The Dominion - Justice

Questions Persist about Provocateurs at SPP Summit

Moira Peters — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:33:30 +0000

As protester is acquitted of charges from 2007 Montebello protest, questions resurface about police-incited violence

TORONTO—A Quebec court ruling in January 2011 found police acted illegally in trying to shut down a protest in Montebello, Quebec, in 2007, when they arrested two women on a downtown street. This ruling has led to renewed calls for an inquiry into another police action—one now well-known, thanks to Youtube—at that same protest: the alleged use of undercover officers to incite violence.

On August 20, 2007, the heads of state of Canada, Mexico and the US met at a summit in Montebello to discuss the proposed Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP), an agreement that would have harmonized trade and security measures between the three countries. A protest against the meeting took place throughout the day.

Late in the afternoon, when the number of demonstrators had dwindled, a line of riot police attempted to disperse those who remained on the streets. While most of the protesters were pushed backwards by police, activist Leila Martin and another person sat on the ground, clinging to each other, as the police swept over them. They were arrested for obstructing police, who were carrying out orders to shut down the demonstration.

Martin was offered a discharge if she pleaded guilty to the charge, whereby she would not receive any fine, jail time, or a criminal record. She was advised to take the deal by her court-appointed lawyer. She told him, “I don't actually think I am guilty and I think my freedom of assembly was violated.”

Her lawyer told her that if she pleaded not guilty he would refuse to represent her.

“You won't represent me then,” she told him.

Martin then went about the work of learning how to prepare her own defense, reading all the court cases she could find which involved charter challenges. She made sure that her charter challenge emphasized why she was protesting the SPP.

Martin did most of the research around presenting her case, and eventually acquired a lawyer, Denis Barrette, who helped her finish writing her charter challenge and represented her in court.

Martin told The Dominion that with support, it is possible to prepare one’s own charter challenge. (She said she would encourage anyone in a similar position to write to her, "and I would help them do it.")

When the matter eventually went to court, Judge Lapointe ruled the Charter of Rights and Freedoms had indeed been violated.

“The approach [of the] RCMP against the two women arrested, including the accused, is incomprehensible,” said Quebec Court Judge Real Lapointe in his January ruling, acquitting the charge brought against activist Martin.

“Police decided to end the demonstration. We will not know why. In itself it is surprising, in the presence of a largely peaceful and festive crowd who met...to express opinions and positions. This expression of their deepest beliefs is a right guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of this country and gives the rally itself a special character and importance.”

The RCMP and Surete du Quebec (SQ—Quebec police) chose not to comment on the ruling.

Judge Lapointe said another factor that supported the argument of the defense was testimony that during the protest police used agents provocateurs—a term used to describe the use of undercover officers to try and provoke activists into committing illegal acts.

Lapointe was referring to an incident earlier in the protest. Dave Coles, President of the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), confronted three undercover police officers dressed in black and wearing masks over their faces. The officers were posing as Black Bloc, and one of them, who would later be identified as Sergent Jean-Francois Boucher, held a large stone in his hand. The event was caught on video.

“These three guys are cops, everybody; put the rock down, cop,” said Coles on the video. As Coles confronted the three undercover officers, Boucher shoved him. The officers also swore at Coles, and continued to push him and others gathered at the scene.

Coles and others activists, including some dressed in Black Bloc, continued to yell at the undercover officers and tried to remove their masks. Eventually the three jumped into the line of riot police, where they were handcuffed and led away.

“They are trying to create a riot so they can suck us all in to get beat up,” said Coles on the video, which went viral on Youtube and has been watched more than a half-million times.

At first the RCMP and SQ denied allegations that the men were in fact police officers. But three days after the incident, on August 23, 2007, the SQ released a statement explaining the men were indeed undercover members of their force, but denying that the officers had committed an illegal act.

The three officers, Sergeants Boucher, Joey Laflamme and Patrick Tremblay were part of an undercover team code-named “flagrant delit,” which roughly translates to “caught red-handed.” The team’s official role, according to a report by the Quebec Police Ethics Committee, was to “melt into the crowd to identify the perpetrators of crime and stop them.”

“It is wrong for a state to use its own security forces, police, provocateurs, undercover agents, to evoke violence. That's not democratic. We have a voice, we had a right to [speak], and we had a right to assemble,” Coles told The Dominion in a telephone interview.

Coles began asking for a public inquiry into the event. He wanted to know who gave the orders to use agents provocateurs. Instead of being granted an inquiry, the channel offered to him was to bring a complaint before the official body for dealing with police wrongdoing in Quebec, the Police Ethics Committee.

On May 19, 2009, the Commissioner of the Committee dismissed six of the eight complaints brought forward by the CEP. Five months later, on October 19, 2009, the Committee overturned the Commissioner’s ruling and started a new investigation, stating, “If the infiltration of police officers to stop the authors of criminal acts is acceptable, not all acts committed by [police] to this end are legitimate just because the original goal is desirable.”

The Committee released its final report on March 14th, 2011, finding that Boucher had breached the police code of conduct by swearing at and pushing Coles, but dismissed charges of inciting violence and abusing his authority. The charges against the other two officers were all dismissed.

Coles does not think the Committee was asking the right questions. He wanted to know who gave orders for undercover police to incite protesters in Montebello in 2007.

“They were able to box us into a corner,” said Coles about the way his complaint was handled by the Committee. “It was all about the conduct of three policemen rather than who gave the political orders for agent provocateurs to go in and disrupt the assembly.”

Coles said he felt encouraged by Judge Lapointe’s ruling, and he has renewed his call for an inquiry into the actions of police at Montebello—especially the use of agents provocateurs.

“What is happening more and more and more in Canada, as witnessed through the G8/G20, is that the state thinks that if they don't like what you have to say, they will go in and mess it up so that the message isn't clear,” said Coles.

No clear evidence has emerged that agent provocateurs were used at the G20 protests. However, some activists like Coles still have their suspicions.

