[Indigsol] Fwd: [CPTNET] RAPID LAKE, QUEBEC: Government responds to Algonquin demands with police violence

[kim mackrael]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: CPTNET: the news service of CPT <cptnet at mailman.cpt.org>
Date: 2008/10/9
Subject: [CPTNET] RAPID LAKE, QUEBEC: Government responds to Algonquin
demands with police violence
To: cptnet at mailman.cpt.org


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CPTnet
October 9, 2008
*RAPID LAKE, QUEBEC: Government responds to Algonquin demands with police
violence*

At 5:30 a.m., on 6 October 2008, seventy-five members of the Barrière Lake
Algonquin First Nations (BLAFN) along with twenty non-native supporters set
up a nonviolent blockade on Hwy 117, approximately 300 km north of
Ottawa/Gatineau.  The Algonquins were calling on the federal and provincial
governments to honour a resource-sharing agreement signed twenty years ago,
and to respect their customary governance structures.  They dragged logs
across the highway, and set up 'lockboxes': cement-filled barrels designed
to allow individuals to insert their arms so that the authorities cannot
easily pull people participating in a public witness away from a site.
Three members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were present as human rights
observers.

Upon the arrival of Quebec Provincial Police (QPP) personnel, police liaison
Norman Matchewan, requested that they call government authorities who are
supposed to negotiate with the community.  Eventually, the police informed
the blockade participants that they had called in SWAT team from Montreal.
CPTers introducing themselves as human rights observers were informed that
they could be arrested.

As the day wore on, traffic backed up along the highway.  Several truckers
accepted invitations to attend the fires at the blockade site and partake in
tea and coffee.  At 15:48, a SWAT team arrived equipped with helmets, gas
masks, and batons.  After ordering everyone to vacate the highway, the SWAT
team began to push people off and set off two canisters of tear gas although
demonstrators and observers repeatedly informed them that they were
protesting peacefully and that seniors and children were present.  A
disabled child and an elder were hit directly by the gas canisters.

After they cleared most blockaders from the highway, police surrounded the
lockboxes, impeding the view of observers.  They threatened CPTers
attempting to gain a view with arrest.  The police chose to use coercive
techniques to force people to remove their arms from the lockboxes.  CPTers
observed a police officer with his hands around the neck of a woman locked
into these barrels.  Later a demonstrator said the police officers used
"pain compliance" techniques on him, making him release himself by jabbing
their fingers into pressure points in his nose, throat, and Adam's apple.  A
seventeen-year-old participant said that when she refused to comply with a
request to remove her hand from the lockbox, an officer began to pinch the
underside of her arm and did not stop even when she said she would release
herself.

Police arrested nine people, including an elder.  One elder said the police
response reminded him of the residential school experience in that
government is forcibly and actively destroying his culture.  He said that
for the children present this attack would leave scars that would never
heal.

People wishing to see a slide show of the events at the blockade will find
it at http://www.flickr.com/photos/31135244@N07/sets/72157607795831835/show/

----------------------------------------------

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trained peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict.

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