regional trade agreement signed by the US.

In December, scuffles broke out at the National Assembly in Korea as opposition politicians attempted to enter a locked-door session of the parliamentary committee on trade discussing the US bilateral deal, which remains extremely controversial in Korea.

In parallel with the US-Korea deal, officials from the Conservative government in Canada have been pushing to sign a similar bilateral deal. Labour unions in both countries have opposed the deal, including the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW). The CAW stated, "We refuse to enter into a competition with Korean workers for future prosperity. Working people in all countries have the right to job security, fair trade, and economic and social development."

In an attempt to understand the drive from US and Canadian officials to secure bilateral trade deals with Korea, Stefan Christoff spoke with Christine Ahn of Korean Americans for Fair Trade on the bilateral trade accords and grassroots opposition in Korea.

Stefan Christoff: Concerning the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement and also the Canada-Korea FTA, can you outline how this agreement will impact environmental and labour standards in South Korea, Canada and the US?

Christine Ahn: Impacts on working people stemming from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Canada, Mexico and the US make it clear that extending similar trade policies to Korea will only create further damage [for] all countries involved.

Essentially, economic and trade policy being pushed on Korea through the WTO and the IMF-imposed structural adjustment following the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s have moved Korea from a relatively self-reliant, industrial and agrarian economy to an economy increasingly dependent on exports and international market trends. This economic transformation, led by structural adjustment, broke the backbone of the trade union movement. Today in Korea over 50 per cent of the workforce are now irregular workers.

Trade unions in Korea had succeeded in creating a situation in which workers' rights were beginning to improve in Korea in the early 1990s, whereas for decades under authoritarian regimes workers were seriously oppressed; now again under neo-liberal economic policies, workers' rights are being seriously undermined.

Past experiences of workers throughout North America under NAFTA and the plight of Korean workers under neo-liberal policies make it extremely clear that the Korea-US trade agreement, the second largest US trade deal after NAFTA, must be opposed.

Christoff: Can you outline how the US-Korea trade accord would impact different elements of Korean society, for example on the national healthcare system and also on the peasants which have a long history of political mobilization in Korea?

Ahn: Pharmaceutical provisions that are included under this US-Korea Free Trade Agreement are terrible. Korea does not have the best universal health care system but there is a public system intact. Under the US trade agreement the current list of medications that are available to people through public healthcare would be challenged.

US pharmaceutical companies have been trying to push for a new pharmaceutical list, which would stack the list with US-patented pharmaceuticals which are so much more expensive than generic pharmaceuticals, putting a major strain on Korea’s healthcare system and ensuring profits for US pharmaceutical companies through Korea’s national healthcare system.

Exporting the US model for healthcare is a disastrous idea. In the US, there are over 45 million people who do not have healthcare, which is certainly a scenario not to encourage in other countries.

Clearly workers' rights will be detrimentally impacted by this agreement both in North America and in Korea. Under such agreements corporations can simply pick up their operations and move them to other countries that have weaker environmental and labour standards, lower production costs, while [the same companies] have the ability to send their produced goods around the world without paying any tariffs.

Only 10 years ago, Korea once was a largely agrarian economy with around 10 million farmers and now there are only around 3.5 million farmers. A mass migration has taken place, people moving from the countryside into the cities, contributing to growing unemployment rates, as fierce competition has also driven down the wages in the country. Also, there is a massive depression of Korea’s rural economy due to the flight to urban centres. This mass internal migration has severely impacted the economy of Korea’s non-urban centres.

Under NAFTA, the US ensured that agribusiness was subsidized with hundreds of millions to ‘compete’ with the small-scale South Korean farmers. It is positive that rice is not included in this agreement because in Korea rice farmers make up the largest number of peasants in the country, who would be seriously impacted by imports of cheap rice from the US. Under WTO regulations, however, Korea will eventually have to erase the tariffs on imported rice anyway, so even rice farmers will be hit by cheap imports.

The Korea-US bilateral trade agreement is worsening the situation for people in Korea and in the US. The agreement will eliminate tariffs that protect local industries while granting further rights to corporations to privatize further many social and public industries.

Christoff: Can you talk about some of the main issues that people highlighted on the ground in Korea as concerns this agreement?

Ahn: A major issue is beef, which isn’t currently included in the agreement, however [it] has been used as a leveraging tool by the US.

US negotiators are pushing Korea to remove the 2003 ban on US beef imports, imposed after Mad Cow Disease was discovered in the US, seriously impacting US beef imports to Korea. During this process there were major education campaigns within Korea and also in Japan, educating the public concerning the potential harm stemming from US beef.

