The Dominion - prison

Building Prisons, Creating Prisoners

Moira Peters — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:02:55 +0000

Harper gets “tough on crime” and everyone pays

MONTREAL—"It's wrong to believe that more time inside is what will make people safe," says James*, who was recently released from a maximum security prison. "If you want to fight crime, put money into communities, like job opportunities. The best way to fight crime is to fight poverty."

Since Prime Minister Harper took office, Correctional Services Canada (CSC)'s net budget has increased by 54 per cent to $2.46 billion for 2010–2011; it is predicted to increase further to $3.12 billion by 2012–2013, according to CSC. Much of this money is for capital expenditures such as construction of new prisons; in 2010, $329.4 million is set for capital expenditures, and in 2012–2013 that is set to increase to $466.9 million.

The number of incarcerated people in Canada is expected to soar due to new legislation introduced by the Conservative government.

"These prisons that will be coming online aren't even going to put a dent in the number of prisoners that they're going to be creating [with] this legislation," says prison justice activist Justin Piche, who notes that at least 22 new provincial-territorial prisons are being built in Canada and 15 additions are being made to existing facilities.

The Parliamentary Budget Office predicted in June 2010 that Bill C-25, which lengthens prisoners' stays by eliminating the "two-for-one" credit for time served pre-sentencing, will incur over $2 billion in construction, operation, and management costs over a five-year period. These costs correlate to the increased cost of housing these prisoners. The proposed Bill S-10, which involves mandatory minimum sentencing of six months for those producing as few as five marijuana plants, would add additional costs and increase the prison population in numbers that Correctional Services Canada says it cannot predict.

"It's like they're using a bigger net because they have to catch more fish. They're trying to pull people back in," says James. "There is no supporting data that this works, but nobody cares because it's prisoners, and prisoners are seen as second class."

Piche, co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, and author of the popular blog Tracking the Politics of "Crime" and Punishment in Canada says the government's changes in legislation, though expensive, are not needed and will not make the streets safer.

This legislation is being introduced despite the fact that Statistics Canada reports that crime rates have been falling steadily since the 1990s.

As the numbers of prisoners is set to rise, the living conditions of prisoners are far below those of the non-incarcerated population. Overcrowding is worsening, according to the Correctional Investigator of Canada's annual report, and incidents of prisoners facing violence from guards are also increasing. Suicide rates are more than seven times higher than the rest of Canada, HIV transmission rates are 10 times higher in prison, and the prevalence of Hepatitis C is 25 times greater. Access to clean needles and condoms is nearly non-existent, creating what many view as a health crisis inside the walls of prisons.

In an interview with Maclean's magazine, the Correctional Investigator of Canada notes that less than three per cent of the budget for prison expansion is to go towards programming inside prisons.

"There used to be so much more in terms of programs, and the ability to learn skills and trades," says James. "They take more and more of that away and we know that it's not coming back."

The Canadian government notes on their Public Safety website that 12 per cent of male and 26 per cent of female offenders have serious mental health problems; and about four out of five offenders arrive at a federal institution with a serious substance abuse problem. This reality, however, is not leading to a corresponding increase in the mental health treatment for prisoners.

James notes that psychotherapy used to be easier to access; but increasingly, guards hold the de facto responsibility for prisoners with mental health issues. "Now guards play the role of the therapists," says James, "because they're there full time. They [the prison system] save money." The Correctional Investigator of Canada has repeatedly denounced the lack of funding for mental health treatment in prisons.

"It's increasingly recognized that our prisons have become dumping grounds for those suffering from mental illnesses, those who have substance-abuse addictions, and also other marginalized populations, particularly the poor, including Aboriginals, who are completely over-represented within our prisons," says Piche.

The increase in spending on prison expansion comes amidst cuts in many other sectors as part of the "austerity measures" that Harper announced at the close of the G20 meetings in Toronto. Money for community spending, for Indigenous peoples, and for women's groups have been slashed across the country.

Piche asserts that the over-representation of marginalized populations in prisons, such as people living in poverty or First Nations peoples, "indicates our inability to use appropriate services to address the needs of [these] populations. These populations are over-policed, over-prosecuted, they are sentenced in a disproportionate fashion, and this basically leads to their over-representation in prisons."

Peter Collins, an outspoken prison justice advocate, reflects on the rising costs of the "prison industrial complex" in a time of "fiscal restraint."

"If you look at the way that they spend on things that they want to spend on, which is the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex, you can see that they are not really in a time of fiscal restraint, they are in a time of abundant spending. It just depends on what they want to spend it on," says Collins. "If it involves killing people or punishing people, there is a lot of money for that."

Collins, who recently won the Canadian Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, is currently serving a life sentence in Bath Penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario.

Furthermore, Piche adds, "It costs more to imprison people than it does to put money into community programs, which actually address real social ills." Indeed, the Parliamentary Budget Office reports the average cost of an inmate in 2009-2010 to be $162,373, while community-based organizations across the country are fighting to survive.

To Collins and many others, it is this basic lack of justice that is putting growing numbers of people behind bars for longer and longer stays.

"It is so many people from low economic situations [who are in prisons]," says Collins. When living in poverty children "often do not do as well in school, they're going to school hungry or tired. Some of them have or develop learning disabilities [and struggle with school] and then you have schools operating with their no-tolerance attitudes...and when the kid runs afoul then he's on the street," explains Collins. "What are the kids supposed to do? When do we take some responsibility in society for that kid's opportunity or lack of it?"

Though the Canadian government refers to its prison system as "rehabilitative," Collins disagrees. He points out that it is not only poor conditions inside of prisons or the expansion of prisons that should be criticized, but the very idea of using incarceration as a solution: "At the end of the day, regardless of how pretty or how ugly a prison is, it's still a prison. Deprivation does not work, you simply can't rehabilitate someone inside of a cage."

"They treat you like an infant, like a 'bad child,'" agrees James. "They try to hold you in for so long, it harms you."

Piche says these statements are supported by the evidence. "It has been demonstrated in studies about the US system of longer-term incarceration and mandatory minimums that indeed, though much more money is spent, American-style justice and imprisonment systems do not work in reducing or in preventing crime".

Collins sees a deep injustice in a system he says doesn't make the streets any safer but puts public money into locking away economically and racially marginalized people, while others walk free. "There are different ways that we can see criminals. If you look at the tar sands—the way that they're pumping toxins into the Athabasca river and poisoning everybody downstream, and the air—how is that not criminal?" asks Collins. Collins has faced severe repercussions and the denial of his parole as a direct consequence of speaking out from inside prison, yet he continues to do so.

"There is a punishment for speaking out. But I think that there is punishment for shutting up as well. At the end of the day, if you know that something should be said and you don't say it, you're going to pay some price in terms of your integrity, your dignity. So you've got to make the choice of where you want to pay your toll."

* Not his real name.

Robyn Maynard is a movement writer, radio journalist, and activist based in Montreal. She co-hosts No One Is Illegal Radio and is involved in various grassroots campaigns for migrant justice, and against police violence and impunity.

Cookie-cutter prisons

Ball and chain

Riding Out the G20 Judicial Roller-Coaster

Moira Peters — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:56:41 +0000

Hundert threatened with solitary, Rainville released, Ichim's charges dropped

MONTREAL—The fence has come down, the police have returned to their respective cities and the G20 leaders have gone home, but the saga of arrestees continues. While charges in some of the most spectacular arrests have now been dropped, others are just beginning to face the repercussions of the G20 convergence in Toronto.

In the latest arrest on October 14, Montrealer Youri Couture turned himself in to Toronto police. He faces several charges, including mischief over $5,000 and disguise with intent.

Ryan Rainville, a young Indigenous rights advocate from the Sakimay Nation, was released from prison yesterday after spending nearly three months in jail. In early August, while out on bail for other G20-related charges for which he had spent six days in jail in June, he was re-arrested for allegedly causing mischief over $5,000, assaulting a police officer, intimidating a justice system participant by violence and breaching his bail conditions.

Rainville was released on non-association bail conditions which block him from contacting some other G20 defendants and community organizers. He will go to trial in early 2011. A week prior to his release, Rainville was offered release and a reduced sentence if he co-operated with G20 Integrated Security Unit officers in identifying individuals in photographs. He refused.

