[asia-apec 748] G&M: The Day the (Cdn.) PM was host to a despot
Sharon R.A. Scharfe
pet at web.net
Mon Oct 5 20:14:12 JST 1998
Globe and Mail
October 5, 1998
COLUMN ONE
The day the PM was host to a despot
Canada treated Suharto like a star. Now the unofficial
spotlight at an RCMP hearing is on Jean Chretien.
Monday, October 5, 1998
JOHN SAUNDERS and JANE ARMSTRONG
The Globe and Mail
Vancouver -- Helicopters thumped in the sky.
Sharpshooters stood guard
on a roof. The police made their stand at a security
fence, and adrenalin
flowed in student protesters' veins. From some points
of view, it was a
glorious day, thanks to decisions that may change the
way history regards
a prime minister.
When Jean Chrétien played host to an Asia Pacific Economic
Co-operation summit in Vancouver last Nov. 25, he
chose an awkward
location and questionable company, notably Indonesia's
since-deposed
president Suharto, a famously corrupt ex-general who
rose to power on
the bodies of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen.
With less courting from Mr. Chrétien, the dictator and
his armed guards
might have stayed home. Memos and letters paint
pictures of diplomatic
grovelling for the favour of his presence, Indonesian
insistence that he
face no protests, and anxiety in the Prime Minister's
Office that
demonstrators be neither seen nor heard.
The site was elegant -- a glass-walled museum full of
native artifacts on
the sea-rimmed campus of the University of British
Columbia -- but the
neighbours were noisy. Students and off-campus
activists had been
preparing for the day for more than an year.
As they tell it, their tactics were nonviolent but
definitely illegal. Among
other things, they swarmed a police line to force mass
arrests, pulled
down part of the security fence and tried to form
human roadblocks on
motorcade routes.
No one knows what might have happened had RCMP
officers not routed
them with pepper spray, a crowd-stopping substitute
for tear gas.
As police tell it, they had to spray because the site
was hard to defend and
Suharto's twitchy guards would have shot any
demonstrator who got near
their boss. They have yet to say how much they were
influenced by the
Prime Minister's do-not-disturb sign.
The clashes were gentle by international standards: no
rock-throwing, no
baton charges, no rubber bullets. Protesters spent a
day resisting what
they saw as evil, tested theories of civil
disobedience, were
pepper-sprayed, arrested and in some cases strip-searched.
They emerged little the worse for wear. None face
criminal charges
relating to the day's events.
What they did not do was make an impression on the
actual summit,
nestled deep within the police cordon. The 18 APEC
leaders, including the
protest-shy Suharto, glimpsed scarcely more dissent
than is permitted in
the police states some of them run.
The protesters now are taking revenge on Mr. Chrétien,
whose conduct is
unofficially on trial in an RCMP Public Complaints
Commission hearing
that resumes today. Their persistence has made his
role a national issue
more than 10 months later.
The Prime Minister may be a little guy from
Shawinigan, Que., but he
seems to enjoy rubbing shoulders with the powerful,
even when they stand
for things Canada officially deplores. He was eager to
have Suharto at the
summit, and the dictator was playing hard to get.
The process can be glimpsed in a mass of documents the
government has
been compelled to provide to participants in the
hearing, including student
protesters. Although the material has not officially
been made public, parts
have been leaked to reporters.
In the summer and early fall of 1997, officials at the
Canadian embassy in
Jakarta and the Privy Council Office in Ottawa worked
to wear down
Suharto's resistance.
Memos describe Indonesian demands that he be spared
"embarrassment,"
including any face-to-face confrontation with a
protester. The occupation
of East Timor, a former Portuguese territory held by
Indonesian troops
since 1975, was a particularly sensitive point.
Indonesian officials complained "forcefully and at
length about what they
claimed was Canadian gov'ts failure so far to ensure
that President
Soeharto [sic] would not be humiliated while in
Vancouver." (Memo from
External Affairs official Leslie James to colleague
Ingrid Hall, Sept. 9,
1997)
"There is a growing possibility that President
Soeharto may not come to
the APEC Leaders meeting in Vancouver because of a
desire to avoid
embarrassment at the hands of the East Timor
protesters. . . . Suggest
perhaps in future you place a telephone call to
President Soeharto." (Note
from PCO official Jim Bartleman to the Prime
Minister's Office, Sept. 19)
"Do what we can to prevent embarrassment. [Censored]
don't want to
see any demonstrators. PM will want to be personally
involved." (Minutes
of an interdepartmental meeting taken by PCO official
Patricia Hassard,
Oct. 29)
"I have directed my officials to spare no effort to
ensure that appropriate
security and other arrangements are made for your stay
in Canada as our
guest." (Letter from Mr. Chrétien to Suharto, Oct. 3)
Suharto agreed to come and the protesters were kept at
bay, but his
gratitude would do Canada little good. Within six
months, mass protests by
his own people had driven him from office.
Officially, the public hearing will examine complaints
about the conduct of
40 RCMP officers, but what everyone wants to know is
how deeply the
Prime Minister was involved in guaranteeing Suharto's
hassle-free
experience.