As a pre-condition to negotiations surrounding the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, negotiators on the Korean side are being pressured to weaken laws concerning the imports of US beef. Essentially the US has been using the beef issue within the negotiations as an exchange to allow Korean industries to export greater amounts of electronics, conductor chips and automobiles into the US.

In the US and Canada, autoworker unions are highlighting the major imbalance between the number of automobiles being exported by Korea into the US and the limited number of automobiles that US manufacturers are exporting to Korea; a trade imbalance.

Autoworker unions in the US and Canada are saying that these bilateral accords should only be signed if a certain amount of automobile exports to Korea are secured. Actually, on the Korean side there is concern about importing larger numbers of US-manufactured automobiles because generally the engines are less environmentally friendly. So these bilateral agreements are flawed on both sides as they are fundamentally market-driven, agreements that doesn’t prioritize other critical points such as the environment, health or labour standards.

People in Korea are very concerned that the US is using this agreement as a wedge to dismantle health, environment and labour laws, and also the national healthcare system. These are real concerns in Korea as opposition to this agreement and are being most strongly pushed by peasants and farmers who have direct, first-hand experience of the impacts of neo-liberal economic policies in Korea.

Korean peasants have really galvanized a strong opposition to neo-liberal economic and trade policies within peasant movements in the country, but also throughout the Third World. This opposition was strongly felt in Cancun, Mexico, during the WTO negotiations and again in Hong Kong.

Essentially these bilateral accords are viewed by Korean peasants as [leading to] a loss of their dignity and autonomy.

Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer. This interview was originally produced for the Fighting FTAs project, an international project that provides a global picture on free trade agreements (FTAs), and insight into struggles being waged by social movements fighting back.

July 2007 Anti FTA protest in Korea

Memorial to Lee Kyung Hae

Canadian Drones Patrol Afghan Airspace

dawn — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:19:45 +0000

Unmanned warplanes stretch the definition of "nation building"

MONTREAL–War is rising to new heights over Afghanistan. Flying thousands of feet over the frontlines of Kandahar are several new unmanned military planes recently activated by the Canadian Army.

Beyond reach of the human eye, the advanced spy aircraft, the Heron, will monitor territory throughout southern Afghanistan from dizzying altitudes, delivering information for military strikes.

In early December two Afghans were killed in a targeted attack by Canadian forces on the basis of information gathered by the spy drones. According to military officials the Afghans killed were members of the Taliban. However, this has not been independently verified.

Far beyond the visual capacities of local Afghan authorities, the Heron will provide hyper details on human movements and activities allowing "ground forces to see...in real time [the] images acquired by the aircraft's sensors on a laptop on the ground," according to the Canadian Army.

Highly advanced spy aircrafts hovering over Afghanistan, collecting information on local movements, serve as a poignant reminder of Canada's role as a foreign military force in the country, operating beyond the domain of 'nation building' or reconstruction efforts.

Canada’s multi-million dollar unmanned spy airplanes are a direct result of recommendations stemming from the Conservative-government-initiated commission on Canada’s role in Afghanistan, headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley. The commission's report paved the way for the controversial extension of combat operations until 2011.

"There simply are not enough troops to ensure that the job can be properly done in Kandahar province...We hope that this [report] is not a poison pill," said Manley at a media conference after the release of the report. The report specifically outlined Canada’s acquisition of “high-performance unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” before February 2009 as a condition to extend the mission.

According to multiple opinion polls, the majority of people in Canada oppose the war in Afghanistan. It was the technicalities of war, however, and not the essential nature or context of the Canadian military presence in the country that were the subject of critique in the government-sponsored report.

“Operations on the ground in Afghanistan are easier for the Canadian government to present in their narrative of humanitarian war,” said Sophie Schoen, a Montreal-based anti-war activist with Block the Empire.

However, according to Schoen, “Canada’s military role in the sky makes it clear that the mission is not humanitarian. [The recent] expansions of military capabilities in the air is indicative of the real nature of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan and our role as an occupying force.”

Operating from the skies allows Canada a huge technological advantage over local guerrillas in southern Afghanistan. The advantage of aerial combat is especially important in light of recent events that suggest the US-backed government in Kabul is losing political control over major regions in the country, including Kandahar, where Canadian forces are stationed.

Last June, militias staged a spectacular jailbreak at the main prison in Kandahar, freeing up to 1,000 prisoners by blowing through the prison walls with explosives. This action set a new benchmark for the growing capacities of rebels in southern Afghanistan.

Hundreds have been killed in southern Afghanistan this past year, while US and Canadian military officials – as in Iraq – continue to ignore demands from human rights organizations that they keep records on civilian deaths.