G20 defendant Alex Hundert was arrested for a third time, this time for allegedly attempting to intimidate a member of the judicial system. Hundert was arrested four days after he filed an application for a review of his most recent bail conditions, which included “no expressing of views on a political issue.”

After initially refusing the “no expressing of views” bail condition, Hundert was coerced by the security manager of the Toronto East Detention Centre into agreeing to it.

“They said that they would keep him [in solitary confinement] until he was eventually released from prison if he didn’t sign his bail conditions right away. He was not allowed to make a phone call,” said Jonah Hundert, Alex’s brother, in an interview with CBC.

Alex Hundert had been found by a Scarborough Justice of the Peace to have breached his "no-demonstration" bail condition on October 8, 2010, by speaking as an invited panelist at two university events.

Gary McCullough was arrested June 24, 2010, after police pulled him over and found a crossbow, a chainsaw and other outdoor equipment in his vehicle.

McCullough’s home in Haliburton County, Ontario, had burnt down, and his remaining possessions were in his car when he drove to Toronto to get his car window fixed. McCullough has spent most of the last three and a half months in solitary confinement before being assessed as unfit to stand trial, and now awaits transfer from prison to a psychiatric hospital.

Byron Sonne, a computer security expert who had created a G20 counter-surveillance “how-to” guide, was arrested on June 22, 2010, on a slew of charges, including possession of an explosive. There is a publication ban on his case, and it is unknown why he was denied bail on July 20, 2010. Sonne remains behind bars.

Toronto-based organizer Syed Hussan, an alleged co-conspirator, has been unable to get his work permit to Canada renewed and is facing inadmissibility proceedings, which may lead to his deportation. Hussan was arrested after being swarmed by plainclothes officers and thrown into an unmarked van the morning of June 26, 2010.

“I think it’s rare for this much resources and energy to be put into so vehemently going after people who are allegedly guilty of nothing more than vandalism,” said Jonah Hundert.

Indeed, it seems that many of the charges are not holding up in court. Conspiracy charges against nearly 100 protesters of the G20 who were arrested in the widely publicized and violent 9am raid of a gymnasium at the University of Toronto (U of T) were dropped due to lack of evidence. Charges against three members of Montreal’s Anti-Capitalist Convergence (ACC) who were “preventatively” arrested on the morning of June 26, 2010, were also dropped.

“A lot of [the U of T arrestees] are more radical now, [they’ve] seen you can be arrested for your political beliefs,” said Blandine Juchs, a member of the ACC.

Leah Henderson, another accused of conspiracy successfully challenged her non-association bail conditions on October 20, 2010.

"[Superior Court Justice Todd] Ducharme said it was a nebulous condition, it was setting someone up to breach, essentially, because it just wasn’t defined,” Henderson told the Vancouver Media Co-op in a phone interview.

Anti-poverty activist Julian Ichim had his charge of counseling to commit mischief dropped by the crown on November 1, 2010. He appeared in court with eight of the 19 alleged co-conspirators, all of whom still face charges.

Following the same hearing, Peter Rosenthal, lawyer for Montreal-based organizer Jaggi Singh, argued for more disclosure regarding the case against his client. He told reporters after Singh's hearing that many of the accused still have not received full disclosure of the evidence being used against them.

Such judicial harassment is only strengthening the conviction of those resisting G20 policies. Before Alex Hundert was banned from speaking to the media, he urged people to continue organizing. "The way to assert our right to resist is to resist."

“If they’re trying to break [Alex] down with these sorts of things, it’s certainly not working,” affirms Jonah Hundert.

Nat Gray is a poet, an activist and an intern at The Dominion.

G20 UofT Press Scrum

Prison Farms on Death Row

Moira Peters — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 05:04:16 +0000

Feds invest $9B in prisons, progressive rehab program phased out to save "pocket change"

MONTREAL—The movement to save prison farms has intensified in recent months as increasing numbers of Canadians have voiced concern about the Conservative government’s overarching plans for the federal prison system.

Twenty-four people were arrested during protests on August 8 and 9 outside the Frontenac Institution in Kingston—one of the six prison farms across the country that the Conservative government has slated for closure. Correctional Services Canada (CSC) was attempting to transport Frontenac’s dairy herd out of the facility when protesters formed a human barricade to prevent livestock trucks from passing onto the prison grounds.

Police attempted to break the blockade, periodically grabbing and detaining protesters, but they remained numerically outmatched.

“Sunday was a major victory for the campaign,” said Andrew McCann, a member of Urban Agriculture Kingston and one of those arrested. “Over 500 people held the blockade for two hours. They started to drag old women and young women away to intimidate people, but the line just grew.”

By the next morning, an estimated 150–200 Ontario Provincial Police officers had been called in. Several more arrests were made and the protest was eventually broken up. McCann stated that he and the other 23 defendants plan to plead not guilty at their first court date on September 14, 2010.

The farms employed about 300 inmates, and their produce fed inmates throughout the neighbouring CSC institutions, while surplus was typically donated to food banks. The prison farms program has existed in Canada for well over a century.

In recent months a groundswell of support for the farms has spread—from environmental groups to prison activists and former inmates, to the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Union of Solicitor General Employees (USGE), of which the prisons’ correctional officers are members.

“This issue touches on everything from food security, food banks, rehabilitation and self-sufficiency,” said McCann.

He emphasized the rehabilitative aspects of farm work, which research has corroborated. “I toured the farms back in June 2009. ...I met people who have murdered, and talking about the impact of working with cows, milking them, taking care of them while sick—it’s a really profound change in their lives, and I can’t think of a more effective way to make Canada safer.”

Part of the government’s rationale for closing the farms has been that less than one per cent of former participants enter the agricultural sector after their release from prison, though critics—and several former inmates—have argued that the work experience is broadly applicable.

“We think the skills you can learn in the prison farms are useful, even for those who don’t go directly into farming,” said NFU Executive Director Kevin Wipf. “We don’t see the sense at all in taking away such an important method of rehabilitation.”

The 2007–08 annual report of CORCAN—the rehabilitation and employment-training arm of CSC—indicates that prison agribusiness is costly in contrast with its manufacturing programs, which bring in more money than they cost.

In an email to The Dominion, CSC Senior Media Relations Adviser Lori Pothier stated that the decision to close the prison farms was the result of a “Strategic Review process” which she said is meant to ensure that “all existing government programs be reviewed on a four-year cycle to ensure the programs are effective and efficient, and are meeting the needs of Canadians.”

NDP MP and Public Safety Critic Don Davies stated that a program’s expense should not dictate whether it is scrapped. “It’s not unimportant, but it should be seen as secondary to the primary goal of rehabilitation,” he said, adding that the availability of rehabilitative training programs is already far too limited. According to the CSC’s 2008–09 financial statement, only 0.4 per cent of its $2.2 billion annual budget went to CORCAN programs.

The Ministry of Public Safety, headed by Vic Toews, emphasizes that the program loses over $4 million annually, but has refused to disclose the full cost of outsourcing its food services to the private sector.

“There’s a lot they’re not telling us,” said USGE Labour Relations Officer Fred Sadori. “They haven’t even disclosed the numbers, so they haven’t given us a very good reason to believe that [closing prison farms] is a good idea.”

In her email, Pothier stated, “CSC does not anticipate any increase in the annual cost of food procurement due to the closing of the CORCAN farms. CSC will purchase food and products through existing contracting authorities and mechanisms, including the government tendering system.”

McCann said the privatization of CSC’s food services might save some money at first due to competitive bidding, but would likely lead to cost overruns in the future as firms attempt to ratchet up the price of their contracts with CSC.

The $4 million annual expense, said McCann, is “pocket change compared to the billions of dollars they plan on spending on expanding the prison system.”

McCann was referring to the $9 billion that Treasury Board president Stockwell Day recently requested for the expansion of the federal prison system in early August. Day claimed that the expansion was necessary due to an “alarming” spike in unreported crime. After being pressed for his source on this, Day pointed to a 2004 StatsCan report indicating that 66 per cent of criminal activity nationwide went unreported, up from about 58 per cent in 1993. (Reporters and bloggers were quick to point out the irony that only minutes earlier Day had criticized the long-form census as unreliable for being as much as five years out of date.)