The evidence so far suggests a lively interest,
although it remains to be
shown conclusively that he ordered a clampdown on
protesters to appease
a despot.
"PM specific wish that this is a retreat and leaders
should not be
distracted by demos, etc." (Note taken by RCMP
Superintendent Wayne
May, Aug. 27, about discussions with Chrétien aide
Jean Carle and
summit organizer Robert Vanderloo)
"Jean Carle does not want the demonstrators close at
all!" (Note by
RCMP Inspector Bill Dingwall, Aug. 27)
"PMO had expressed concerns about the security
perimeter at UBC, not
so much from a security point of view but to avoid
embarrassments to
APEC leaders." (Note from Vanderloo to his staff,
Sept. 19)
Whatever the verdict on their conduct, the police were
in a tough spot.
Bringing APEC to UBC turned out to be a terrible idea.
The campus sits on a headland, with the summit site at
its tip. The guests
included two of the world's least-loved leaders --
Suharto and China's
Jiang Zemin -- and the President of the United States.
On one side was a
large group of bright, politically interested young
Canadians with time on
their hands. On the other, the Pacific Ocean.
Staff-Sergeant Peter Montague, who served as RCMP
liaison to the
Indonesian delegation, later told internal affairs
investigators that the
police knew it was a no-win situation but their
misgivings were ignored.
"All we ever heard back was that we're gonna go to UBC
come hell or
high water."
As he saw it, the event should have been held at
Harrison Hot Springs,
B.C., "or some place on private property where we can
barricade the hell
out of it and no one's gonna get through. But to put
an eight-foot or
nine-foot-high fence across a Canadian university
campus is the first time
that's ever been done, to my knowledge, and it's like
putting a red flag in
front of a bull."
Then there were the famous Indonesian guns. They would
not have been
allowed in the country before 1995, when Canada made a
fateful decision
to consider requests from visiting leaders to bring
armed bodyguards.
The aim was to win the same privilege for Mr. Chrétien
when he travels
abroad. Requests are approved or denied on a
case-by-case basis. In this
case, Ottawa did not tell the reluctant guest it had
been wooing for months
that it did not trust his security men.
The most compelling police account is Staff-Sgt.
Montague's internal
affairs statement, in which he portrays the
Indonesians as frantic to shield
Suharto from any sort of protest -- even "people
swearing, making loud
noise near him" -- and quite ready to shoot.
If students had approached the dictator's limo or
swarmed the summit site,
he said, "I am absolutely convinced from all my
experience in VIP
security and my experience working with the
Indonesians that somebody
would have probably ended up dead, and that the
Indonesian security
forces would shoot them without any question, with
great impunity. I
mean, it would have been an honour for them."
On the 33,000-student campus, the scene on Nov. 25 was
like a cross
between a rock concert and a football rally.
Jeerleaders -- mock pompon
girls -- led anti-APEC chants.
By midday, the crowd was moving toward the security
perimeter, where it
was halted by a portable chain-link fence. When
protesters toppled the
fence toward themselves, Mounties on the other side
waded into the
crowd and opened up with pepper spray.
They would use a lot of it before the end of the day.
Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, a fourth-year philosophy and
politics student,
was in the first group hit. It was painful and
disorienting, she said. "All you
want to do is hold on to your head and crumple into a
ball."
She was arrested (at her own insistence) and taken to
a suburban RCMP
detachment, where she and other female students were
strip-searched.
According to police, the women were stripped and the
men were not
because the female officers on duty were accustomed to
searching
suspected drug smugglers from the airport.
As the summit ended, the students blocked all three
exit routes, raising the
prospect of motorcades being stalled and leaders being
exposed to
protesters' opinions or assassins' bullets. Pepper
spray cleared the way.
Whether or not the spray was overkill, the Mounties
face accusations that
they ignored basic democratic rights. At minimum, they
seem to have
jumped at what they saw as lawful opportunities to
remove protest signs,
ban would-be demonstrators from the campus and shield
the important
visitors from unpleasantness.
Craig Jones, then a final-year law student, was one of
the less flamboyant
protesters, a partisan of civil liberties, not radical
chic. His college dorm
faced a road on which the leaders were to pass.
On the lawn, he hung twin signs on large metal garment
racks saying
"Democracy" and "Free Speech." Lying on the grass was
his third
message, "Human Rights," spelled out in individual
letters on sheets of
typewriter-sized paper in transparent sleeves.
Mr. Jones was arrested on the morning of the summit
for refusing to
remove the garment racks, which police argue could
have been used in an
attempt to block a motorcade. As he sees it, the true
intent became clear
when all of his signs, including the one on the grass,
were confiscated.
Signs were seized from other students on grounds that
they could be used
as weapons or projectiles, a risk that police say was
serious at such an
event.
Mr. Jones, now 33, will be one of the first witnesses
in the RCMP
complaints hearing. Separately, he has filed a lawsuit
against Mr.
Chrétien, the Mounties and others for conspiracy to
infringe on protesters'
constitutional rights.