“The number of civilians killed by the international forces in Afghanistan remains significantly underreported,” stated Amnesty International in a 2008 report.

“Taliban is a label applied to any male over 18 that the Canadian Army kills in Afghanistan, a term that is so broadly applied it is absurd,” said Schoen. "Generally this term, Taliban, is used without any verification and is used to cover up killings carried out by Canadian forces."

The spy drones that fly over Kandahar providing details for Canadian military strikes are adding another military layer to the thousands of foreign troops already occupying the country.

After decades of conflict in Afghanistan and thousands of civilian deaths since the 2001 US-led invasion, one key point has been clearly repeated by progressive voices inside Afghanistan: military-driven solutions delivered by foreign forces will not provide safety or stability for the country.

“We need liberation, not occupation,” said Malalai Joya, celebrated member of the Afghan Parliament, in a recent interview. “Afghans have a long history of fighting foreign occupation and if the[...]occupation lasts longer we may witness many mass resistance movements against it.”

A version of this article was originally published by the community newspaper, Sada al-Mashrek, based in Montreal.

Stefan Christoff is a community organizer and journalist based in Montreal and a member of Tadamon!, a collective of social justice activists in Montreal working for justice in the Middle East.

HighwayOfHeroes

Death in the Field

hillarybain — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:00:36 +0000

An interview with Arturo Rodriguez of the United Farm Workers of America

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died in May after suffering a heat stroke while pruning grape vines at the San Joaquin County vineyard in California. Jimenez was a seventeen-year-old undocumented worker who had migrated from Oaxaca, Mexico to work in the United States. She was working in the fields with her fiancé and was pregnant at the time of her death. As an undocumented worker, Jimenez’s death points to the often severe realities faced by non-status agricultural workers in the US.

Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), migration from Mexico to the US has increased dramatically. NAFTA has failed to deliver the economic boom for Mexico that was promised and thousands like Jimenez migrate to the US each year seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

Jimenez’s death sparked protest in California, including a caravan from Lodi, CA, to Sacramento, CA, coordinated by the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). Jimenez’s death reinvigorated calls for an amnesty program for undocumented workers in the US who often face appalling working conditions that frequently go undetected due to the precarious status of the workers.

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the UFW, spoke with Dominion contributor Stefan Christoff about the recent death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and the political movement for regularization of non-status workers in the US.

Dominion: The death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez has drawn a great deal of attention to the case of undocumented farm workers in the United States. Commentators across the political spectrum are referencing this tragic event. Could you address the specifics surrounding her death?

Arturo Rodriguez: Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez was a 17-year-old farm worker who was pregnant while working in the fields in the San Joaquin County Vineyard, working with grape vines. Maria was working in the fields for long, long hours. The employer didn’t bring water until 10:30 that morning--work had begun at 6am. Maria had worked for over four hours without any water to drink and on that particular day, the temperatures soared above 95 degrees [Fahrenheit], and in the fields even hotter.

That afternoon, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez collapsed after not having enough water, or having any shade provided and without any sufficient rest. Consequently, Maria fell into a coma. Supervisors took no action, not calling the ambulances, not calling an emergency vehicle, instead putting her in the back of a sweltering van. About two hours later, [they] finally brought her to a hospital where, upon arrival, the doctors pronounced that the body temperature had soared to around 108 degrees.

At this point Maria was admitted to the hospital and over the course of the next days her heart stopped beating a number of times and finally her heart simply stopped beating. Doctors said that there was no real chance to revive her or for her to survive. At this point the family made a decision to shut off the machines that were keeping her alive.

Could you provide a picture of the trek that undocumented migrants are making from throughout the Americas, due to economic factors, to work in agricultural fields in the United States and Canada?

Migration occurs throughout the United States and into Canada. Towns that the workers come from, in Oaxaca or Chiapas in Mexico, have economic conditions that are so bad, so poor, that people are forced to look externally for ways to provide their children with enough to survive in these states.

Often families will pay thousands of dollars to smugglers, known as coyotes, to take people across the borders to a place where another family member is, or a place where they can work as an undocumented labourer where they slowly start working in the field. These people are then indebted to that particular coyote, so they are working first to pay off their debt.

Literally thousands and thousands of people are crossing each day. Estimates indicate that at least five hundred people are dying trying to cross the border each year. People are dying while crossing the deserts, dying from thirst, heat exposure or starvation.

Can you talk about these demands for safety reform within the context of the larger demands for regularization or status for all non-status people or workers in the United States?

Our organization has been working extremely hard for the past decade because we know that Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez isn’t an isolated case. In the US, at least 70 per cent of the farm labour force is undocumented. Oftentimes, workers like Maria are abused, or exploited, or mistreated, simply due to their lack of status in the US.