A week after the G20 protests, on July 2, 2010, Le Devoir, a Quebec daily newspaper, ran a story entitled, “G20: la police aurait utilise des agents provocateurs”—“G20: The police reportedly used agents provocateurs.”

The article refers to a video in which “plainclothes police, disguised as protesters, some armed with batons and sticks, took cover behind a cordon of police. One of them dressed all in black with a hood over his head, as [in the style of] Black Bloc.”

However there is no indication in this video that the alleged plainclothed officers were provoking or inciting activists.

"As far as [using] officers dressed as Black Bloc, I will not say we didn't. I will not speak to our techniques," said Sergeant Michele Paradis, an RCMP spokesperson, when asked about police tactics during the G20. "I won't speak to the manners we will use to keep the community and the [G20] delegates safe."

Meaghan Gray, spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service, had a less ambiguous answer, saying in an email that undercover officers did not dress as Black Bloc.

In response to an access-to-information request on the "use of so-called agent provocateurs or undercover Black Bloc infiltration policies" at the G20, nine pages were released by the RCMP and made available to The Dominion. These documents mostly deal with the structure of undercover operations. In addition to these nine pages, another four pages were redacted in their entirety.

Only one page—a set of media talking points—speaks about agents provocateurs. It reads, “None of the Integrated Security Unit partners use so-called agents provocateurs,” and, “In fact, the role of police is to de-escalate tension and preserve the peace.”

“I don’t believe that. In fact, there is just no evidence that the police were trying to diffuse anything,” said Coles.

Coles said many wrongdoings at the G20 have already been exposed, but he expects many more will be revealed.

“A lot of this stuff is going to be uncovered a lot more [easily] than it was for us at Montebello,” he said. He believes the number of photos and videos taken in Toronto is what will make a difference. “I think social media is going to help us to uncover the facts and force an inquiry.”

His union, the CEP, is one of many groups, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), the federal New Democratic Party and Amnesty International, calling for a public inquiry into police actions at the G20.

"The suggestion that police informants may have endorsed or supported the commission of acts of vandalism is particularly concerning," said NUPGE and the CCLA in a recent report on police actions during the G20. They "believe an independent inquiry into this aspect of G20 policing is necessary to investigate the extent of undercover operations and address the limits on what police infiltrators can and cannot do while on assignment."

Tim Groves is an investigative researcher and journalist based in Toronto. He twitters @timymit.

molatov provocateur

Revolving Door

Moira Peters — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:52:36 +0000

Sex offender who targets Aboriginal girls should not be released, say Vancouver residents

VANCOUVER—A growing number of Aboriginal teenage girls are speaking out about their survival of drugging and sexual assault by Martin Tremblay. On February 3, 2011, relatives and friends once again rallied in support outside the Vancouver Provincial Court at Main and Hastings Streets in Vancouver.

"I hope our message gets through to the federal government and the provincial government to tell them the people are now finally speaking up instead of sitting back, hoping for the worst," explained Hank Bee, who had come to the rally from the BC interior to represent the family of his niece Kayla Lalonde, who was murdered last year.

Tremblay is in custody and facing drug charges. His bail hearing was postponed again and is now scheduled for February 16. Tremblay was arrested along with several others in a January 2011 sweep by the Vancouver Police Department's (VDP) "Project Rescue."

Both Project Rescue and "Project Tyrant" targeted some of the city's most predatory and violent drug dealers. While the VPD reports that the arrests are the outcome of their outreach with some Downtown East Side organizations, the police and courts face ongoing criticism for their failure to protect Aboriginal girls and women from sexual and physical violence.

"This place is bullshit; [it's a] revolving door. He'll probably get out within the next couple of months, 'cause that's the way it is," said Bee in an interview with the Vancouver Media Co-op outside the Vancouver Provincial Court at 222 Main Street.

In December 2003, Tremblay was convicted for five counts of sexual assault against Aboriginal teenage girls. However, he was released from custody the following year, after serving only a fraction of his three-and-a-half-year sentence.

Several Aboriginal teenage girls have spoken out to police and media over the past year, denouncing Tremblay for drugging and sexually assaulting them since his previous release.

A white francophone man in his mid-40s, Tremblay is known by youth as "Uncle Martin," "Frenchie" and "Dad." According to the girls and women in the DTES who have been speaking out about Tremblay, he has been preying on young Aboriginal teenage girls in East Vancouver for years, luring them to his home with promises of free alcohol and drugs.

Finally, on February 11, 2011, the VPD released to the public a photo of Tremblay. "We believe it’s necessary to put out his picture because he goes by different names. He has used 'Daniel Simard' and changed his name from Martin Tremblay to Joseph Walter Martin Tremblay," said Inspector Dean Robinson in a public statement from the VPD.

“Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures,” said Chief Constable Jim Chu, of the unusual step of releasing a photo of a suspect of a continuing investigation.

Those seeking justice for girls assaulted and killed feel police response to those crimes is still lacking. "How many girls do they need to keep him behind bars? A hundred? You want a hundred dead? You know, like, isn't one assaulted good enough? Isn't one dead good enough?" said Aboriginal Front Door volunteer Bobbi O'Shea after the rally on February 3, 2011.

Statements by young girls reveal detailed accounts of Kayla Lalonde and Martha Hernandez's "visits" to Tremblay's residence.

In 2009, Lalonde survived a sexual assault by Tremblay while she was unconscious and woke up naked at a bus stop downtown. Details of this incident were publicly revealed to the media by another 17-year-old Aboriginal teen, who also shared details of her own survival of a sexual assault by Tremblay.

On March 2, 2010, 17-year-old Martha Hernandez died from a lethal dose of drugs and alcohol inside Tremblay's home in Richmond. That morning, 16-year-old Kayla Lalonde's body was discovered on a street in Burnaby. Forensic evidence determined her cause of death to be a similar lethal dose of drugs and alcohol.

"I don't know why we haven't heard that, you know, he's up on any charges [related to the sexual assaults or deaths] yet," said O'Shea, who also told the Vancouver Media Co-op that she personally knows nine Aboriginal teenage girls who have been sexually assaulted by Tremblay.