Two weeks before Day’s announcement, StatsCan released data indicating that the national crime rate has declined by 17 per cent in the past decade. This encompassed a 22 per cent drop in StatsCan’s crime severity index, and a marked drop in violent crime, with homicides, attempted murder, serious sexual assaults and crimes against children comprising less than one quarter of one per cent of all reported offenses.

The Harper government's approach to the prison system, according to critics like Davies and McCann, has largely been shaped by a policy paper released in October 2007 entitled “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety.” The document calls on several occasions for the CSC to “strengthen its partnerships” with the private sector, and recommends CORCAN in particular for private sector involvement.

The panel that authored the report was chaired by Rob Sampson, formerly the Minister of Corrections in the Ontario government of Mike Harris. Sampson was a staunch proponent of prison privatization during his tenure there, and established Canada’s first ever privately run prison. The Central North Correctional Centre was built to replace three older provincial prisons and was managed by the Utah-based Management and Training Corporation. (The Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty refused to renew Management and Training’s five-year contract once it expired in 2006, noting that publicly run jails offered better security, prisoner health care and rehabilitative programs.)

Following the precendent set by the Central North Correctional Centre, the Roadmap also calls for CSC to establish “regional complexes”—prisons that would accommodate several times more inmates than current federal penitentiaries, and encompass minimum-, medium- and maximum-security blocks. Neither Davies nor McCann have faith in the ability—or the intent—of such institutions to deliver meaningful programs to inmates.

“The Conservative approach to the prison system is entirely ideologically motivated, not empirically based,” said Davies, adding that he doubts the government will expand vocational, educational and rehabilitative programs in tandem with the rest of the prison system. “They just want to pursue their tough-on-crime agenda, which appeals to their base.”

Day’s push to expand the prison system has been matched with initiatives for longer prison terms and more convictions. One of the Roadmap’s recommendations is an end to statutory releases, and the implementation of a system of “earned parole.” (Under the current system of statutory releases, convicts are granted mandatory parole after two-thirds of their prison sentence has been completed, unless they have been identified as a significant threat to themselves or others.)

The Ministry of Justice under Rob Nicholson has also been angling to increase the country’s prison population. The day after Day revealed the planned prison expansion, Nicholson announced that crimes such as betting, keeping a bawdy house and trafficking in cannabis and barbiturates are now treated as “serious offenses.” This builds on legislation passed in 2007 that abolished conditional sentencing for serious offenses and enforced mandatory minimum sentences for gun crime, robberies and fraud.

Pothier stated that in the 2008 federal budget, “the Government announced its intent to fundamentally transform the federal corrections system, and one of the objectives was to provide more employment and employability skills for offenders.” She did not elaborate on what those skills would be, how much money would be allocated to those programs in the future, or what would be done to replace the prison farms program in the short run.

McCann noted that under Canada’s Corrections Act, the government has an obligation to offer some sort of employment training to supplement the farms program, but said he remains skeptical.

“I honestly feel that the Conservative government’s vision for the future of corrections in Canada is not to do corrections, but to do punishment.”

Niko Block is the Features Editor at the McGill Daily and sits on the Board of Directors of CKUT Radio in Montreal.

Prison farm blockade

Prison Farms Umbrella

Less Than Animals

hillarybain — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:46:24 +0000

Palestinian women imprisoned by Israel speak out

JERUSALEM—“The Russian Compound...” said Jehan Dahadha, before trailing off. Her gaze shifts to the floor and the 23-year-old Palestinian woman sighs before continuing.

“The level of pain that the prisoners suffer inside the Russian Compound, whether it is psychological or on a physical level, made it so that we call it the ‘Butcher Shop.’ It is not suitable for humans to live there. Even animals, it is not healthy for them.”

At age 19, Dahadha was arrested under Israeli suspicion that she belonged to the Islamic Jihad movement, and was taken away from her home and family in Ramallah, West Bank.

She spent several days being interrogated at the Russian Compound prison facility in Jerusalem before being sentenced to 16 months at Ha’Sharon prison in northern Israel.

“We as Palestinians are all subject to becoming prisoners: my sister, me, my mother, my brother. There is not a single Palestinian house that [does] not suffer whether from demolition or arrest,” said Dahadha, sitting in the offices of Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association in Ramallah.

Dahadha says the real reason she was arrested was because she engaged in non-violent demonstrations against the Israeli occupation, visited the families of Palestinian political prisoners and helped these prisoners get in touch with lawyers.

“What's behind [the Israeli process of arrest and detention] is not to maintain order or to punish people for violations of laws or committing crimes; the idea is to crush the mentality of resistance or the idea of rejecting the occupation in your mind,” explained Ala Jaradat, Programs Director at Addameer.

Approximately 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested or detained under Israeli military orders since 1967. This accounts for about 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and nearly 40 per cent of the male population.

Over the same time period, nearly 10,000 Palestinian women have been detained.

Presently, 7,000 Palestinians—including over 300 children and 34 women—remain in Israeli prisons. According to Jaradat, the small number of Palestinian women in Israeli jails makes it much more difficult for the prisoners to demand better treatment and rights, as compared to their more numerous male counterparts.

“[Male Palestinian prisoners] can organize themselves in such a way and actually negotiate and resist and struggle to have certain rights and to have a certain level of relations because of the larger number,” Jaradat explained. “With Palestinian women, it's harder to be able to organize because of the smaller number. Whenever they try to [negotiate] they are subjected to harsh treatments."

Dahadha says that despite the research and information she gathered before entering prison, she was shocked by what she saw there.

"I used to read in newspapers and on the Internet about prisoners in prison. But no matter how much you read, you will never understand it until you go there,” she said, explaining that poor lighting, unhealthy food, and the constant presence of insects and cockroaches characterized daily life in Ha'Sharon prison.

“They treat you very badly, not as humans. They make committees for animal rights. But humans for them, especially the Palestinians, are less than animals,” said Dahadha.

According to Jaradat, Israeli prisons sorely lack a gender-sensitive approach and issues such as personal hygiene and medical needs are rarely addressed.

Further, sexual harassment and intimidation are widespread and used as a means to coerce confessions out of Palestinian women during the interrogation process, he says.

While Palestinian women may have a unique experience, many of the injustices widespread in Israeli prisons are shared by both men and women—and are forbidden by international law.

Hiba Hamidat is originally from Jalazone refugee camp, seven kilometers north of Ramallah. She spent 32 months in Ha’Sharon prison in Israel for her participation in demonstrations and support of Palestinian prisoners.

Released just over a year ago, Hamidat explains that the hardest part was being separated from her family, especially her mother, who didn’t have an Israeli ID card and therefore could not enter Israel to visit the prison.

“While I was serving my sentence, my mother couldn’t visit me for one year. For one year, only my father visited me. It was very difficult to see that all the other prisoners had their mothers visiting them, while my mother couldn’t visit,” explained the 24-year-old.

According to Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel, Hamidat should never have been held in an Israeli jail.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power are prohibited."

Hamidat’s case is yet another example of how Israel blatantly disregards international law, says Tsemel, especially when it comes to arrest, interrogation and detention procedures for Palestinians.

“[Palestinians] are not recognized prisoners of war. They are held in different prisons within Israel which again is contradictory to the international Geneva Conventions, [which state] that people from the occupied territory will not be shifted to the occupier's territory,” explained Tsemel.

Jaradat, who does prisoner support with Adameer, says that a prisoner’s plight does not end with his or her release from prison. "Once a Palestinian has been to prison, their life will change. The punishments or violations of their rights and restrictions on their lives continue forever by the Israeli occupation," said Jaradat. "It’s never over."

Dahadha can speak to this reality first-hand.

"My life changed," she said. "I was engaged to someone in Jordan, but after I was released they prohibited me from leaving the country. Every time I try to cross the border they turn me back and give me an invitation for interrogation."

Newly engaged and planning her wedding for the fall, Dahada says her new fiance has been threatened with imprisonment by Israeli authorities for his connection to her.

"Even after a prisoner is out of prison," she said with a soft smile, "the torture and sentence does not stop there."

Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a human rights activist and multimedia journalist presently based in occupied East Jerusalem.

Jehan Dahadha

Central Prison

Strengthening Our Resolve

Moira Peters — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:36:24 +0000

An interview with Alex Hundert

Since this article was first posted on the website of the Vancouver Media Co-op, Alex Hundert and others have been warned not to speak to the media. We are reposting the article to share Hundert's words with a larger audience.