Consequently, we feel that it’s extremely important that we change this situation, to ensure that undocumented workers are afforded the same rights as anyone else in the United States when they come to work in this country. A very important part of our work as an organization is to bring about real immigration reform in the US.

Recently we have worked very closely with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Kennedy and Congressman Howard Berman on a special piece of legislation that would in particular deal with undocumented farm workers in the United States. Through this legislation, farm workers would bring proof that they have worked 150 days over a four-year period. This legislation would then provide a pathway to grant legal status for the workers and their spouses and children in the US.

We continue to work very hard on this legislation, as we think it’s the real solution to the current problem. [If the legislation were adopted], farm workers could enjoy the same protection as anyone else and they will no longer be discriminated against.

Do you see a parallel between the recent death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and the current position of the US government to not grant farm workers status in the US today?

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez is one of nine individuals that we know of who have died of heat stress just in California. Multiple other deaths have occurred due to equipment failures, due to heavy use of pesticides, and you can go on from there. The overwhelming majority of these deaths are undocumented people, so we know that these deaths are very closely linked to the legal status of these individuals.

Unfortunately, the legal status of undocumented farm workers needs to change for them to be treated as human beings. This is the reality that we face in the US and we are trying to do everything within our own power to ensure that these changes do come about. So it’s of utmost importance for us to ensure that farm workers receive the same type of legal status and protections that any other workers in the US [receive].

Throughout Mexico there has been unrest concerning the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Can you talk about the case of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez within the larger context of NAFTA, which some argue is forcing increased migration of undocumented workers into the US?

Unfortunately, NAFTA hasn’t been the solution for Mexico’s economic concerns that it was presented as. Many companies went to Mexico looking for a cheap labour supply, [but] once they found a cheaper labour supply in China or other parts of the world, they often abandoned the communities or cities in Mexico where they had set up.

Along the US-Mexico border, near Tijuana [and] other areas, you can often find factories that have been completely abandoned as a result of these corporations finding other locations internationally where they could find a cheaper labour supply, a labour supply they could better use and exploit for their corporate economic benefit.

Many large regions or states in Mexico, for example Oaxaca, were not impacted by any of the proposed economic gains from NAFTA. Oftentimes the areas that NAFTA impacted, in terms of US companies setting up factories along the border regions, are no less destitute [today] as these factories or companies are now leaving.

Today, large, large numbers of people in these states are in situations of unemployment, even homelessness, as they had left their homes in other parts of Mexico and are now stranded without work or opportunity. Oftentimes, the only solution that they had was migration to the US, in order to seek some kind of relief, in order to deal with the economic stress that they were feeling in Mexico.

Profound economic changes that benefit people will never take place unless there is real economic revival within Mexico and across other parts of Latin America. Huge numbers of people are migrating from across the Americas to the US in order to find jobs, basically to find economic relief; this is a real challenge.

Economic stability in Mexico means that people will have self-reliance where they live, an economic situation locally where they can provide for themselves, their families and their local communities.

Migrant Farm Workers

Contemporary Currents of Quebec’s Student Movement

hillarybain — Sat, 31 May 2008 08:26:07 +0000

An interview with Sophie Schoen of L'Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ)

Waves of student protest have swept Quebec in recent years. In 2005 a major strike galvanized students across Quebec, with over one hundred student unions participating at the height of a strike organized around the demand for free post-secondary education in Quebec.

Major currents within Quebec’s student movement draw parallels between the struggle for accessible and free education in Quebec and larger movements for social justice in the Americas. From campaigns combating poverty, to fights for labor rights, Quebec students have woven profound connections between campus-based struggles and broader social movements.

The 2005 centered on a confrontation with the Liberal government of Jean Charest. Upon taking power in Quebec, Charest’s Liberals attempted to slash $103 million from bursaries granted to students, and the students fought back. Eventually, Charest was forced to back down on the cuts, and the funding was restored.

Quebec's Liberal government announced a protracted hike in tuition fees across Quebec for the first time since the late 1990s. In response, L'Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ) -- one of Quebec’s strongest student unions, boasting 42,000 members -- held a series of protests. Thousands took the streets in Montreal in mid-November while multiple student associations held strikes at CÉGEP* and university campuses.

Sophie Schoen is a community organizer and activist with ASSÉ. In this interview Schoen discusses the history of Quebec’s powerful student movement and the recent mobilization against rising tuition fees.

* CÉGEP is the French acronym for a "College of General and Vocational Education." In Quebec, High School ends in grade 11, after which students can attend one or two years of technical training or "pre-university" classes at a CÉGEP.

