MONTREAL, August 29th, 2007 - There has been much coverage in the past few days about “agents provocateurs” from Sûreté du Québec who infiltrated the protest this past August 20th in Montebello. The People’s Global Action (PGA), a network of anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal and direct action groups who moblilized people to the protests in Montebello to denounce the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), would like to cease this opportunity to put into perspective the following points related to police action in the protests against the SPP.
Intimidation and police abuse
The topic of SQ police provocateur presence in the group of protesters, which deserves to be denounced, has unfortunately served as a distraction from other acts commited by the police in the context of mobilizations against the SPP summit in Montebello. Group members of the PGA wish to shed some light into these acts, while asserting our right to organize and mobilize without police interference, whether it be that of federal or provincial police, in uniform or not.
The autonomous camp, that was located in Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix, north of Montebello, was the target of intimidation by the authorities. During the days leading up to the protests against the summit; helicopters, shining bright lights, flew at a very low altitude, at the level of treetops, where the camp was being held. This act demonstrates but one strategy to discourage the direct opposition put into place against the SPP summit. Similarly, the criminalization and marginalization of protesters achieved through random arrests and phony charges aims at punishing any attempt to protest or disrupt the status quo. As well, the police brutality displayed at the summit, through the use of tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and batons also aims at eliminating any form of dissidence by the use of violence.
On the issue of violence, it is important to point out the completely inappropriate use by the police and corporate media of so-called “violence” on the part of protesters to justify the brutal police repression that took place to further marginalize protesters. In speaking of violence, one needs to first recognize the systemic and institutionalized violence imposed by states and corporations on millions of people worldwide, through occupations, imperialist wars, free trade agreements that empoverish the majority of the population, racist anti-immigrant laws and border militarization policies, as well as through direct violent repression, just like in Montebello. The member groups of the PGA bloc refuse the dichotomy between “good” and “bad” protesters, and recognize the need for a diversity of tactics and the right to self defense against the oppressive regimes.
On the use of a school as a detention center
Due to the SPP Summit, a Papineauville high school was transformed into a detention center. The school gym was divided into four makeshift cells, with walls and barbed wire. The four people who were detained appeared in front of a judge in the middle of the night, without the presence of a lawyer, an obvious violation of their fundamental rights.
This intense repression, together with the militarization of the Château Montebello, represent an allegory of “Fortress North America”: a world where the leaders and the powerful can be sheltered behind a fortress surrounded by fences, walls and thousands of police, while the overwhelming majority is pushed away further and further from arbitrary “borders”, while being criminalized if they attempt to approach it.
The basis of our opposition to the SPP
The police actions in the context of the protests against the SPP summit take root in a larger rhetoric that aims to minimize or put down opposition to the SPP.
We never promised thousands of demonstrators in Montebello. Rather, we have chosen to put forth, as a priority, the daily work of the groups that make up our network: the struggle against detentions and deportations, solidarity with Indigenous struggle for self-determination and freedom, collective organising in our work environment, work against poverty and precarity, the right to housing, mobilizing against war and the work we do in solidarity with allies all over the world. All of these struggles lie in working within “Fortress North America” and are at the frontlines when it comes to the opposition of policies such as those within the SPP. We hope our actions at Montebello can be a modest contribution to these struggles which continue on a daily basis. We therefore reject stereotypical images shown in the media, which only show the smokes of tear-gas and never the complex reasons that motivated about 2000 people to take to the streets and to face police intimidation and other obstacles to demonstrate their opposition to the policies of Bush, Harper and Calderon. The media may have stopped reporting on the SPP summit in Montebello, but the protest against the injustice and oppression that the SPP will bring continues. This struggle did not start in Montebello and will not end in Montebello.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Farha Najah 514-243-2776, No One Is Illegal Montreal; Mandeep Dhillon, 514-909-9991, No One Is Illegal Montreal
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