"I feel failed by the system," continued O'Shea. "If it was a white person from the West Side, and a Native person who victimized them—one person!—[the Native] would have been locked up, closed, case closed. But because it was on the other foot, it's like, 'Who cares?'"

According to a Justice for Girls press release on the day of his sentencing on December 4, 2003, Tremblay had originally been charged with 18 counts of sexual assault and administering a noxious substance to five Aboriginal girls between the ages of 13 and 15. Then 38, Tremblay admitted to sexually assaulting and videotaping the girls while they were unconscious in his home. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in custody and 18 months probation.

"We are disappointed with the sentence but not surprised by it because the courts rarely treat violence against Aboriginal teenage girls seriously," said Justice for Girls advocate Annabel Webb in the December 2003 press release.

"What is shocking however is the degree of racism and sexism that is tolerated in the defence of men who commit sexual offences against Aboriginal girls," continued the statement.

Media reports indicate that Tremblay did not in fact serve his entire sentence, and that he was released in 2004. Although Justice for Girls advocated for his sentence to include restrictions against contact with minors, their motion was not accepted. Police refused to issue a warning upon his release, and Tremblay has not been included in the Sex Offender Registry in Canada.

Media reports also indicate that between his release in 2004 and his arrest on drug charges in 2011, Aboriginal teenage girls in the legal custody of the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development were living with Tremblay in a house on Pender Island. Not long before his 2011 arrest, a Richmond housemate told CTV that Tremblay was planning to move to Montreal.

"Two girls are dead," said O'Shea, her voice shaking with rage and grief. "It's very sad. I'm a parent. When you look at another parent who's Aboriginal, and their child is dead because of this man, and he's going to get out of jail... It's despicable. It's disgusting. I don't know what to say to them but to cry, because it's so heartbreaking," said O'Shea, tears sliding down her cheeks and mixing with the rain on Main Street.

"At first the police thought they were dealing with two separate cases, but it turned out to be the same case. And, at the time, one of the girls was actually my girlfriend," said Steven, a young Aboriginal who lives in Vancouver and who only wanted to give his first name, to the Vancouver Media Co-op after the rally.

"When this guy gets prosecuted to the full extent of the law, that's when we know our girls will be safe again. That's when we'll know it'll be just this much safer, just to get that one guy off the streets again. That's what I look forward to here," he said. The young man is still hoping for justice almost a year after the murder of his girlfriend and their friend.

The statements of relatives and friends of the young women reportedly sexually assaulted and murdered by Tremblay echo the voices of many others from Vancouver's Aboriginal community, First Nations around the province and Downtown East Side women's organizations.

The inaction of police forces and government agencies in the face of startling numbers of missing and murdered women in British Columbia and across the country is highlighted in the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry this year. Commemorative events are ongoing around the city, leading up to today's 20th annual Women's Memorial March in the DTES.

"March 2 will be one year [since the murder of Kayla Lalonde and Martha Jackson Hernandez], and that's when we'll have our very first celebration; [that's] when I come out of mourning for the first time. It's a long process," explained Bee.

"Keep him in jail forever, because that door does stop eventually," said Bee.

"It has to stop. Now." said O'Shea, as the rain continued to fall in Vancouver's Downtown East Side. "You have to show these youth, these Native youth, that they mean something, that they're not throwaways. And that their people didn't die and nothing happened."

Sandra Cuffe is a contributing member of the Vancouver Media Co-op (VMC) who lives in the Hastings Sunrise neighbourhood, in unceded Coast Salish territory.

This article was originally published by the VMC. A video of the interviews conducted February 3, edited by VMC contributing member Masrour Zoghi, can be viewed on the VMC website. Catch VMC coverage of events related to the BC Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and today's 20th annual Women's Memorial March in Vancouver. Background information on many issues addressed in this article is available from the Vancouver Media Co-op, and from groups such as Sisters in Spirit, Aboriginal Front Door and Justice for Girls.

Tremblay.Streets Safe

Tremblay

You've Got Bail! (But No Freedom)

Moira Peters — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:11:46 +0000

Ryan Rainville, and the letter of G20 law

TORONTO—The men’s shelter doesn’t look like a prison. There are no bars on the windows, no sign announcing the building’s institutional status. The walls are decorated with posters about Indigenous pride and occasionally the air is tinged with the sweet smell of burning sage.

For Ryan Rainville however, it is a prison. He is not allowed to leave the shelter except to see his lawyer and for occasional group activities. There is a long list of people—some of whom he has never met—whom the courts have ordered him not to contact. Because of these conditions he can’t work or go to school.

"I went from being able to actually work and come up with my own money to not being able to work...It's driving me nuts that I can't go out there and look for work because I want to help my mom, and her partner," said Rainville, whose mother was recently diagnosed with cancer. "That poor guy is working double shifts so that he can keep up with the [medical] bills."

Rainville is charged with crimes related to alleged participation in the Black Bloc during the G20 protests. He was arrested August 5, 2010. His original bail was denied and he spent three months in pre-trial detention in prisons in the Toronto area before finally being granted bail on November 9, 2010.

During the G20 protests in Toronto in June 2010, more than 1,100 people were arrested in the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Many more were detained or trapped in the rainy streets for hours between lines of riot police using a tactic called "kettling."

The now-infamous Public Works Protection Act, a Second World War-era law that was secretly re-enacted by the province—and which the Ontario Ombudsman called "illegal" and "likely unconstitutional" in a report released in December 2010—was used for arrests across a broad swath of downtown Toronto, even though the act was supposed to apply to the area inside the G20 security fence. In a video posted on YouTube, police officers were quoted as saying, "This ain't Canada right now; you're in G20 land." Only one man—environmental justice activist Dave Vasey—was formally charged under the Public Works Protection Act, but when he arrived at his court date, he found the charges had been "lost."

