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Quebecers denounce treatment by Toronto police at G20
March in Montreal draws hundreds
By IRWIN BLOCK
As the G20 summit wrapped up in Seoul, hundreds of demonstrators marched through downtown Montreal yesterday to protest against the “rich countries club” and to denounce the “illegal and abusive repression” at the G20 summit in Toronto last June, when 1,100 people were arrested.
Organizers of last night’s march, a group called Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes, said Montrealers are concerned about heavy police presence for the Seoul summit.
“It was a very dynamic and festive march, but there are a lot of people who are still very angry,” about what happened in Toronto last June, said Mathieu Francoeur, a spokesperson for CLAC. Montreal police constable Anie Lemieux said the protest was mostly peaceful, although officers caught some protesters doing graffiti and one person was arrested for mischief.
Ninety Quebecers who went to the Toronto protests were arrested while sleeping on the floor at the graduate students’ union building of the University of Toronto.
Charges against them, including unlawful assembly and conspiracy, were eventually dropped. But complaints of abusive treatment and illegal arrest and detention are being investigated by the Ontario Independent Police Review Director.
And yesterday, several Quebecers who protested in Toronto testified about anti-Quebec, anti-French and sexist remarks at a hearing sponsored by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and National Union of Public and General Employees.
Here are some highlights from the testimonies:
Natalie Gray, 20, said she was at a peaceful protest outside a Toronto detention centre on June 27 when without warning she was shot twice with rubber bullets, arrested, charged with obstructing police and jailed for 30 hours.
An asthmatic, Gray put a painter’s respirator over her face, fearing some kind of chemical might be used.
“It was then I was shot in the sternum, then in the elbow.” Later, she said, she was strip-searched in jail by four female officers, one of whom threatened to “cut my piercings out of my face.”
Jenny James, 31, a Latin American Studies student at McGill University, discussed her efforts June 26 to take an injured and bleeding demonstrator to hospital, who was released later with stitches and a concussion. “The fact that police did not respond to our request for help and did nothing was disgraceful.”
On June 27, at a rally at the detention centre, James sat down to protest against arrests there by undercover cops.
“Instead of asking people to disperse, they began charging into the crowd, kicking people who were on the ground.
“I kept backing up, yelling ‘This is a peaceful protest,’ and police started firing rubber bullets.”
She was not arrested.
Catherine Durand, 20, a CEGEP de St. Laurent student, was three days short of completing an intensive English course in Toronto when she happened to be walking in downtown Toronto.
At 1 a.m., she and some friends were stopped and their bags searched. She was dressed in black and in her bag they found an apple and a plastic gun bought by a friend at a Dollarama “as a joke” and dumped in her backpack.
She was arrested, manhandled, ended up with “a basketball-size bruise” on her behind, and told to speak English. In detention, she said, officers sang “Voulezvous coucher avec moi?”
One officer who accompanied her to court seemed nice at first, and said, “all I really want to do is smoke a joint.”
“He said, ‘You Montreal girls are really cute. If you want, the next time I’m in Montreal we can get together.’ "
As a result of her three-day ordeal, she was unable to complete the six-week course. She also lost 17 pounds.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Quebecers+denounce+treatment+Toronto+police/3823404/story.html#ixzz15Bnu28S6
Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Quebecers+denounce+treatment+Toronto+police/3823404/story.html