VANCOUVER—In the wee hours of June 26, Alex Hundert awoke to the sound of police breaking down his door with a battering ram. Members of the gang unit entered his home in Toronto with guns drawn, arrested him and his partner, and took them to the now infamous temporary jail set up in an old film studio in Toronto.

By the time the mass arrests began Saturday evening (June 26), Hundert had been transferred to the Maplehurst jail in Milton, Ontario. Over the next days, more than 1,000 G20 arrestees were put behind bars, including 16 more organizers and activists from southern Ontario and Quebec who face serious, trumped-up charges.

This might seem a far cry from the life of a self-described former "ski bum" who grew up the older of two boys in a middle class Toronto home. But Hundert, who was released on bail July 19 and faces charges of conspiracy related to G20 organizing, can trace a line from his early activism right through to today.

While studying at Wilfred Laurier University, Hundert's early forays into organizing were typical of many university students. "I was thrust into situations where these big, very effective organizing efforts—like doing campus fundraisers for popular causes such as AIDS—were happening and we'd get hundreds of people involved. But then everyone one would go home and feel that they'd done their part and everything was okay," he said. "I felt that no matter how much money we raised on a university campus, we were not really contributing anything to the solution."

Providing support at the blockade in Grassy Narrows opened Hundert's eyes to a far more holistic form of activism, and deepened his analysis of capitalism and colonialism. "In Grassy Narrows, I got to see first-hand the extent to which many of the things we're told about this country are flagrant lies, and the extent to which the exploitation of resources and labour is synonymous with the destruction of communities," he said.

Judy Da Silva, Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabe (Grassy Narrows First Nations), who has worked closely with Alex since 2006, attributes the growing movement of non-Natives in support of Indigenous land rights to the work of Alex and others in southern Ontario.

“Alex Hundert is a patient, generous person who works tirelessly on environmental and social issues on behalf of Mother Earth and her inhabitants,” said Da Silva in a statement of support for Hundert. “He has continued to support us in our struggle to protect our boreal forest from logging and pollution and to raise awareness about our issues [among] non-Natives.”

But instead of being in Grassy Narrows, Hundert remains under house arrest at his father's home in Toronto. He jokes that he's been reading too much Chomsky, but says being jailed confirmed events he'd witnessed as an activist in support of Indigenous struggles.

On the inside, other prisoners helped him fill out forms and navigate the prison system, which Hundert says is designed to dehumanize prisoners and their communities. But he thinks the attempt of the state to quash dissent through repression will have the opposite effect.

"I think in the long run it's going to have the same effect that cracking down on legitimate dissent and the public voices of communities always has," said Hundert. "The effect is strengthening the resolve of that very voice."

Already, people with no interest in political radicalism have been radicalized, said Hundert. "For every person that they are pulling out of the movement—to the extent that they're able to do that through criminalizing and incarcerating us—there are several people to take our place," he said.

Hundert doesn't want a focus on the criminalization of activism to obscure the reasons people are in the streets.

"Whether it's remote-controlled airplanes dropping bombs in Pakistan, or whether it's the OPP [Ontario Provincial Police] attacking Six Nations land defenders, or whether it's the Integrated Security Unit criminalizing so-called anarchists, it's all about the attempt to break people's resistance to an imposed order," he said. "It is important to question just how democratic or legitimate that order is, and lots of people know that, and hanging on to that conviction is just as important as being honest about the experience of criminalization."

Though this has been a difficult time for Alex’s friends and allies, they remain firm supporters of his work. "Alex’s family and friends are proud that he is putting his future on the line in the service of social justice," said Amy Rossiter, a Professor at York University, in a letter of support for Hundert.

"I think the most important thing we can do is to make space for those communities that have been most silenced in shaping the current system to facilitate a process of transformation with their voices, visions and practices," he said.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Community Center for Social Justice, which Hundert helped found, is one example of creating that space. "Once we make space it is a lot harder for them to take it away, and no matter what they do to us, other people can join that community and culture of resistance and fill it with what they want."

To support those still in jail and facing charges, donate to the legal defense fund.

Dawn Paley is an organizer with the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Alex Hundert

G20 police officer

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

just another day [of indiscriminate police violence] in Honduras...

Sandra — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 03:46:33 +0000

collage fotos 14 agosto.jpg

Police brutality, militarization, torture, political murders, disappearances, injuries, tear gas, illegal detentions, State forces' use of sexual and gender violence, intimidation, paramilitary activity, death threats, censorship...

...are all becoming DAILY OCCURRENCES IN HONDURAS.

Ongoing international solidarity needed. Now.

Sandra Cuffe
sandra.m.cuffe@gmail.com
http://HondurasSolidarity.wordpress.com
http://flickr.com/photos/lavagabunda

Death Watch in Haiti's Jails

dru — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:01:36 +0000

MONTREAL—Located in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti's largest jail looks like a stage piece: a blue and white fortress with high walls and square turrets of the type favoured by operatic drama.

But inside the compound—guarded by UN soldiers and protected by an Armored Personnel Carrier—a tragedy of a more contemporary and mundane sort is playing out.

Constructed in 1918 by US Marines eager to consolidate their occupation of Haiti, the National Penitentiary was designed to hold eight hundred prisoners. With only minor expansions since then, the facility now crams four thousand male inmates into an area of two thousand square meters.

At a density of two detainees per square meter, conditions in the jail are undercut by four times the minimum standard established by the International Red Cross, which calls for an allowance of two square meters per inmate.

Eyewitness accounts paint the picture of a packed environment inside the cell blocks, with prisoners' health further undermined by poor lighting and ventilation, a vitamin-deficient diet, and the prevalence of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis.

Since the overthrow of Haiti's democracy in 2004, the country's prison population has more than doubled, rising from 3,500 shortly before the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to 8,000 today.

Haitian human rights lawyer Evel Fanfan estimates that six thousand people were arrested in Port-au-Prince because of their political loyalties in March 2004, the month following Aristide's ousting. Although some were released soon afterward, since that time both the Haitian police and the UN peacekeepeing mission MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) have conducted aggressive operations in poor sectors of the capital, drag-netting youth at a faster rate than the Haitian judicial system can process.

Brian Concannon, a lawyer who directs an Oregon-based Haiti solidarity organization, describes a typical Haitian inmate:

"They are almost all poor," responds Concannon. "Over 80 per cent have not been convicted of anything. Many don't have a lawyer; most have been tortured."

Concannon's group, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, works in association with the Port-au-Prince based Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI), an advocacy group which was financed by Haiti's elected government until its funding was cut following the 2004 coup.

Visiting the BAI office, I met my first case study of the post-coup Haiti incarceration pattern: Michaelle LaFrance, a former TV journalist who says she was arrested for wearing dreadlocks. Seated in the shaded courtyard of the building, LaFrance does her best to convey to me the atmosphere of class tension that gripped Port-au-Prince during the weeks before President Aristide's overthrow.

Because Aristide invested in social spending, and applied protectionist measures to sustain Haiti's economy, he remained popular with the poor. He also drew the ire of neoliberal-minded donor nations, including the US and Canada, which moved to undermine him by channeling money to middle class-based opposition groups. In a repeat of scenes seen in Venezuela and elsewhere, affluent Haitians flooded the streets of the capital, calling the elected government illegitimate, and demanding Aristide's resignation. During this period, telejournalist LaFrance was physically assaulted while covering an opposition demonstration.

Following Aristide's departure on February 29, a posse of former Haitian soldiers aligned with the middle-class opposition occupied the city. The names of wanted persons were read on the radio, and anyone or anything associated with grassroots activism immediately became suspect.

Shortly after February 29, recalls LaFrance, who was 24 at the time, "The police came to my house. They took everything."

She describes the feelings of fear and uncertainty during the three days she spent confined at the local police station. "I wrote on the wall, 'God help me,'" she says."I thought two things: either they'd kill me, or I'd be out in a few years.”

Denounced by a neighbour, LaFrance says her dreadlocks stigmatized her because they were interpreted as a statement of loyalty to the poorer classes. Social profiling stories are common in a context where both the Haitian police and members of the hastily-constructed UN mission—dominated by the same countries that helped undercut Aristide—accept a middle-class narrative portraying Aristide's followers as a violent mob that needs to be controlled by force.