Many who were released from the temporary detention centre on Eastern Avenue allege beatings by police, threats of rape, strip searches of young women by male officers and widespread denial of the right to call a lawyer after arrest. Due cause was thin on the ground, and in many cases, passers-by were arrested. A Toronto Transit Commission worker in full uniform was arrested while walking between job sites. By the time of the first mass court date for G20 defendants in August 2010, only 300 people faced charges, 100 of which were dropped that day at the courthouse for lack of evidence, and 100 more which were dropped October 14, 2010.

Since the G20, police have engaged in what critics are calling a witchhunt against activists, arresting 11 from Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) during a small demonstration outside Liberal Party headquarters in downtown Toronto. Authorities appear to be targeting particular kinds of activists on thin pretenses. Indigenous activist Jaroslava Avila was arrested after speaking at a health-related event on September 29, 2010, at the University of Toronto, only to have charges dropped for lack of evidence on December 20, 2010, after her name was released to the press and she had spent months living with restrictive bail conditions.

Rainville, 23, is active in Indigenous and working-class organizing. Friends describe him as a tireless activist, always ready with a joke or an insightful observation. He is of Cree background, but notes that he appears White, and therefore escapes the worst racial prejudice.

He is fluent in Spanish—his stepfather is from El Salvador and he taught himself the language while spending time in the country. Self-educated, Rainville is reading through a huge stack of books—political literature, texts on Indigenous land claims and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. He was working on his high school diploma through an academic upgrading course at George Brown before he was forced to drop out due to post-G20 legal harassment. Prior to his current bail conditions, he supported himself through work as a factory laborer and as a baker.

Despite having no criminal record, Rainville was initially denied bail, and had to wait in jail for three months until his appeal was heard. Most other G20 defendants in this situation were released within days or weeks. Rainville attributes this disparity in treatment to poverty.

“My father is dirt-poor and works for just above minimum wage as a truck driver, and my mother lives in the US right now, and is also dirt-poor,” he said. “She was working in a factory for $7.25 per hour until she contracted breast cancer, for which she just had surgery today.”

Because of economic insecurity, he explained, his family has been forced to disperse from Toronto. This makes it difficult to get bail, as he would be unable to live with family if released. Neither can his family post up large amounts of money, nor purchase a plane ticket to Toronto to testify in court on his behalf. Each of these elements of a disadvantaged economic situation work against someone going through the court system.

“If you have a lot of money you are going to get more justice in this system,“ said lawyer Davin Charney, who is familiar with Rainville's case and is defending other G20 arrestees. “This doesn’t apply just to Ryan; this applies to people of the working class and impoverished people.” Charney said many people in economic difficulty find it hard to access bail, not only because they have trouble raising the large sums of money required, but also because they have trouble finding someone who will be respected by the court, and who has space to put them up if the court requires a residential surety—someone who can vouch for them. Homeless people, for example, do not have an address—a requirement to be granted bail.

Gary McCullough, who was arrested for driving near the G20 zone with most of his possessions in his car, experienced the judicial disadvantage of poverty that Charney cited. According to the Toronto Star, McCullogh was kept in prison with minimal health care and suffered a jailhouse beating, exacerbating his mental illness. He was initially denied bail because his elderly parents are unable to supervise him. He was only released December 6, 2010.

“People charged with what would be essentially the same crime are being treated very differently [than non-G20 related offenders],” said Charney. “For example, in my practice when people are charged with mischief it’s seen as a less serious offence, but for some reason because of the context of the G20 there is all this hysteria…They are pulling officers who would normally be on the homicide squad, or the sexual assault squad, and putting them to investigate these ‘mischief makers,’ which I find really upsetting. It’s a political decision on the part of the police.”

Byron Sonne, charged with computer crimes, has been incarcerated without bail since his arrest on June 22, 2010, before the G20 even started.

Activist Alex Hundert was preemptively arrested in the early morning on June 26, 2010, released on bail, then re-arrested. Police interpreted his speaking with several professors at an indoor panel at Ryerson University on September 17, 2010, as violating a bail condition about speaking at public demonstrations. He was released after the legality of this was challenged and after being forced under duress on October 13 to sign what he called “draconian” conditions. Ten days later, Hundert was re-arrested under the pretense of another alleged bail violation; he was recently released after taking a plea bargain with the crown.

Rainville was eventually released to a Native bail program at his hearing on November 10, 2010, with his father and two professors as sureties. But, contrary to normal procedure, Ryan’s bail conditions prevent him from leaving the shelter at all, even accompanied by his sureties. He also has a no-alcohol condition which he attributes to anti-Indigenous targeting. “Despite the fact that I’ve grown up with white-skinned privilege—and I do look like a settler—they are targeting me based on my Cree background with this whole alcohol issue.”

“Out” on bail, Rainville is technically free, but his is a pitiful freedom. Time spent confined at the shelter will not count toward Rainville’s time served if he is convicted at his trial, scheduled to take place in April. This situation was made worse by the fact that his mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he could only communicate with her by phone. The day he was interviewed at the shelter, she was having surgery. “They’re telling me that I’m free. But if I were free I’d be holding my mom’s hand next to her hospital bed right now in Louisiana.”

More recent tests found his mother to now be free of cancer.

Rainville can leave the shelter for medical and legal appointments and on group field trips with the shelter staff.

“Aside from that I’m forcibly confined...I basically feel like I’m in jail still, minus the fact my mail is not being torn through and I can read whatever literature I want, and I can have visitors not through a glass window. But aside from that I’m forcibly confined.” The front door of the shelter visibly bothers Ryan; he says he effectively acts as his own jailer.

“I’m doing it to myself, it’s basically out of this want to not end up in jail again,” he said. “I go crazy in this place sometimes. I have to stick to doing jumping jacks and push-ups in my room because I feel like a trapped animal.”

In spite of blatant denial of individuals’ civil rights by the Canadian state, G20 arrestees have been first to encourage Canadians to keep their arrests and detentions in perspective.

