Two well know US activists were stopped at by Canadian Immigration Sunday as they tried to enter Ottawa. Starhawk and Lisa Fifthian flew into Canada Sunday night prepared to give non-violent civil-disobedience and direct-action trainings for the upcoming protests against globalization in Ottawa.

Ottawa invited the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to meet there this week when their scheduled summit in Washington, DC was cancelled after the September 11 attacks.

After five hours of questioning, Fifthian was ordered to leave Canada, or face arrest. She refused to leave and was arrested Monday. Immigration authorities also seized Starhawk’s computer and sent it to Canadian intelligence for examination.

Ontario activists reacted by protesting Fifthian’s arrest at the airport – resulting in the arrest of Toronto activist, Shel Goldstein.

Starhawk and Fifthian are familiar to many anti-globalization organizers for their non-violent direct-action trainings. For the Quebec FTAA protests, they helped with trainings in Montreal and Quebec City.

Starhawk reports that Canada’s actions show two obvious directions:

1) The so-called anti-terrorism policies and upcoming laws will be used more against domestic dissidents than actually opposing terrorism.

2) The new priorities of the State is the free flow of capital across boarders, and the greater restriction and control of people across the same boarders.

We might add that neither corporate globalization or unbridled war against poor countries like Afghanistan, could succeed without the global repression of dissent.

Solidarity is needed.

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