Stefan Christoff: Can you paint a picture of the current state for Quebec students? What are the central issues and political demands that are being pushed by students today?

Sophie Schoen: Last June, Quebec’s education minister, Michelle Courchesne, announced that tuition fees in Quebec would rise. A fifty-dollar hike in tuition fees is planned for each semester over the next five years, which means that by 2012 it will cost five hundred dollars more each year to go to school. Taking into account additional fees that universities continue to mount -- without government regulation -- every year, students will pay thousands more in tuition fees.

Two years ago, there was a major student strike in Quebec due to cuts to the loans and bursaries program, a strike that was historic. At the peak of the strike, over one hundred students unions were participating across Quebec. Demonstrations mobilized tens of thousands of people on the streets of Montreal, on the streets of Quebec City, across Quebec. At seven weeks, it was the longest student strike in the history of Quebec.

Today, two years later, people within students unions and activists within the student movement are working to mobilize for a response to tuition hikes on the same scale as in 2005. Students remember a massive strike that cost seven weeks of lost classes, such as at CÉGEP St. Laurent; students remember a massive strike that didn’t win concrete gains, which makes mass mobilization more difficult.

For readers outside Quebec could you explain the role of CÉGEPs in Quebec society today and also the historical context in which the CÉGEP system was created in the late 1960s?

CÉGEPs exist only in Quebec, and were officially created in 1967. Quebec’s government at the time aimed to bring people planning on attending vocational schools and people moving onto university into the same educational institutions, studying together and having a common curriculum of classes.

In 1967, the year CÉGEPs were created, was a time of huge reforms within Quebec society, reforms that led to things such as free healthcare, the will to have free education in Quebec and also the creation of CÉGEPs.

What is often forgotten is that these major changes to Quebec society took place due to social struggles during that period, led by unions, led by students, led by social movements.

In 1968 there was a massive student strike, leading to the creation of UQÀM, the Université du Québec à Montréal. UQÀM was a second francophone university, created because there wasn’t enough room in the existing francophone university in Montreal. At the time UQÀM was created there was an ambition to have free post-secondary education in Quebec; mainstream political parties such as the Parti Québécois supported the idea at the time. Now UQÀM has obviously changed; it has become another tool of neo-liberalism, while at the time of its creation the goal was to have a university for the people. [...]

At the time that CÉGEPs were created, at the time that UQÀM was created, many radical student unions were also created. Student unions that function with direct democracy, through general assemblies, which from the onset took on radical positions in terms of free education, in terms of a critique of capitalism, in terms of solidarity with other social movements.

Those structures, those radical institutions have changed with time, but [they] still exist today. In Quebec we still have many, many student unions that function through direct democracy and that demand free education while viewing the student movement as a part of larger social movements.

Today, Quebec is known throughout Canada as having the most inexpensive education or affordable tuition in the country. Could you talk about the context of the student movement in the past ten years?

There is clearly only one reason why in Quebec we have low tuition. Low tuition in Quebec is a direct result of the major student strikes.

A large student strike happened in 1996 in response to the Parti Québécois saying they intended to raise tuition fees in the province. It wasn’t as massive as the strike in 2005, but it did force the government to step down from their decision to raise tuition.

An organized student movement is the only barrier to the state’s intentions to raise tuition fees -- a move that would be detrimental to the majority of students in Quebec society. It’s really important that people understand this point, that an organized student movement is the only barrier to having a situation in Quebec in which inaccessible education is the norm.

A student strike is the only way to halt government efforts to raise tuition fees in Quebec. A strike is extremely difficult to organize; it takes a lot out of the people -- the students who participate -- but a strike is what is takes.

Concerning accessibility to education in 2008, can you talk about the current economic conditions surrounding education in Quebec?

There are more and more barriers to education, mostly financial or economic barriers for the majority of people accessing quality education. Today many of these barriers to education exist because the student movement hasn’t been able to adequately defend students or the right to education.

Today, fewer and fewer poor people are attending school; fewer and fewer poor people are attending CÉGEP or university. Those in CÉGEP or in university who aren’t struggling to get by financially often don’t realize that there are major economic barriers to going to school for many in society.

Also, for students who have kids or who aren’t well-off, there are very few measures in Quebec that assist students with children, leading to many student parents leaving CÉGEP or university due to financial pressures.

People attending CÉGEP from families with parents who can’t help out financially could be working 20 to 30 hours per week over and above school work to cover the expenses of life or expenses related to studying, which is extremely difficult. Often people in this financial reality never finish CÉGEP or even start CÉGEP simply due to financial barriers.