Many of the men and women clogging Haiti's jail system are in fact minor casualties in the campaign of class repression. Arrested during an anti-gang sweep, fingered by a neighbour, or picked up for talking too loudly or angrily, they are warehoused for months to years while awaiting trial on vague or difficult-to-prove charges such as "associating with miscreants." In the case of known political organizers, however, the charges can be more specific.

Ronald Dauphin, now 43 and Haiti's longest-serving prisoner, was arrested by paramilitaries on March 1, 2004, the day after President Aristide was forced from office. A member of Aristide's party and a port official from the city of Saint Marc, Dauphin was accused of participating in a massacre which reportedly occurred when anti-government paramilitaries clashed with police outside Saint Marc on February 11. Through more than five years of incarceration, Dauphin has maintained his innocence. The case has never gone to trial.

Dauphin's 27 co-accused in the case include former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, pro-Aristide activists, and at least one cabinet member. In a pre-trial indictment handed down in 2005, many details of the Saint Marc incident remain fuzzy. The document cites fifty killed, but identifies only eight casualties from the February 11 events, and furnishes no evidence about the whereabouts of missing bodies. Named witnesses claim that Dauphin was present during the clash, but do not specifically link him to either of the offenses for which he is accused: murder and arson. Writing in French, investigating Judge Cluny-Jules instead argues that Dauphin has been denounced by "la clameur publique," broadly translatable as by rumour.

While most observers do not dispute that some sort of armed conflict arose between members of pro- and anti-government forces on February 11, it has yet to be demonstrated that government agents overstepped the bounds of a legitimate police action, or targeted non-combatants.

I briefly met Dauphin at the National Penitentiary in April 2007, three months after one of his co-defendants in the Saint Marc (also known as the La Scierie) case, Wantales Lormejuste, died from untreated tuberculosis in the same facility. Though there were legitimate concerns about Dauphin's health—he suffers from a prostate condition—in 2007 he looked alert and was standing on two feet.

In the intervening two years Dauphin's well-being has declined dramatically.

Traveling to Haiti in April 2009 as part of a union delegation, California teacher Seth Donnely heard disturbing reports that Dauphin suffered from an acute, untreated illness. Accompanied by other delegates, Donnely arrived at the National Penitentiary on April 16 for a scheduled visit.

Upon arrival, he says, "Dauphin was in fact very ill. He had to be carried out in the courtyard by other prisoners...During our visit, he collapsed. [He] was unconscious with his eyes wide open. He was not responding to pressure that was being applied by the health care professionals [there were two nurses on the delegation] to his sternum."

In spite of complaints about headaches and abdominal pain, Dauphin had not been authorized to leave the jail for medical treatment. The nurses concluded that Dauphin "may have a septic infection that was spreading through his upper body."

Many of Haiti's grassroots activists believe that extending pre-trial detention is a government tactic to neutralize or even kill unwelcome political actors without the worry of having to build a legal case against them.

According to documents released to researcher Anthony Fenton under an access to information request, in March 2004 a Haitian NGO known as the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) asked for and received $100,000 from Canada's development agency to prosecute the authors of the alleged massacre of La Scierie. NCHR's membership had previously stated a position which identified it closely with the anti-Aristide camp. In its funding request the NCHR promised to disburse money through a "victims" fund to citizens who had suffered from political violence in Saint Marc.

The incidents that were eligible for compensation were limited to those which had occurred from February 9 to 29, excluding victims of the wave of violence against Aristide supporters that crested after the fall of the government on February 29.

Using Canada's money, the NCHR thus conducted a publicity and legal campaign to push for the incarceration of pro-Aristide actors. But neither the NCHR nor the Canadian government has subsequently pushed for a trial, suggesting that open-ended detention, rather than due legal process, may be what they're after.

Scratch the surface of the debate on how to improve jail conditions in Haiti, and two different tactics emerge: increase the amount of floor space by expanding or constructing jails, or reduce the number of prisoners by releasing those held on vague suspicions or for petty crimes.

While the latter approach is favoured by social justice advocates, Canada and most big donors see "security" and the elimination of crime as the overriding priority for Haiti. This "security" priority requires more state investment in jail-building, and training police and judges. The logic behind this elaborate investment strategy is that foreign investors—especially in the manufacturing sector—will be attracted when they feel safe and to achieve this, Haiti must tackle criminality by disbanding gangs. In the years after the 2004 coup, a series of high-profile kidnappings, sometimes of foreigners, gave Haiti a bad name, and may have scared off investment.

According to many Haitians, the problem of security has been sensationalized to justify class-based repression. Most of those imprisoned are extremely poor and have been the victims of social and political profiling. Many prisoners are being held for petty crimes for which they would not have been targeted if it was not for their low social status.

Patrick Elie, a Port-au-Prince-based activist and former cabinet member, sees the path to economic development in Haitian-based agriculture, rather than investor-based manufacturing. According to Elie, most of Haiti's current crime is poverty-related, and for this reason investing in incarceration as a deterrent is a futile exercise. Jail construction and security measures are expensive, gobbling up scarce resources that could otherwise be invested in schools or agriculture, which would help reduce poverty in the long term.

"When you have 70 per cent unemployment, and you build more jails, you'll be building jails 'til Kingdom come," he says.

With Haiti still occupied by UN soldiers, the made-in-Canada ideology seems dominant for the time being. Under international pressure, the government of President Rene Preval, who succeeded Aristide, has promised to double the number of Haitian police officers, from 7,000 to 14,000 by 2011. Similarly, a quick glance at CIDA's website shows that a high number of big ticket projects funded in Haiti are directed toward "governance measures," including a commitment to build a new police academy at the cost of $18.1 million by 2014.

Chris Scott is a member of the Montreal chapter of the Canada Haiti Action Network.

National Penitentiary

The Land Provides What Mining Can't

dawn — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:14:21 +0000

KI leaders take their complaints to the United Nations

KITCHENUHMAYKOOSIB, ONTARIO–When Ontario imprisoned six of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation's leaders in March, Canada turned its back. In response, the Northwestern Ontarian First Nation, fighting to keep mining exploration off of their traditional land, is going over Canada’s head.

The community has made formal accusations of treaty violations and human rights charges against Canada for standing by while Ontario jailed Chief Donny Morris and his council for contempt when they stopped Platinex corporation workers at their airport. The case will be presented to the United Nations in February.

Morris doesn’t oppose development, but has strong objections to the Ministry of Natural Resources collecting specimens, and field helicopters buzzing above the countless lakes surrounding KI, in explicit contravention of the wishes of the community. He questions whether the industry has learned anything from his incarceration and the public outcry that allowed for his release.

“We didn’t go through this exercise, going to jail, for another company to test us again,” he said. “We’re not trying to block it, we’re trying to be a part of it. Give us that responsibility ourselves. We’ll work with any corporation, but let us make that choice. We don’t want bureaucrats in Toronto who have never been up here making decisions on our behalf.”

In the thick of the province’s consultations that promise to overhaul the 135-year-old Mining Act, which currently allows for open staking on Crown land, there has been no correspondence from Ontario. In fact, Morris asked to photocopy the 15-page First Nations consultation briefing released by the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines because he had never read it.

Minister Michael Gravelle would deny those claims in a later interview.

****

Morris is leaving town at six in the morning for three days at a hunting festival. The caribou are nearly gone, but the moose, deer, migratory birds, fish and other animals can still sustain a population where a can of soup costs $5 at the grocery store.

The water levels are rising, the weather is changing, and he has a difficult time explaining how he once saw seals on a paddle to Ontario’s shores of Hudson Bay.

Times are changing. When he became Chief, he never imagined how, in the middle of nowhere, he could be engaged in this kind of work. After two referenda opposed mining exploration, he had no choice but to go to jail.

“If it’s a different road they want, I’ll gladly take it, but I have to take the mandate of the community, eh?”

“When we were in jail, we went to the UN International Treaty Council,” he explains. “This is global now and that’s the route we decided to take. Not what you see across Canada, blockades and tires burning. That’s not the route to take in this day and age. It’s education.”