“It’s a hugely intrusive imposition,” said Hundert of bail conditions before he was placed on conditions which restricted his ability to talk to media, ”I think it’s supposed to disrupt the communities in which we organize and to be punitive despite the fact that we haven’t been convicted of anything.”

Rainville agrees. “Forget about this,” he said. “Forget about me having a little bit of privilege stripped away from me...This whole thing is a walk in the park compared to what they are doing to people like Omar Khadr.“

Megan Kinch is an activist and journalist in Toronto.

Ryan Rainville

The Silence Was Deafening

Moira Peters — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:35:46 +0000

BC's Missing Women Commission of Inquiry hears from Downtown East Side

VANCOUVER—Passionate criticism and painful stories rang out at two Community Engagement Forums held at the end of January in Vancouver and Prince George, BC, leading up to this year's Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. Indigenous women spoke up to demand justice for their beloved family members and friends who have been disappeared or murdered.

More than 100 people gathered in a large hall at the Japanese Language School in Vancouver's Downtown East Side (DTES) on January 19, 2011. The Commission's process, content and the naming of Wally Oppal as Commissioner were subject to passionate criticism and scrutiny by those who have been demanding justice for their relatives, friends and colleagues for over 30 years.

"Mr. Oppal, this has been a long journey for a lot of us women," said Walk4Justice co-founder Bernie Williams.

The Commission was set in motion in September 2010 by an Order in Council by the BC Lieutenant Governor in Council. The terms of reference instruct the Commission to inquire into the investigations by police forces into the disappearances of women from the DTES between certain dates, inquire into the Criminal Justice Branch's 1998 stay of proceedings on charges against Robert Pickton, recommend changes concerning investigations into cases of missing women and suspected multiple homicides in BC and recommend changes concerning homicide investigations and inter-agency co-operation.

"Why did it take 69 women [in BC], and over 4,000 women nationally [for this to get started]?" asked Williams.

Sold into the sex trade in Prince Rupert as a child, Williams' mother was murdered in 1977. Two of her older sisters were murdered in the 1980s. Williams and other relatives of missing and murdered women out west and across the country have been organizing for decades, demanding justice and, among other things, a public inquiry concerning all missing and murdered women since the 1970s.

"I don't trust this whole Commission. I don't trust it," added Williams, to loud applause by those in attendance.

Many women regretted the choice of date and time for the community engagement forum. It was originally postponed, but then scheduled for one of the worst days possible: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 was a welfare payment day, complicating many local residents' and others' availability to participate.

The terms of reference of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry were repeatedly called into question.

The inquiry into the way investigations of disappearances of women in the DTES were handled by police forces deals with investigations specifically between January 23, 1997 and February 5, 2002. This narrow window excludes dozens of women who have been murdered or gone missing both before and after the chosen dates. Furthermore, the infamous Highway of Tears—Highway 16 running east-west in northern BC—is not mentioned by name in the terms of reference, despite the fact that young women, almost all of them First Nations, have been going missing along that highway for decades.

"I started a movement in northern BC. My niece went missing on the Highway of Tears," began Walk4Justice co-founder Gladys Radek.

"Our people, our families, they need to know what happened," said Radek, echoing the voices of so many relatives of missing and murdered women. "The system is failing."

"I got home at 1:30 am last night and I checked my email, and there was a 'missing' poster. That missing poster was the mother of someone who went missing on the Highway of Tears five years ago," she continued, choking back tears.

Radek went to school with Maggie Layton, the woman whose photograph appeared on the missing poster in question. The two women walked alongside each other during a previous Walk4Justice—Layton, to demand justice for her missing daughter, and Radek, for her niece Tamara Chipman, and for all of the missing women and their families.

At the Community Engagement Forum in Prince George on January 21, 100 people gathered to speak out about their experiences, stories and their missing and murdered daughters, sisters, mothers, nieces and others. The Commission, and particularly Oppal, was urged to visit the communities along the Highway of Tears. A few speakers at the Vancouver forum echoed the request for the series of cases in northern BC to be dealt with thoroughly, and not simply as an aside to the inquiry into what occurred in the DTES.

"The women of the Highway of Tears need their own inquiry," asserted Alice Kendall of the DTES Women's Centre.

"There is poverty across Canada. There is racism across Canada," she said, but adding that "something happened in this specific neighbourhood [the DTES]."

In large part, the Commission of Inquiry arose out of the explosion of media attention concerning missing and murdered women during Robert Pickton's arrest, the high-profile forensic investigation of his pig farm in Port Coquitlam and his subsequent trial and conviction for the murders of six women. As does the Inquiry, media attention focused on a few sensational cases and issues, ignoring the vast majority of others.

The facts are undeniable. The overwhelming majority of missing and murdered women in BC are Indigenous women. As has often been the case with media coverage and investigations, the terms of reference offer no mention, analysis or instructions reflecting that reality.

With the exception of the sensationalist coverage of the Pickton case, the near complete failure of the police, media and government to take reports of missing and murdered women seriously, or to do anything about them, has continued for decades. Many women denounced the institutional racism of police forces and other institutions, which have resulted in the abuse and derision of families who report their daughters, mothers, sisters and others missing.

"The silence was definitely deafening. We could hear it," said Dianne George.

"How did the Commission of Inquiry come up with the dates of January 23, 1997 and February 5, 2002?" she asked.

The terms of reference arise from the principal goal of the Commission of Inquiry: to recommend changes to improve the investigations of police forces and the judicial system, as well as inter-institutional co-operation in the future. It reflects the Pickton case, but excludes many other women, families, perpetrators and systemic problems. The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry has in fact been dubbed the "Pickton Inquiry" by the media.

Several women came forward at the Community Engagement Forum to speak about their own experiences with Robert Pickton and other suspected perpetrators. They told harrowing stories of their interactions with Pickton and others, their sisters' and friends' visits to the infamous pig farm, and their treatment by the police when they came forward.

"I was treated as though I was making stuff up, as though I was delusional," recalled Terry Williams, adding that one police officer once told her that if she kept reporting information, she would be committed to a psychiatric institution.