Let’s jump back to the strike of 2005. Mainstream media coverage presented the strike as revolving around the cuts to the loans and bursaries program. Could you talk about the 2005 strike in detail and the importance of the strike for Quebec society in the face of neo-liberal economic reforms being pushed by Jean Charest’s Liberals?

Cuts to the loans and bursaries program, as proposed by the Liberals, meant that people would receive the majority of their funds from the government in loans and a small amount in bursaries, loans that students would have to pay back to the government soon after graduating or stopping their studies. Now in Quebec students would face a similar situation to the rest of Canada, where students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt to the government.

Now also it must be understood that those who are accepted into the loans and bursaries program are those deemed by the government to be the most in need financially, or the poorest students. Generally, to be accepted for bursaries, the student has to be without major financial backing from their family; so these students, the poorest students, were directly targeted by Jean Charest’s Liberals' proposed cuts to the loans and bursaries program.

Can you talk about the proposed cuts to the loans and bursaries program within the context of larger neo-liberal economic reforms pushed by the same provincial government?

Certainly the cuts to financing for students are directly connected to all the other policies that the Jean Charest Liberals put forward, including raising daycare fees, opening up space for the privatization of social services, and the implementation of repressive labour laws in Quebec.

It’s clear that the success of the student strike in Quebec in 2005, in terms of political momentum or mobilization, was directly connected to the widespread opposition to Charest’s neo-liberal economic policies in Quebec in general.

Could you highlight a couple important actions that took place within the context of the student strike or broader social struggle against Jean Charest’s Liberals?

Starting from two weeks into the strike many small actions started to take place in Montreal and also throughout Quebec. The office of the Minister of Education was occupied; there was also an occupation at the Quebec office of the Ministry of Education for Quebec and there was also a blockade at the entrance to the port of Montreal.

In Quebec there were many actions that aimed to economically disrupt the government and corporations in Quebec -- the institutions behind the massive cuts to social services and to education. Targets for actions within the student movement were those individuals who promoted privatization, promoted a free-market vision for Quebec, promoted tuition fee increases.

At one point during the strike the bridge that leads to the Montreal casino was blocked for one evening. Many actions of this nature took place in Quebec. It was an important message of economic disruption. Of course there were large demonstrations across Quebec, however it’s important to understand that economic disruption was an important part of the student strike.

Talk about who was behind the strike; there were a number of student unions, federations and organizations involved in the strike.

The strike was first initiated by student unions that are members of ASSÉ, a student union in Quebec that right now has about 42,000 members -- a student union based on the fight for free education, on principals of social justice; basically a student union fighting for larger social change through the student movement.

ASSÉ has existed since 2001 and it didn’t come from nowhere: it exists within the historical context of other student organizations in Quebec prior to ASSÉ, including L’Association nationale des étudiants et étudiantes du Quebec (ANEEQ). ANEEQ was a large student union that existed in the 1970s and 1980s and was a large student organization with a large number of members. Basically, ANEEQ had similar principals to those that ASSÉ has today on free education and broader social change.

In 2005, student unions that were members of ASSÉ were behind the strike; they formed a coalition called Coalition Élargie de l’Association de Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante, or CASSÉE. This coalition included unions from ASSÉ and other independent unions that mobilized for the strike.

A couple of weeks after the strike had started, the more mainstream student unions in Quebec, the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) and Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) joined the Quebec-wide strike.

It was excellent that they joined the strike; we can never say no to having a bigger movement. The important point concerning these two mainstream student federations is that their executives were continually negotiating a deal with the government throughout the strike, maintaining channels of communication with the government while not seeking to build a mass movement, not seeking to mobilize their membership or fight for genuine social justice in society.

[In 2005] ASSÉ and CASSÉE were shut-out of all negotiations with the government and with the education minister. It was FECQ and FEUQ that put an end to the strike. It was a deal that was flawed because we didn’t really win that much. It even fell short of reinstating the status quo.

There are major elements of the student movement that until today are thinking about broader social change. The Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001; the massive protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and then again solidarity protests with the mobilization against the Summit of the Americas in Quito, Ecuador in 2002 -- each saw a major demonstration in Montreal. Can you comment on the larger international movement the Quebec student movement operates within?

The year ASSÉ was created was also the year of the protests against the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001. There is a direct connection there, as one of the first major plans of action that ASSÉ had was continental days of action against the FTAA and neo-liberalism, in collaboration with allies in Latin America.

In 2002, there was an important demonstration against the FTAA in Montreal. Around five-thousand people participated in the protest, which was a very important mobilization for ASSÉ. In 2001 and 2002, people in ASSÉ openly talked about a five year plan of action, which would end with a continental strike against neo-liberal economics. Not even five years after ASSÉ was created there was a major general student strike in Quebec, which is an achievement.