When Canada didn’t come to their aid in pressuring Ontario to release them, the KI-6 (the six jailed indigenous leaders) applied for funding to pay legal fees and were turned down. Defining Ontario as a successor state to Canada, Morris feels they were entitled to that defence by treaty right.

“I want to meet the Queen because we’re the Queen’s subjects. That’s the road I want to take. I want to tell the Queen that things aren’t going that well with what you promised us. We’re not doing that well with Ontario. Canada is sitting on the sidelines.”

Having gained international notoriety throughout the ordeal, Morris has been invited to Guatemala to share stories with indigenous peoples there and he hopes to address the United Nations when their concerns air this winter. These trips will depend on whether or he is able to obtain a passport, which has been declined twice.

Why Resist?

While the media roar surrounding KI has concentrated on the black and white questions of development – pro- and anti-mining, jobs and environment – the reasons for resistance have been silenced.

Samuel McKay is a band councilor and the spokesperson on the Platinex issue. McKay is one of a few who are reviving traditional spirituality and culture in the largely Christian community. His ideology on development reflects the balance needed to survive in this remote and ruthless climate. He wants development to be led by his people and the reason for this quickly becomes clear.

There is a barren flagpole overlooking a plaque in view of the lake where the 1929 treaty was signed. The treaty commissioner’s subsequent report read: “In view of the ...fact that the pushing back of the frontier is inevitable due to the spectacular interest and activity in the mining industry with its concomitant development, it was found necessary to extinguish the rights of those Indians resident north of the line AB.”

Walking out onto the peninsula, McKay slices the air with his forearms, revealing the checkerboard of ownership of their land, split before the treaty was signed between territory reclaimed from the church, plots owned by Bell Canada, Northern Stores, and regional carrier Bearskin Airlines. Some drums of waste are neatly gathered on the only private property around. Others are seemingly randomly placed throughout the tall grass leading into the woods and out into open water.

A creek runs to the lake from the former site of a float-plane refueling station where McKay worked as a teenager. He recalls fuel seeping into the ground and accuses the company of holding the lease on the land in order not to have to clean up the waste.

He says he has evidence that the Ministry of Natural Resources was dumping 45 gallon drums with PCBs and proof that it affected the community’s water supply. Environment Canada abandoned a weather station until they were pressured by the community to remove what they had left behind.

“We literally had to fight them to get them to clean up the land, and that’s Environment Canada!” he said. “That has been our experience with development. You wonder why this is the situation we’re in?”

The federal riding of Kenora, in which KI’s traditional territory falls, was identified in a 2006 federal report as having over 11,000 contaminated sites, the highest in the country. Morris’ own trap line crosses the Sherman Lake Mine site, a 400-foot-deep excavation abandoned without cleanup decades ago.

Their community members aren’t new to the mining life or to the boom and bust cycles of the economy it creates. Many of their families flew to Pickle Lake to work in the uranium-mining town that has been nearly abandoned after outliving the excavation. Many of those men continue to die from diseases commonly associated with mining.

When Platinex first came to the table, they were intent on having an open pit mine. To do so, they would have to drain two lakes that claw against these shores. As the community still relies on sustenance fishing, the payoff would have to be substantial to offset the damage to the community's ability to subsist.

He compares their situation with the Saugeen First Nation, who sold part of their land to a pulp and paper company 90 years ago. Today, their water is contaminated, there is no wild game, and no forest. The only way their people can survive, he explains, is through education and employment. Despite the dizzying scenes of past industrial ventures, whose removal costs would be substantial judging by the cost of flying a can of soup into KI, he insists that they are still in a position where their survival is best served by the land.

“We’re making the stand because we still have the water, the forest, the land, the fish and the animals. There are people in this community who live off of the land year around. Right now, we value this more than the minerals under the ground. We know that the mining industry is a boom and bust industry. It’s good for 30 years at the most... we want to use this for as long as possible.”

In the midst of KI’s struggle, AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine signed a Memorandum of Understanding that all First Nations were ready to go into business with industry. For McKay, it justified what he sees as trespassing without consent on their traditional land and undercut their right to self-determination. For now, the untouched wilderness surrounding the region’s ten partnered communities bears the fruit of their survival, and the negotiations with Platinex are off.

There are plans for development in KI, but the leadership insists that it be their priorities on their terms. In the next 20 years, they’re looking to eliminate the fuel generating station that powers their community in favour of hydroelectric generation. Ready to partner with any industry under conditions that achieve balance, the potential benefits must outweigh the costs.

“Really, we should thank Platinex for bringing this to the forefront,” McKay laughs. “It was going to have to happen eventually.”

Jon Thompson is a journalist, author, and media activist in Northwestern Ontario.

KI Solidarity March

Five of the KI6

Native Leader Serving Six Months for Opposing Mine

hillarybain — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:22:36 +0000

Supporters call Algonquin leader a "political prisoner"

Algonquin community leader Robert Lovelace had never been charged with an offence, but when a uranium company began prospecting for radioactive ore on unceded First Nations land without engaging in consultation, he decided to take action and organized a non-violent blockade.

On February 15, Judge Cunningham of Ontario's Superior Court sentenced Lovelace to six months in jail for contempt of court and fined him $50,000 for his involvement in the peaceful protest.

Chief Paula Sherman, elected leader of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, a small community about 110 kilometres southwest of Ottawa, where the controversial uranium prospecting is taking place, calls Robert Lovelace "a political prisoner."

"It seems like a very heavy sentence," said Jamie Kneen of Mining Watch Canada, a non-governmental watchdog. "If the court had issued a trespassing charge, there could have been an argument about who was really trespassing."

The territory in question involves mainly Crown land that is subject to ongoing land-claim negotiations between First Nations and the provincial and federal governments.

In September 2007, an Ontario provincial court issued Frontenac Ventures, the mining company, an interlocutory injunction ordering protestors from Ardoch and Sharbot Lake First Nations, along with their non-native allies, to vacate the Robertsville camp. The camp is the only feasible entry point to a 30,000-acre wilderness tract in Frontenac County, where the company has its prospecting license. Lovelace and other activists violated that order.

"The source of this conflict is the Ontario Mining Act, which allows companies to stake land and prospect without consultation with private land owners or other users, including First Nations," said Kneen. Lovelace and other activists argue their constitutional rights were violated by the lack of consultation.

People living on or near the exploration site discovered their land was being taken almost two years ago. There were no community meetings or information sessions about the uranium exploration. "It started on private land when a cottager saw trees being cut and started protesting the development," said Kneen. A few months later it became clear that some of the land being staked was disputed territory.

"Uranium mining has no record other than environmental destruction and negative health issues," said Doreen Davis, chief of the Shabot Lake First Nation. "Uranium can't be stored safely," said Davis, who will be sentenced on March 18 for participating in the blockade. She is under court order not to talk about the dispute with Frontenac.

"I do know that we have communities from Kingston to Ottawa on our side against uranium mining in this district," said Davis. "A huge group of settlers, that's what they call themselves, have been working with us, pounding the pavement and educating people about this. I think it is unique to have aboriginal and non-aboriginal people standing shoulder-to-shoulder like this."

The federal government has yet to get involved in this case and Ontario's provincial government has only been reluctantly and peripherally involved, according to Kneen.

Not much is known about the company at the centre of the dispute. "Frontenac is a private company, so they don't have to file any disclosure," said Kneen. "Aside from the president and their lawyer, no one knows who they are or where they get their money."

The company's website has only one page and a press release. Frontenac's president, George White, did not return calls. The website says the company "is committed to participating in any efforts of Ontario and the First Nations' to consult in good faith," but Ardoch Chief Paula Sherman isn't convinced.

"No consideration was given to the circumstances leading to our actions," said Sherman in a statement following Lovelace's sentencing. "The testimony given under oath by Robert Lovelace outlined Algonquin Law and the corresponding responsibilities of Algonquin people with respect to human activity in our territory," wrote Sherman, who was fined $15,000 during the court case for breaking the injunction that prohibited protests on land being explored by Frontenac.

Because the company obtained a court order against protestors rather than filing trespassing charges, the judge was not required to consider arguments regarding historical precedent or Algonquin legal codes when making the decision. "It's a way of avoiding the core issues," said Kneen.

After a decade of low prices, the spot price of uranium has increased drastically in recent years, from $43 per pound in 2006, to $75 today.