The stories shared included experiences and incredibly detailed information, including the license plate of the van used by Pickton and others to abduct women, an Oregon license plate of another van seen abducting women and the location of Pickton's pig farm. Almost invariably, the response women and family members received echoed a comment made by Williams: when she had a license plate number of a van and a description of the man that she had seen abducting a woman from the DTES, "The cops would not take the information."

The history and experiences do not all relate to Robert Pickton. They do not all relate to the years between 1997 and 2002. Most of the women who spoke at the Community Engagement Forum expressed their frustration or anger at the exclusion of so many missing and murdered women, but also at their own exclusion from the process itself.

"What I think everyone here is saying is that those terms of reference are too narrow," reiterated Beverley Jacobs, emphasizing that she was not speaking as legal counsel for the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), but as an Aboriginal woman.

"You have the authority, Commissioner Oppal, to change...those terms of reference," added Jacobs.

"We understand the dissatisfaction that has been shown here today," said Commissioner Wally Oppal, speaking on behalf of the Commission of Inquiry. "We want to see constructive changes made."

As the Community Engagement Forum came to a close, it was clear that relatives, friends, colleagues and neighbours of the missing and murdered women in Vancouver's Downtown East Side have been proposing constructive changes for years. Beyond their critiques and proposals for the official Commission of Inquiry, which is set to begin within a few months, they continue to organize and mobilize in the DTES, in northern BC and across the country.

The 20th annual Women's Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women will be held again this year on February 14, 2011—Valentine's Day—in Vancouver's Downtown East Side. Everyone, of any gender, is invited to gather at the Carnegie Community Centre Theatre at Main and Hastings at 12:00pm, where relatives of missing and murdered will speak before the march begins at 1:00 pm. Two weeks of commemorative events began last week, on January 30, 2011.

Other Women's Memorial Marches, Sisters in Spirit vigils and rallies for justice will take place on February 14 in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and dozens of other communities across the country.

Relatives and supporters will be joining the Walk4Justice once again this summer, walking across Canada to honour the missing and murdered Indigenous women from coast to coast, to raise awareness, and to demand justice. The Walk4Justice will reach Ottawa on September 19, 2011.

Sandra Cuffe is a contributing member of the Vancouver Media Co-op and based in Vancouver, in unceded Coast Salish territory. This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Deafening Silence.Presentation

Deafening Silence: Crowd

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

Recovering from the Heart Attack

Moira Peters — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:31:10 +0000

Arrestees fighting off Olympic side-effects in court

VANCOUVER—Although the Olympics' closing ceremonies were three months ago, for those who opposed the two-week spectacle, the Vancouver 2010 Games have not yet left town.

Guillaume Pascal was arrested and accused of involvement in the February 13 Heart Attack Demonstration. "Two cops say that I instructed people to smash the windows of the RBC [Royal Bank of Canada]," he said. "VPD [Vancouver Police Department] said that they caught the ringleader of the action when they arrested me."

The Heart Attack was a demonstration meant to clog the roads leading through Vancouver to Whistler where many of the sports events were taking place. 300 masked people walked through downtown Vancouver, vandalizing symbols of the Olympics and capitalism. Olympic sponsors' advertisements on city buses were spray-painted; newspaper boxes of the Province and Canwest newspapers were overturned and the windows of the Hudson's Bay Company were smashed. The group was dispersed finally by riot police in the West End.

Pascal was arrested two days after the Heart Attack demonstration, after his residence and vehicle were constantly monitored by the police.

"VISU [Vancouver Integrated Security Unit] really dropped the ball on keeping the peace," said Pascal, who believes he was arrested because security agencies needed to save face after property was damaged during the Heart Attack. "They spent eight times the amount [on security] as the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, and needed a scapegoat for their incompetence in letting the Heart Attack take place."

"The Heart Attack ended the violent protests, and that had a lot to do with the response of the police," said Deputy Chief Constable Steve Sweeney at a March 17 Olympic security debriefing. "The public came over to our favour," he said about support for police conduct during the Heart Attack.

But few saw footage of police conduct during the February 13 demo. Police were brutal in arresting protesters, and even detained people peacefully walking to a prison vigil later that day.

"There were no charges made against me," said Sozan Savehilaghi, who marched with a pink-wigged, coverall-wearing group calling itself the Olympic Cleanup Crew. She was detained for video-taping arrests during the Heart Attack. "I was never read my rights or told why I was being detained. There were just lots of empty threats."

Savehilaghi was one of 27 protesters arrested during the Olympics, according to Solidarity with Anti-Olympic Convergence Arrestees (SACA)—a group formed to bring together arrestees and supporters to raise funds for the formers' defence. Ten of the arrestees were charged, of whom two are still fighting charges in court.

SACA member Ed Durgan was arrested February 13 near Pigeon Park, fifteen blocks away from where the Heart Attack demo ended. He was arrested for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk after questioning a group of police, whom he believed were harassing someone sleeping on a bench near the park.

"I was nearly deported. We had to fight for me to stay since they were going to revoke my student visa," said Durgan. "They put effort into intimidating me because I was a high-profile activist. But [the detainees] realized we'd all been arrested for political purposes, and wanted to stick together and fight these charges." Durgan said SACA goes beyond fundraising, and is considering legal action against the police for harassment.

Fundraising for SACA is tricky in Vancouver, where recently a benefit rock gig at the Pitt Pub at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was cancelled by the Alma Mater Society (AMS).

"AMS is claiming that the policy is that only student groups can book events on-campus," said SACA organizer Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, "which makes no sense because off-campus groups"—such as the Red Cross and Vancouver General Hospital—"work with student groups to book space at UBC all the time."

Despite UBC AMS' actions, there is support for SACA. The launch of the Dominion's G20 special issue on May 14 at the Vancouver Media Co-op included a solidarity statement with SACA. A dance party at the Secret Location on the same night included a silent auction for SACA.