That same day, Gail Sparrow, chief of Vancouver's
Musqueam Indian
Band, was to have addressed the leaders at a welcoming
ceremony at
UBC's Museum of Anthropology. As she recalled it last
week, this is
what happened:
She was told at a rehearsal that her speech was too
long and too touchy
because of references to human rights and working
conditions in APEC
countries. She agreed to cut it to one minute, but a
summit organizer later
called to say she could not speak at all.
After she threatened to go to the news media, she was
told she could talk
privately with the leaders. She managed a brief chat
about native issues
with U.S. President Bill Clinton before Mr. Chrétien
approached.
He greeted her, then snapped his fingers and pointed
over his shoulder as
if gesturing that she be removed. Two men escorted her
from the building.
When she asked why, one replied, "The Prime Minister
wants you to
leave."
This version of Ms. Sparrow's treatment differs from
published reports
that she saw the PM barking orders to security
personnel. Ms. Sparrow
says now she was misinterpreted. When contacted
yesterday, the Prime
Minister's press spokeswoman Jennifer Lang dismissed
Ms. Sparrow's
charges. "She has no credibility," Ms. Lang said.
At least the summit didn't end in a firefight between
Canadian police and
Indonesian bodyguards. It could have happened, police say.
Staff-Sgt. Montague recalled asking a colleague what
they would do "if
things get out of control and a foreign security
officer from Indonesia
shoots and kills somebody, or shoots somebody. I said,
'Picture it. We're
probably gonna have to shoot the Indonesian security
officer.' "
Asked if he was joking, he said he was not.
AN APEC CHRONOLOGY
July 18, 1997:
Memo from Gary Smith, Canadian ambassador to Indonesia
to Foreign
Affairs in Ottawa. An Indonesian offical has told Mr.
Smith that "posters
displayed in Ottawa by the East Timor Alert Network
were 'very insulting
to us.' He repeated the words very insulting three
times during our
conversation. The Indonesian planned to brief Suharto
as gently as
possible as he could well burst (blow up) as it was
personally insulting."
Aug. 25, 1997:
Memo from Jakarta embassy states Indonesians still
concerned about
APEC security.
Sept. 3, 1997:
External Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy sends letter
to Indonesian
foreign affairs minister Ali Alatas, saying he has
conveyed security
concerns to the Prime Minister.
Sept. 19, 1997
Memo from Jim Bartleman in the Privy Council Office to
the Prime
Minister's Office. "There is a growing possibility
that President Suharto
may not come to the APEC leaders meeting in Vancouver
because of a
desire to avoid embarrassment at the hands of the East
Timor protesters."
Sept. 19
Memo from APEC organizer Robert Vanderloo to staff
"PMO had
expressed concerns about the security perimeter at UBC
not so much
from a security point of view but to avoid
embarrassments to APEC
leaders. ACCO and the RCMP are looking at that
issue...We have to find
a balance that meets both concerns (we do not wish student
demonstrations and efforts by the gov't to suppress
the freedom of
expression to become a major media story).
Oct. 29, 1997:
Memo from Mr. Smith to Ottawa. (Some names blanked
out.) "I believe
that (blank) argued for a delayed decision in order to
build pressure on
us...For his part, (blank) may have been recommending
a no-show
because he would not get the absolute guarantees he
wanted from the
RCMP."
Oct. 29, 1997:
Handwritten notes from Patricia Hassard, then Director
of Operations,
Security and Intelligence in the Privy Council Office.
"Do what we can to
prevent embarrassment," she writes. "PM will want to
be personally
involved."
Nov. 25, 1997:
Protests at the APEC summit in Vancouver lead to the
arrest of 49
activists. RCMP use pepper spray on students.
February, 1998:
The RCMP Public Complaints Commission announces it
will hold an
inquiry into police response to APEC protests.
CAMPUS CLASH
Key sites on the UBC Campus during the November 25,
1997, APEC
summit meeting
Gate 3: Protesters attempt to block motorcade entry
route, arriving by
Chancellor Blvd. Police pepper-spray demonstrators.
Student Union Building: More than 2,000 protesters
mass outside the
student union building. They move to library, then
west to the Flag Pole
plaza, which marks the perimeter of the security zone.
There, students pull
down barbed wire fence. Just after noon, police
respond with pepper
spray. Forty-eight people are arrested.
Green College: Leaders drive past this graduate
dormitory. Law student
Craig Jones is arrested at 8:30 a.m. for displaying
protest signs.
Museum of Anthropology: Site of the APEC leaders' meeting.
Gate 6: Protesters block motorcade route with a
sit-in. Police move in
with pepper spray and clear the route.
We welcome your comments.
Copyright © 1998, The Globe and Mail Company
All rights reserved.
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For more information on Parliamentarians for East Timor, Please Contact:
Sharon Scharfe, International Secretariat
Parliamentarians for East Timor
Suite 116, 5929-L Jeanne D'Arc Blvd., Orleans, ON K1C 7K2 CANADA
Fax: 1-613-834-2021
E-Mail: pet at web.net
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