As oil prices rise, countries have re-started old nuclear reactors and countries like South Africa, India and China have ambitious nuclear-power plans on the horizon. UBS, a financial services company, predicts uranium will hit $110 per pound by 2010.

These developments don't sit well with Dr. Mark Winfield, a Canadian nuclear expert. "Existing [uranium] mines in northern Saskatchewan have caused severe contamination through heavy metals like arsenic, and long-lived radionuclides, along with conventional pollutants," said Winfield.

In 2004, Health Canada concluded that effluent from uranium mines meets the definition of a toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Canada is the world's largest supplier of uranium and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to increase exports in his bid to transform the country into an "energy superpower."

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was very clear that nuclear [energy] can't compete economically," said Winfield. "The potential health and environmental impacts of uranium mining are not worth the risks."

A version of this article appeared on Inter Press Service

Blockade Gates

Terrorist proceedings "a show trial for political ends"

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:50:45 +0000

Defence lawyers representing the 17 men being held as terrorist suspects in Southern Ontario since June 2 are protesting the recent publication ban levied by justice of the peace Keith Currie.

Rocco Galati, the defence lawyer representing 21-year-old Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, told reporters, "I want the public to see the bail hearing, I want the public to assess for itself and have confidence in the administration of justice and the only way to do that is with a live feed."

Galati accused "confidential police sources" of unfairly leaking selected information to the media "to ensure the denial of a fair bail hearing and the denial of a fair trial."

Aljazeera quoted Galati, condemning what he described as "a show trial for political ends," noting the intention was "to influence the vote in the House of Commons on extending the anti-terrorism provision and to influence the Supreme Court ... in its constitutional review of anti-terrorism provisions."

According to the Toronto Star, defence lawyers said their clients' cell lights are being left on 24 hours a day, they're being forced to keep their eyes on the floor and are being woken every 30 minutes. The lawyers said that amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment," and a breach of their clients' Charter rights.

Criminologists fear a private prison boom in Canada

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 21:40:06 +0000

Leading criminologists fear a private prison boom under the current Conservative government, reported the Toronto Star on April 2nd.

The following day, Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the Canadian Professional Police Association in Ottawa, reiterating the crime fighting promises made during the election campaign. "If you do a serious crime, you're going to do serious time," he said.

Experts agree that the government's justice strategy would dramatically spike demand for costly prison space.

"Either they'll spend a ridiculous, unsubstantiated amount of money on this or, more likely, they'll move to a more private model of corrections," Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, told the Toronto Star.

Critics argue that private prisons put profit margins before rehabilitation; it's not in their interest to decrease the number of repeat offenders.

The Conservative government maintains that it does not advocate private prisons.

Is This What 'Responsibility to Protect' Looks Like?

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 09:06:16 +0000

Status, Elections and Canada in Haiti

Popular folk singer 'So Ann' Annette August, in the custody of the Haitian National Police. photo: Haiti Information Project

I came to Haiti on a short trip to study a country that doesn't really understand its place in the world or in the Americas, a country whose people feel too much pride and not enough responsibility for what has been done, and continues to be done, by their government and elites, a country that it seems very difficult to keep in perspective or understand. Of course, I am talking about Canada.

Since Paul Martin went to the United Nations last week and won the "Responsibility to Protect," which is a declaration that the sovereignty of weak countries has officially lost all international legal protection, it's interesting to see what a case study in "Responsibility to Protect" looks like.

Given my agenda, it only seemed fitting to start my trip at the Canadian Embassy, a shiny new building with a tennis court and a pool, built by SNC-Lavalin, the Canadian engineering company famous for its bullet contract with the US military and its many other global ventures.

I was there for a press conference by Denis Coderre, the Canadian government's "Special Advisor" on Haiti. Coderre, like SNC-Lavalin, pops up in the darndest places. He did a turn as Minister of Immigration and another special appointment dealing with the question of "non-status Indians" in Canada.

This merits a bit of discussion itself. The state of Canada's system for "granting" or revoking "status" to the indigenous peoples on whose land the state of Canada exists is carefully built to disappear the indigenous in a couple of generations. You see, Canada's legislation provides two kinds of status. The child of a full-status Indian mother and full-status Indian father has status, but the child of a status Indian with a non-status Indian, while having status, does not have the same kind of status—because if this child in turn has a child with a non-status Indian, the result is a non-status child. By creating two levels of status, the Canadian state has ensured that indigenous people must marry only status people (which is almost impossible in a small population) or see their children and grandchildren eventually lose "status." At any rate, Coderre's career, between the immigration ministry and the "status" question, seems to have everything to do with status.

Coderre was announcing $2.25 million more dollars for Haiti's elections. This money is for paying 25 retired Canadian police officers who, according to Coderre, will help to "stabilize" the country in advance of the elections that are to take place on November 20.

Coderre also announced a "concert for hope" on October 23 at the Rex Theatre. We took a sample CD.

Several of his other lines deserve to be noted as well.

When asked whether a list of 54 Presidential candidates was bewildering, Coderre said that "democracy is like a flower that needs constant tending."

When asked whether registration seemed low, with 2.4 million registered out of some 4.5 million possible voters, Coderre replied that he respects the process of the Haitian people and that more people are registering all the time.

When asked whether the Haitian government would actually see any of the money, Coderre suggested to the journalist that he take that question up with CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency.

Coderre's speech, made to a group of about two dozen mainstream Haitian journalists (from radio and television) who seemed hard-pressed to find anything exciting going on there, was liberally peppered with the word "terrorist." The terrorists wanted to prevent elections, but we have won that battle, and in February 2006 we will have a historic event in Haiti. "We are at the crossroads, so to speak." Even Fanmi Lavalas is now getting involved in elections, he said, as if to prove his point.

(Not Yvon Neptune though. The constitutional Prime Minister has been in jail for over a year, accused of a "massacre" in St. Marc on sketchy evidence, provoking UN officials to ask for his release or at least due process to be followed. So, put in jail in June 2004, Yvon Neptune was formally charged... yesterday, September 20, 2005.)

In any case, no need to worry, since no matter who wins the elections, Canada promises a "long-term commitment" to the Haitian people. 15 minutes of announcing, 3 questions, and Coderre was gone.

From there it was just a short trip to the police station where Annette Auguste, or So Ann, has also been imprisoned since May 10, 2004, when US Marines kicked down her door, shot her dogs, handcuffed her 5-year-old granddaughter and took the 70-year-old grandmother and singer away.

So Ann is locked in a police station with 147 other women. She was sitting in a corner in the open area between locked hallways of cells under the eyes of guards and young women prisoners when we asked her how many of these women were political prisoners. She answered, "All of them." They were all rounded up from the poor neighbourhoods and faced charges of "associating" with malcontents—something out of the Napoleonic legal code.

As for So Ann herself, she told us about the bizarre twists and turns of the case against her. The first set of charges the Marines brought was that she was colluding with Muslims in a local mosque to attack the Marines. Given that this was May 10, 2004, we concluded there must have been a mix-up in the US occupation filing system, and they accidentally pulled out an accusation file for Iraq. When the absence of a mosque in So Ann's neighbourhood cast some doubt on this accusation, they tried to charge So Ann with attacking the anti-Aristide opposition in September 2003. She was in the hospital at the time. Next they produced an eyewitness stating that So Ann had ground up a baby with a mortar and pestle, so that Aristide could drink the baby's blood. The eyewitness said So Ann called her for the ritual and even produced the phone number, which So Ann did not acquire until months after the ritual supposedly took place. At least this last charge has a witness, even though that witness is apparently in France and has not been heard from in some time, but that's the charge they are sticking with.

We were not So Ann's only visitors. She told us that months before, US Ambassador Foley had sent former Fanmi Lavalas senator Gilles and another Lavalas figure, Heriveaux, to seek her support (Gilles is running for president in the upcoming elections). So Ann said she would not support them.

Even more surprising, So Ann reported that paramilitary leaders Guy Philippe and Louis Jodel Chamblain had visited her, also seeking her support for their bids for election. Suspecting a problem in the translation, I asked that this be repeated. "You can't believe what you hear? I told them, "You are the reason I am here," So Ann said. Jodel Chamblain was one of the key authors of the Gonaïves massacre under the 1991-94 coup regime, and his prosecution was one of the few laudable achievements of the Haitian justice system in the years Lavalas was in power. (Amnesty International lauded it, for example. Amnesty was also quite upset when the current government reversed the verdict against Chamblain months ago).