It’s essential for a social movement to make those broader links and it’s excellent that ASSÉ was created in this context. Personally I always push to have ASSÉ focus more on the broader analysis, beyond Quebec, looking at neo-liberalism and broader issues, while trying to build links with other social struggles in our society such as indigenous struggles at home, and with social struggles internationally in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Europe and beyond. Many around the globe are struggling against on a daily basis in a much more profound way than the student movement in Quebec.

Today we are experiencing a strange political moment in Quebec: we have the extreme-right Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), which has become the official opposition in Quebec. Can you talk about the recent actions or mobilizations organized by ASSÉ within this context?

Following the government's announcement of tuition hikes in June 2007, it was decided that ASSÉ would undertake a campaign of an unlimited general strike to fight back against those tuition raises. A strike effort commenced in a political context where a growing right-wing ideology is present in the province: for the first time in recent history people aren’t really scared anymore to state that they are openly right-wing.

Before in Quebec, one would always have to be watchful when stating you were hard right or right wing, as there was a sense of social shame involved with right wing ideology, which today doesn’t exist in the same way.

Despite this context, many student unions in 2007 had mandates from general assemblies to undertake a strike campaign this year, with the central demand for free education and other demands also, including reinvesting in the education system, and having more support structures for parents going to school, in terms of daycare but also more generally.

In the end, the strike was massively rejected this year in the CÉGEPs. In the universities, people were more open to the strike; at least this was the reality at UQÀM and at Laval University in Quebec City. Many student unions at UQÀM, as there isn’t one big student union at UQÀM but many smaller faculty unions, decided that they would go on a general strike this year.

Association facultaire étudiante des sciences humaines de l’UQÀM, (AFESH-UQÀM), the social sciences union at UQÀM, went on strike for two weeks. In mid-November there was a week of action; at the high point almost 60,000 students were on strike, an important achievement regardless of other things that happened during the campaign.

In Montreal, this week of action was punctuated by the attitudes of administration at UQÀM and also at CÉGEP du Vieux Montreal. Administrations reacted very violently against the striking students.

At UQÀM, students attempted to sleep at the university overnight in order to welcome people from other parts in Quebec who were coming to Montreal for a major demonstration. Students wanted to stay late at UQÀM and also at CÉGEP du Vieux Montreal to make banners for the demonstrations, and to make props for the protests, however both administrations refused to allows the student access to their own campus.

At UQÀM, students were violently evicted by the riot police. The next day at CÉGEP du Vieux Montreal, the CÉGEP was barricaded very well; the way it’s constructed allows for this. Students held on to the space for at least part of the night; however, finally the police evicted the students from their campus very violently.

Over one hundred students were arrested. Students were hit with serious charges such as assault on police and assault with a weapon, charges which will eventually come up in court. Protests for a strike this fall were marked by a refusal by university or CÉGEP administrations to even negotiate with students around the strike.

Also there was a large demonstration the same week organized by ASSÉ, which brought three or four thousand people onto the streets of Montreal to demand free education, more investment in the current educational system and more services for parents.

Can you discuss the central points that continue to drive the Quebec student movement?

Today it’s essential for people involved in the student movement to talk to people in Quebec, to students in Quebec, to highlight the fact that it’s necessary to act now. There are emergencies happening socially in terms of set-backs that many sectors within society are facing - not only students: direct attacks on people such as increasingly unaffordable housing, increasingly repressive immigration laws, and direct attacks on the education and healthcare systems. All such attacks we have the power to fight.

Quebec Student Strike 2007

Reporting on the Ghost of Sankara

dru — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:03:56 +0000

Interview with Journalist Jooneed Khan

[Read part I of this series, an interview with Aziz Fall of GRILA]

GRILA, the Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa, a grassroots collective in Montreal, is leading the international legal charge concerning the case of Thomas Sankara, recently winning a key case at the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations.

According to GRILA, the impunity of those involved in assassinations in Africa is finally being called into question. The Sankara case could set new precedents in an issue of profound importance to a continent with a history of unresolved assassinations of national leaders and political activists.

Jooneed Khan, a reporter on international affairs for Montreal's La Presse, has been covering the case of Thomas Sankara for a number of years. He is one of the few journalists working at a major media outlet to cover this story.

* * *

Stefan Christoff: Explain your accounting of the history surrounding the revolution of Burkina Faso and the assassination of Thomas Sankara. What is the historical and contemporary importance of these events to African politics?