Pascal's case is still going through court. "And there are other things like finding a job, that is hard after this," he said. "Marginalizing someone into being a 'terrorist' stops him from ever being able to live normally."

Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and communications graduate student researching media representation of marginalized people. He is a collective member of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Olympic Cleanup Crew

Main & Hastings Cop Shop

Indigenous Justice in Colombia

dawn — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:02:08 +0000

Traditional justice sentences kidnappers, restores faith in community and traditional authorities

The town center of the Resguardo (Reserve) of Jambaló in Northern Cauca. On November 26th, seven people were kidnapped on the road leading out of Jambaló's town center, in the village of Pioyá. Five were liberated later that night, and the other two in the early hours of the next day. The hostages were liberated by the Indigenous Guard of Jambaló and members of the community, and four of the five kidnappers were apprehended.

Colombia I

Colombia II

Colombia V

Colombia XV

Colombia IV

Colombia VII

Colombia IX

Colombia X

Colombia XII

Colombia XI

Colombia XIII

Colombia XIV

Colombia III

A Hillbilly, a Judge, and a Coal Company

Moira Peters — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:21:19 +0000

The opening skirmish in the court battle over mountaintop removal mining

PIGEONROOST HOLLOW, WEST VIRGINIA–Lucinda Weekley grew up in Pigeonroost Hollow in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, near the little town of Blair. To her, Pigeonroost was a place of incomparable beauty. In winter, with the limbs of trees weighed down with snow, “it was like looking at a postcard,” she remembers. Her family settled in Pigeonroost in the early 1800s. She had kinfolk living from the mouth of the hollow to its head three miles away. After work required her family to move elsewhere in the state, she used to serenade her father Jim, singing, “Daddy, won’t you take us back to Pigeonroost Hollow,” a takeoff on the John Prine standard. Her family did return. She was too young at the time to realize how much the hollow also meant to her father.

By the mid-1990s, however, it looked as though the hollow’s days were numbered. Arch Coal, a leading producer, had begun a gigantic mining operation a short distance from Pigeonroost on the mountain ridge above Blair. This was not old-fashioned underground mining or even conventional strip mining. Arch was blowing the top off the mountain to get at the seam of coal beneath, deploying two huge shovels and a dragline--a towering crane-like machine atop a base the size of a nine-storey hotel--to help shove millions of tons of debris over the sides into the valleys and streams below. Valley fills, they were called. Such strip-mining was known as mountaintop removal.

For the people of Blair living just below the mine, named Dal-Tex, it meant explosions just hundreds of feet away, powerful enough to crack the foundations of their homes, and dust so thick cars turned their lights on in the daytime. The mining went on around the clock, seven days a week, year after year. There was no escaping it except to sell out and move.

Jim Weekley and his wife Sibby were just half a mile from the dragline, close enough that the blasting broke things in their house and clouds of dust drove them off their porch and caused them to cough even when they were inside. They could not avoid the continual high-pitched squeal of the dragline’s bucket – so large it could scoop up the equivalent of five tractor-trailer loads of dirt and debris – as it was dragged across the ground. The dragline, named the Aracoma Chief, moved back and forth along the ridgeline, working from hollow to hollow. Even when it was out of sight, they could hear its racket.

The Weekleys knew Arch had also applied for another mining permit covering five square miles and including Pigeonroost. If approved, it would be the largest mine in West Virginia’s history. They knew two giant valley fills and two waste-treatment ponds were to be constructed not far from their house. Most of their neighbours in the hollow had already moved out. As soon as Arch finished the Dal-Tex operation, it would begin the new Spruce #1 mine. Much of Pigeonroost Hollow would be buried in rocks and dirt from the leveled mountain.

Jim Weekley, an intense, rail-thin man who had broken his back working in a coal mine when he was young, used to sit on the huge “meditating rock” above his house. It rested on the very top of the mountain and from there he could see for miles. For years, it had been so “quiet and peaceful up there, it put you close to heaven,” he recalls, but now he gazed at the spreading devastation. Perched on the rock, he’d time the dragline’s operation: Drop the bucket. Drag it along the ground. Fill it up. Swing it wide to the left. Dump the debris. It took 47 seconds. He wanted, says Lucinda, to know how long it would take to flatten the mountaintop.

Finally, after two years of watching Blair Mountain being carved up, he’d had enough. One summer day in 1997, he was outside his house looking at the mountains surrounding Pigeonroost and the dragline. The house was flanked by a brook where he and his grandchildren liked to fish. Around the house stood some 50 beehives he tended for honey. Dust kicked up by the dragline hung in the air. Sibby was standing on the porch. He whirled around toward her and declared, “Something’s got to be done.” He quoted words he believed were in the Bible: “God spoke thus, ‘Let no man destroy what I have created.’” Sibby agreed they had to act. They decided to get a lawyer.

Something else was driving Weekley. A former union miner, like many in his family before him (several of whom were killed in mine accidents) he considered Blair Mountain sacred ground. In 1921 it had been the scene of the largest labour insurrection in American history and the biggest military engagement on American soil since the Civil War, involving upwards of 20,000 miners and supporters. Their aim on the battlefield had been to free their brothers in southernmost West Virginia from the oppression of the coal company by extending their union, the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA), to them.

Even in West Virginia most people know little about the Battle of Blair Mountain. The story has been passed down in union families, but for more than half a century the battle was not mentioned in public-school textbooks, a suppression of their history that still rankles some West Virginians. Today, Blair Mountain is noted in schoolbooks, but only briefly.

Weekley, however, had grown up learning about the battle. His mother told him members of the miners’ army had camped in Pigeonroost and that her parents had taken them food, despite warnings they were risking arrest or worse. Weekley eventually grew determined to save the miners’ battlefield from mining and to honour it “This is what made our union…,” he says, “this battle right here on Blair Mountain.”

The struggle to commemorate it goes on to this day and has finally made some headway. After three decades of fruitless attempts to nominate the battlefield to the National Register of Historic Places, the federal government is now considering awarding it that historic status. Yet even if it does, that will not necessarily keep coal companies from destroying it through strip-mining. The fight to preserve the battlefield continues.

