[asia-apec 823] Van Sun: Fear of signs
David Webster
davidweb at interchange.ubc.ca
Fri Oct 23 03:03:30 JST 1998
Two from the Vancouver Sun:
-- Protest sign briefly closes APEC probe
-- Chretien resists calls to testify
Other news includes a poll finding BC'ers evently plit on RCMP actiosn
during last year's APEC summit, whilke other Canadians tend to support the
students. Nationally, 38% thought Mountie actions were reasonable, 47%
thought they went too far. In BC, the split was 49-42.
Last Updated: Thursday 22 October 1998 TOP STORIES
---------------------------------------------------------
Protest sign briefly closes APEC probe
The Vancouver Sun
Jeff Lee Vancouver Sun
The chair of the RCMP
Public Complaints
Commission into APEC
strongly rebuked
protesters who put up
several offensive
signs in the hearing
room Wednesday,
including one facing
the panel that said
"F--- APEC".
The protest, in which students Jaggi Singh and Jonathan
Oppenheim posted signs and cartoons on a column near
their desk they named the "Pillar of Democracy," shut
down the hearings for more than an hour.
Gerald Morin, chairman of the three-member panel,
ordered the signs removed. When the protesters refused
and added a mini-baseball bat to the posters while
television cameras filmed the action, Morin ordered
everyone out of the room and told two federal
commissionaires to remove the material.
Singh, Oppenheim and another protester, Mark Brooks,
refused to leave the room, which remained closed while
commission counsel Chris Considine met with the
protesters.
When the room reopened, the signs were gone and Morin
made it clear the panel will not tolerate any
demonstrations, especially ones designed to get media
attention.
In a tone that thinly hid considerable anger at the
demonstrators, Morin warned any further demonstrations
could lead to the hearings being closed to electronic
media.
He then ordered the cross-examination of CBC camera
operator Rob Douglas to resume. When Singh tried to
interrupt, Morin cut him off abruptly and ruled him out
of order. When Singh opened his mouth again, Morin
forcefully said: "NO!"
Singh and Oppenheim were two of the major organizers
behind student protests during the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation summit last year and have emerged as focal
points for media coverage of the inquiry. They are among
a number of protesters and students given standing at
the hearings and have the right to cross-examine
witnesses.
Both said they put the signs on the pillar because they
wanted to exercise their right of free speech. Singh
denied he was trying to show contempt for the hearing.
"I don't think exercising free speech is contemptuous of
anybody."
Oppenheim said he didn't think the protest would weaken
public support for the students because the issue of
free speech is central to the entire hearing.
The disruption came on a day when other protesters and
their lawyers returned to the hearings despite the fact
the federal government has repeatedly refused their
requests for legal funding.
The two events overshadowed continuing cross-examination
of Douglas, who was pepper-sprayed by Staff-Sergeant
Hugh Stewart during a roadblock-clearing incident at
Gate Six at the University of B.C.
Jim Williams, Stewart's lawyer, showed police videos of
protests at a fence-tearing where Douglas said he filmed
protesters being repeatedly pepper-sprayed.
But Williams said the police footage showed officers
sprayed protesters only twice -- once when the fence
came down and once when four protesters tried to crash a
barricade of police officers.
Williams plans to show more police films of the Gate Six
incident that he says will exonerate his client. In that
incident, CBC film shows Stewart opened fire with a
pepper-spray canister nine seconds after he gave a
warning to protesters to clear a roadblock.
Cameron Ward, a lawyer for 29 protesters who are members
of a group called Democracy Street, said he and several
lawyers from his office came back to the hearings
because Prime Minister Jean Chretien's remarks about
pepper spraying students being preferable to using
baseball bats and water cannons have helped galvanize
public support for the protesters.
The B.C. Federation of Labour and Ward have received
dozens of donations, and the federation now reports it
has collected about $65,000 that will go toward
representing the protesters .
Last updated: Thursday 22 October 1998 NATIONAL NEWS
---------------------------------------------------------
Chretien avoids question of his role in APEC security
-------------------------------------------------------
BRUCE CHEADLE
OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Jean
Chretien says he is eager to learn
the truth about any alleged police
wrongdoing during student protests
at last year's APEC summit in
Vancouver.
But he continued to avoid a direct
answer Wednesday about whether he will voluntarily
appear before the RCMP Public Complaints Commission to
explain his own role in the controversial security
arrangements.
"We want Canadians to know exactly what happened
there," Chretien said in the Commons in response to a
Reform demand that he testify.
"But I know that the Opposition, when they see the
commission making progress, they are afraid to know
the truth. We're not afraid of the truth at all,
because we know that if something wrong had been done
by the police, you know, we will be informed."
The commission has heard and seen video evidence this
week that RCMP officers gave nine seconds warning
before blasting protesters with pepper spray at the
summit site on the University of British Columbia
campus last November.
But the inquiry has yet to delve into evidence that
student demonstrators say shows the Prime Minister's
Office ordered the crackdown to save visiting
Indonesian dictator Suharto from political
embarrassment.
"We want to know about the prime minister's actions,
not the RCMP," Reform deputy leader Deborah Grey said.
"We know they're being investigated."
Members of the government continue to stress that the
inquiry must be allowed to do its job of examining the
role of police during the student protests. But they
are silent on the equally pressing allegation that the
crackdown was politically motivated and directed.
Reform MP Jim Abbott said Wednesday that RCMP sources
have told him the commission should have as evidence
"boxes and boxes" of police radio tapes or transcripts
from the summit.
Abbott says those tapes, allegedly containing repeated
references to Chretien's former director of operations
Jean Carle, have not been submitted to the inquiry.
"The people I have been speaking to said Jean Carle's
name was on and on and on (those tapes)," said Abbott.
"(Police) knew that he had the signature and the power
of the prime minister behind him."
Commission counsel Chris Considine said in Vancouver
he would only talk about evidence during the hearing.
"As you will have seen, we have not yet got to the
radio transcripts in any detail," said Considine.
"That will be coming up a little later and our
investigation in respect to transcripts and any other
documents is ongoing."
Carle and Chretien's current chief of staff, Jean
Pelletier, have volunteered to testify but it is
expected to be several months before they appear
before the commission.
Liberal solidarity on a decsion to deny federal
funding for lawyers representing the protesters at the
hearings was called into question by opposition MPs
when two Liberal backbenchers abstained in a vote on
an NDP motion on the matter Tuesday.
Neither Clifford Lincoln nor John Godfrey was talking
Wednesday about their decisions. Godfrey sprinted out
of a Liberal caucus meeting to avoid questions and
neither MP returned calls to their offices.
"They don't want to say anything in public," Grey
charged outside the Commons.
"They don't want to get the hook."
Liberal House leader Don Boudria replied the
government has "no lessons to learn from, of all
people, the Reform party on autocratic rule."
_ _ _
\ / "Long words Bother me."
\ / -- Winnie the Pooh
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