Jooneed Khan: Sankara became president of Upper Volta, shortly after changing the name to Burkina Faso, which translates to the land of people with dignity. At that time, when apartheid in South Africa was still holding sway, Sankara represented a new hope for African development. He advocated simple principles like self-reliance, rooted in the belief that Burkina Faso could not develop if the nation continued to rely on outside support, that the first resource to tap is the internal energies of the country, the energy of the people.

Sankara was also very strongly anti-corruption, cutting back a great deal on government expenses. At one point Sankara was traveling to work on a bicycle, later on giving in to the demands of some within the government cabinet Sankara accepted that government officials use cars. However the government then used very small cars, not the traditional Mercedes that made the African elite known very often known in those days as the new tribe of "wabenzi," [a reference to their preference for the Mercedes Benz car].

In 1987 Sankara was assassinated by a companion in the revolution named Blaise Compaoré, who carried out a coup d'état seizing power, remaining in power for 20 years [until today]. Often we discuss the importance of democracy in Africa, however recently Burkina Faso has been elected to serve a two year term on the Security Council of the United Nations, together with Vietnam, Libya along with the permanent members.

Africa has a long history of national leaders who have been murdered, massacred, or overthrown in one way or another. Beginning with Patrice Lumumba in Congo, in Ghana Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown and died in exile in Egypt, Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique. Many anti-Apartheid workers, activists in South Africa were assassinated, some by hit-men, some with letter bombs. You could say that Thomas Sankara is one of the last in that long list of great African martyrs.

You have been following the case of Thomas Sankara in relation to the work of a local organization here in Montreal which as been active on the case in recent years. Can you explain Sankara’s case in relation to Montreal?

There is a small NGO in Montreal named GRILA [of the Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa], which was formed in the 1980’s during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Interestingly, after the fall of apartheid it continued working, as it was clear that the end of apartheid had not liberated Africa; there were still many battles to be fought. GRILA looked to Sankara as a model for African Development and picked up the case aiming to have light thrown on the circumstances of the death, to commemorate Sankara’s assassination every year.

In 1997, ten years after the assassination GRILA managed to lodge a formal complaint with the authorities in Burkina Faso, asking for Sankara’s assassination to be investigated, and it managed to secure the legal move just a few days before the deadline, the local statute of limitation, beyond which the matter could not be raised. There is a limit of 10 years under Burkina Faso law in which one can access legal recourse, after which time the point becomes moot.

GRILA lodged the complaint just prior to the deadline with the support of Sankara’s family, who was living in exile in France successfully raising the matter, which of course irritated authorities in Burkina Faso. The response that they received that this was a military affair, since Sankara had been an army officer and could not be dealt with in civilian courts but within the military courts.

Within these legal proceedings GRILA had the support of twenty-two volunteer lawyers from around the world, in Canada, in Europe and Africa. After failing within the Burkina Faso legal system GRILA took the matter to the UN Committee on Human Rights and they succeeded last year in obtaining a formal denunciation of the Burkina Faso regime of Blaise Compaoré. The denunciation dictated that the government had to throw light on the circumstances of the death of Sankara, had to identify the grave clearly and properly, and also had to pay some form of financial compensation to Sankara’s widow and two sons.

Apparently when Sankara died the death certificate bore the inscription, “died of natural causes”, apparently the authorities have now removed the word “natural” from the death certificate, and offered somewhere near ninety thousands dollars as compensation to the family, which of course the family and GRILA have considered very inadequate.

Until now the grave of Sankara has still not been identified, while the circumstances of the death have not been elucidated and all the obstruction of justice that has taken place around this case has not been looked into. So GRILA is pursuing the case, they are waiting for the UN Committee on Human Rights to react to the Burkina Faso response.

Can you explain the contemporary importance of the case of Thomas Sankara on a global scale?

What's interesting concerning the Sankara case is that the principle involved is the fight against impunity in Africa because there are so many crimes and violations which continue to be committed and go unpunished. The international criminal court on Rwanda concerning the genocide that took place is just a drop in the bucket concerning crimes in Africa. This is an attempt from the international community and the UN to bring the criminals in Rwanda to justice. However, there are many, many other cases in Africa.

Currently Darfur is a very fashionable cause among many people in the West who want to go to protect the people of Darfur. At the same time according to the United Nations itself, five to six hundred thousand civilians die each year in the eastern Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, deaths stemming from a war that is closely tied to the struggle for natural resources by international corporations. This is often forgotten, one of the many forgotten genocides that is going on as we talk in Africa.

GRILA has picked up the case of Thomas Sankara as another example of impunity, wanting those responsible to be brought to account. These are all interesting factors which have kept me interested in the Sankara case. As the Sankara case has evolved I have tried every now and then to try to asses the situation and do a story in order to keep it alive in the eyes of the public.

Sankara