The Weekleys were referred to a neophyte environmental lawyer in a firm that represented the poor for free. Indeed, they were Joe Lovett’s first clients. No one had ever sued over mountaintop removal and Lovett had to find grounds to do so. He called every environmental lawyer he could think of, but no one had any ideas. And only one, a law professor, was initially interested. “It’s Appalachia,” they told him. “See, nobody serves Appalachia.” Lovett finally figured out he could sue under the US Clean Water and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Acts. He wound up filing in federal court on behalf of Pigeonroost and two other communities experiencing similar problems. There were six plaintiffs beside the Weekleys, plus the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

While Joe Lovett poured over mining law, Weekley and Sibby were doing their own legal research at the county courthouse and at home. Lucinda says her father preferred knowing the law himself to relying on someone else’s word. Weekley had wanted to be a lawyer as a youngster and had started taking classes in law in junior high. Instead he had met Sibby in Pigeonroost and married her at age 18 and gone to work in the mines.

The last judge Lovett wanted to hear the case, named Robertson vs Bragg, was Charles H. Haden II, a Republican from a mining family whose rulings took a decidedly pro-mining bent. But Haden got the case. Weekley encountered Arch’s general counsel, Blair Gardner, speaking at a conference and badgered him mercilessly until he agreed to come to Pigeonroost to see what was at stake. A battery of reporters learned of the meeting and met an unsuspecting Gardner there. That day, Weekley, as always, spoke from the heart, while Gardner, struck by nature’s abundance in Pigeonroost, remarked, “This is like a rainforest.” It was, says Lovett, their first media victory.

While the court case proceeded, Weekley was speaking out at protest rallies and in interviews. “Just ’cuz I have a high-school education and was born in a hollow don’t mean I’m a dumbass hillbilly,” Weekley says.

Then Judge Haden himself came to Pigeonroost before flying over southern West Virginia to see mountaintop removal firsthand--remarkably, at the defense’s request. On landing, “Haden was astonished,” writes Penny Loeb in Moving Mountains, her penetrating book on the Bragg case and its key figures, “‘What were they ever thinking to take me up there?’ he said to his clerks.” Says Lovett, “I think that the flyover and the visit turned him completely.”

A few days later, Haden stunned nearly everyone by issuing a preliminary injunction that barred opening Spruce #1. (His opinion cited the threat to wildlife and aquatic life in Pigeonroost.) That meant the 300 or so Dal-Tex miners who were ready to transfer to the new mine now faced a layoff. Arch, the miners, and the county commission howled. “COMMISSION: THIS IS WAR” headlined the local Logan Banner. One day, when the two sides were negotiating several issues in the Charleston courthouse, “A noisy parade of coal trucks continually drove around the courthouse constantly honking their horns--heard loud and clear by Judge Haden and all the rest of us,” recalls plaintiff Cindy Rank. (Nearly all the other issues would be settled in the plaintiffs’ favour with lasting effects in West Virginia, including smaller valley fills and improved reclamation.)

But this was nothing compared to the reaction that October, when Haden not only made the injunction permanent but also banned the dumping of mining debris in West Virginia streams--in effect, ending mountaintop removal throughout Appalachia.

Lovett had won a landmark decision, and Pigeonroost seemed safe from mining. But the decision brought denunciations from the coal industry and a declaration of a state of emergency from Gov. Cecil Underwood. A thousand coal miners rallied in Washington, D.C. “Things were really tense,” says Lovett. “We were lucky no one was killed.”

A few days later, Haden sought to calm the waters by staying his ruling temporarily. Strip-mining immediately resumed. Ultimately, his far-reaching decision would be reversed by an appellate court on the grounds that the case should have been brought in state court, leaving the legality of valley fills--and so mountaintop removal itself--unresolved. They would be challenged again and again in various courts. Weekley’s lawsuit had opened the door to legal combat over mountaintop removal. This year, however, the Spruce #1 mine started operating and mountaintop removal has begun in Pigeonroost within sight and sound of Weekley’s home.

Peter Slavin, a freelance journalist based outside Washington, DC, has been writing about the West Virginia coalfields since 1995.

MTRArial

MTRWeekley

Haiti: Interview with Haiti's leading human rights lawyer

darren ell — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:53:12 +0000

When in Haiti recently, I conducted an extensive interview with Mario Joseph, the head lawyer of the Bureau des avocats internationaux, the only legal firm working on the tens of thousands of human rights violations that preceeded and followed the Feb 29th, 2007 coup d'etat. In the interview, Mario discusses the impact of the coup on the justice system, the struggle to rebuild the rule of law, the thorny problem of MINUSTAH, the continued problem of foreign (including Canadian) hypocrisy and more.

Prisoners

dru — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 06:31:44 +0000

I haven't weighed in about the Iranian hostage crisis, but it's about time that I did. I'm shocked, shocked, to say the least, that a country would dare to unilaterally detain citizens of another sovereign country without trial, and subject them to questioning. Why, I'm sure it's only the massive media attention that kept them from dressing them up in orange jumpsuits, keeping them in humiliating conditions, and torturing them.

Iran has released them, but we cannot soon forgive this unpardonable violation of sovereignty and rights. Especially given that the British may have been in Iraqi waters. No foreign country has any right to enter those waters without Iraq's permission.

The Ongoing Coup d'etat in Haiti

darren ell — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:18:54 +0000

In part 2 of my interview with Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, now online at HaitiAction.net, Lovinsky talks about what he calls the "ongoing coup d'etat of 2004." He talks about the lack of services to help heal the scars of the thousands of victims of 2004. He speaks of the bureacracy and judiciary staffed by Latortue's people who ensure that the victims will not see justice. He points to how this problem ensures impunity for the perpetrators. He discusses the danger of a potential preparation of yet another coup d'etat by such initiatives as the creation of a parallel police force using the 800 former members of the dreaded Haitian Army who are now in the Haitian National Police.