With all these people seeking her support, what was So Ann's take on elections? She wants Lavalas supporters to register. "If we register, we will be prepared, whatever happens," she said. She herself has no intention of being a candidate because she thinks Lavalas should stick to the position that it will not participate until the political prisoners are free. Even though the authorities are making voter registration particularly difficult in the working-class, pro-Lavalas neighbourhoods like Bel Air and Cité Soleil, So Ann still thinks that if Lavalas unites, Lavalas can win. Even without the other 2 million unregistered voters who, So Ann thinks, are all Lavalas supporters, Lavalas would win.

Before we left, we asked her about the preposterous charges against her and whether they would let her out in order to provide some semblance of reasonableness before elections. "If they let me out, they are in trouble," she replied, "because they know that people will mobilize."

So Ann is radiant, vibrant and open, despite being locked in a miserable prison. Coderre is cold, bureaucratic and defensive, but free to come and go from his multimillion-dollar compound. What's his excuse, do you think?

In his first report from Haiti, Justin Podur takes a look at Canada's intervention on the ground.

Captivating Theatre Closes

Sun, 19 Dec 2004 09:23:54 +0000

Due to prison security requirements, there are no images to accompany this article.

Canada has just lost its only behind-bars theatre company that performs for the public. "William Head On Stage," a prisoner-run theatre company at William Head Federal Prison in Metchosin, British Columbia, has recently folded after twenty-three years of production and performance. This is a real loss to the arts community of the region and, more crucially, to the lives of the prisoners involved. Most prisoner participants, who are responsible for every aspect of each production, have never been involved with theatre before.

The Firebugs, running October 15-November 6, 2004, turns out to have been WHOS's last performance. Ryan Love, the final president of WHOS, has been at William Head for twelve years. (He will be eligible for day parole in five more.) Love has been predicting problems for WHOS ever since the prison's reclassification from medium to minimum-security prison last year. The institution's reorientation from confinement to pre-release facilities means a far higher turnover of inhabitants, and maintaining a continuing theatre society has become, with reluctance, impossible. Love explained that joining WHOS's Board of Directors used to be a three-year commitment. Today, the average stay at William Head is just six months. Last fall, for example, eighteen of the twenty production participants left the prison, most of them in the week following the show. It's "tough to maintain continuity," said Love. Back in 2001 the company had already cut down from two annual shows to just one.

Unlike most struggling theatre companies, finances were not the reason behind WHOS's disassembly. Budgeting is relevant, yes, but "not the point," says Love. WHOS could "make money every year by doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" but the hope has always been just to keep afloat and keep exploring. Between 1981-2004, WHOS built up a substantial patron base. About eight hundred regulars could be counted on to attend each production, be it drama or farce. Losing the relationship between fenced-in performers and the surrounding public is disappointing for both. "People love us," Love explains, because "they get to see inside the prison, and they get to see us working hard, without pay, for the benefit of others."

Alienation, entrapment, responsibility, and control have been explored by participants and audiences through famous scripts like "The Elephant Man" and even, in recent years, in dramatic pieces penned by prisoners themselves.

Patrons realize immediately that a ticket to a WHOS production does not mean an ordinary theatre-going experience. William Head Prison occupies a peninsula facing Washington's Olympic Mountains and surrounded on three sides by the murderously cold Pacific. There is a surreal contrast between the prison's astonishingly beautiful natural setting and the barbed wire and security towers that surround it. Upon arrival, guests must empty their pockets, sign waivers, and assemble for the sniffer dogs. Then they are chauffeured by prisoners across William Head's grounds to its temporarily-renovated gym. WHOS has always used this dislocating introduction to its theatre to its best advantage.

Although WHOS's repertoire includes farce and comedy, its most powerful shows have considered themes drawn from its locale and performers. Alienation, entrapment, responsibility, and control have been explored by participants and audiences through famous scripts like "The Elephant Man" and even, in recent years, in dramatic pieces penned by prisoners themselves. Love explains that the performance society itself has always selected the plays, often drawn to compelling dramas which "speak to our condition, and the human condition: as prisoners, in confinement, about class structure, power... the existentialism, all of that."

The Firebugs, WHOS's most recent and now final production, embraced and built from these confines. Max Frisch wrote The Firebugs, "a parable about the dangers of complacency," following the Second World War, wondering how such disaster could come from people with such good intentions. Director Britt Small described their production as "both cruel and strange," and the surreal set and costume design contributed greatly to this sensation. Viewer sympathies meshed with horror as the hapless main characters refused to understand that they were supporting the devilish Firebugs.

This script was also an excellent choice for its range of central and supporting characters. The Firebugs showcased the talents of performers Andy Maxwell (playing Gottlieb Biedermann), Bruce D. Peters (Sepp Schmitz/Beelzebub), and Dustin Taliathan Olson (Willie Eisenring/Lord of the Underworld), each of whom have been involved with WHOS before. At the same time, it offered supporting roles for new performers like the Chorus of Firemen.

The relationship between WHOS and the William Head administration has been a complicated one. The institution's only involvement is for security--for one small example, The Firebugs requires candles, which aren't allowed in the prison, and so had to be officially signed in and out of each rehearsal.

As an entirely extracurricular activity, therefore, WHOS offers powerful personal rewards to prisoners whose lives are otherwise governed by the penal system. On the other hand, because it exists outside the institution's rehabilitation program, WHOS participation does not come up in parole hearings, for example, as something prisoners have achieved. Love spoke with some frustration that "We may as well be the William Head baseball team." Certainly WHOS cited lack of administrative support as a reason for its closure. Some degree of institutional involvement could perhaps lend the necessary continuity to keep WHOS alive.

No studies have assessed the impact of the dramatic society on the lives of its participants. WHOS's members have actually requested that the institution perform studies, believing that WHOS participation greatly reduces the chances of recidivism.

The dramatic society has certainly, over the last two decades, changed some barriers between the prisoners and the public that they are to someday rejoin. One of WHOS's most immediate rewards for both communities has been simply the mingling of the theatre-going public with their convict hosts on performance nights. WHOS's ongoing support from both patrons and community sponsors bespeaks this positive relationship.

The most significant loss, however, is of WHOS's uncalculated effects on its prisoner participants. As one former WHOS member described, life in prison consists of anger and frustration. To be part of such a project and to explore, through drama, the emotional range of ordinary life is invaluable. The loss of this innovative, controversial, means of rehabilitation is a serious one.

Readers interested in supporting the creative output of William Head prisoners may appreciate Out of Bounds, a prison-produced quarterly magazine for both occupants and public. Those interested in learning more about William Head On Stage can check out "Criminal Acts--Inside Prison Theatre," a 2003 NFB production.

Canada has just lost its only behind-bars theatre company that performs for the public. Jane Henderson discusses its life and death.

Former Guantanamo Prisoner Describes "Torture"

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:51:55 +0000

Jamal al-Harith, a British citizen who was held for over two years without charge by the American military was recently released. Upon his return home from "Camp X-ray" on the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he described gruesome conditions to the British press.

Al-Harith said that prisoners were kept in small wire cages, exposed to the weather from above and to snakes, insects, and scorpions below. The former prisoner described brutal treatment such as frequent beatings for minor offenses, torture, and systematic humiliation. He cited specific instances where devout muslims were forced to watch female strippers, and prisoners were told "we will kill your family and you."

US foreign secretary Jack Straw explained that there was "good reason" for detaining the suspects. When asked if any of those held were innocent, he replied, "I can't answer that question, nobody can."

» Mirror: Terror of Torture in Cuba Camp

"One Big Guantanamo"

Over 10,000 Iraqi men and boys are being held without charge by the US military in Iraq, according to a recent New York Times report. The prisoners, who have been captured by the military, are in most cases not allowed contact with the outside world, including their families.

"It took the Americans five minutes to take my son," said Fadil Abdulhamid. "It has taken me more than three weeks to find him." Human rights lawyer Adil Allami commented that "Iraq has turned into one big Guantánamo," explaining that the prisoners, who are as young as 11 and as old as 75, have "essentially no rights".

» NYTimes: As U.S. Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News