The protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas
agreement during the Summit of Americas meeting have long since
ended. Nevertheless, reporting on some of the specifics of the
police repression that occurred during the protests has been
slim to non-existent in the states (look out for upcoming
NYC-IMC media critique). Thus, the following report details
some of the anectdotal stories of police terror that
characterized the weekend's worth of protests. All of the
stories were eye-witnessed by the author of the article, who
was reporting on the scene in Quebec City.

POLICE VIOLENCE REIGNED TERROR UPON QUEBEC CITY
DURING PEACEFUL ANTI-FTAA DEMONSTRATIONS

Quebec City, Canada: Anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 demonstrators converged into Quebec City during the weekend of April 20-22 to voice their opposition against the 3rd Summit of the Americas, where the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement was negotiated (FTAA). Despite the prevailing peaceful atmosphere of most, if not all of the demonstrations and protests, the police response that ensued became a virtual nightmare of police terror, as arsenals of tear gas, concussion grenades and plastic bullets were unleashed without mercy against demonstrators, citizens, bystanders and journalists alike. This police response was a collective display of massive police violence and repression, which unfolded throughout the weekend. Incidents included the tear-gassing of medical clinics, nursing homes and media centers, whileeven babies were not exempt from the brutal police actions.

Street Medic Describes Worst Police Violence He Had Seen

Dr. Leo Rosen of the Colorado Street Medics described the police repression bluntly: "Never, in my 36 years of experience as a medical doctor and as a street medic during which time I have been to hundreds of demonstrations, have I seen the level of violence used against peaceful protests by the police that I have seen here in Quebec City this weekend."

Well before the summit, the Financial Times reported that the most elaborate security operation in Canadian history would be undertaken for the protests. (April 10) During what was a $30 million quasi-military operation, the Chicago Independent Media Center reported that the three police departments who provided security to the FTAA meetings confirmed that they fired approximately 1700 canisters of tear gas into crowds over the weekend (other estimates ranged as high as 5,000 - or over 1 per minute). The excessive use of tear gas was planned all along, as a confidential planning document for the police obtained by the Independent Media Center revealed. Although the document never directly mentioned tear gas, it did specifically detail how riot police would take over different areas depending upon the wind direction.
Following the protests, Quebec's public security minister, Serge Menard, declared that "Quebec can be very proud the way we handled this summit." These words conflict sharply, however, with those of the human rights observers that were dispersed among the protesters. "Many [protesters] were severely and unnecessarily injured, including one who had to have an emergency tracheotomy," said Andre Paradis, head of the Quebec Civil Rights League, an organization that had enlisted dozens of observers throughout the weekend to document and record all abuses of authority.

Eric Laferrière, a Quebec resident who "may have been rendered mute by a plastic bullet," as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported on April 24, "was hit by two plastic bullets from close range, one in the wrist and one in the throat . . . [as a result] he may never speak again." According to Dr. Rosen, Laferrière "could have died," as Rosen explained the manufacturer of the plastic bullets clearly stated on their web site that if shot above the waist, the bullets can be lethal. Indeed, a manufacturer's warning on a tear gas canister confirmed that not only plastic bullets are potentially lethal, but tear gas as well (i.e. "If aimed directly at persons, serious injury or death may result.").

Police Violence and Repression was Rampant and Widespread

Even as police official Robert Poeti boasted, "The last couple of days have shown indisputably that tear gas is an efficient and effective way to disperse crowds who have tried to breach the perimeter," incidents such as the one that occurred at Saint Jean and Saint Genevieve, as well as on avenue Turnbull and rue Lockwell, contradicted such pronouncements. At these places tear gas was not used for protesters who had tried to breach the perimeter but instead was used against peaceful demonstrators as well as bystanders not even involved with the protests.

Nursing Home Gassed

During the first day of protests around 6:00pm, police came dangerously close to permanently injuring elderly local Quebecois residents at the intersection of avenue Turnbull and rue Lockwell. The intersection is three long city blocks away from the perimeter at Rene-Levesque, as well as one block downhill. Yet the considerable distance between this intersection and the perimeter did not stop police from chasing peaceful protesters down the hill of avenue Turnbull even as they continued to fire tear gas at them.

Ivan Wylander is a student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who came with a Green Party contingent from his school. He stated his disapproval of the police tactics that had been undertaken:

Who knows if they have evacuated these people out of the nursing home already. I would hope they would at least do that if they were planning on launching tear gas. There are a lot of medical conditions that elderly people may have, such as asthma, which could put them in grave danger. How many people are on respirators in that home . . . who knows?

Indeed, Wylander's fears were not misplaced, as the same tear gas canisters that were turning his own eyes red would wind up entering the hallways of the Residence Grande-Alle, a nursing home at avenues Turnbull and rue Lockwell. During a phone interview conducted that evening, the nurse on duty at the home revealed that the police did not warn the residents of the tear gas deployment and as a result, the residents could not be evacuated beforehand. As a result, the nurses did not know that they needed to close all the windows in the building. Indeed one window was left open during the tear gas assault which allowed the noxious fumes to enter the residence, resulting in a number of elderly people coughing and wheezing throughout the afternoon and on into the night. Although one nurse reported no permanent injuries were suffered, one person did die from a heart attack at the nursing home that afternoon. No one can know for sure, if there was a connection between the death and the police violence, but the Chicago Independent Media Center had this to say about the incident:

The guard then talked . . . of how this was an old age home, full of old people, who could see everything happening from inside . . . The woman, like everyone else, was scared witless. And she had an attack. So out the door her body went, draped in shadows and a baby blue sack, a casualty certain not to make the late night news roster of police bruises and resisters' arrests, of spray painted convenience stores and a torn-down chain-link fence. She watched the clash of youth in black and police in green fatigues, she watched it from where she lived and died.

Medical Clinic and Media Center Targeted
The nursing home was not the only neutral site to be victimized by atrocious police aggression. Dr. Rosen testified during the press conference that the medical clinic had its windows broken by police who fired and subsequently broke the windows of the clinic with an exploding tear gas canister that contaminated the whole clinic late at night during the second day of protests. As a result, the clinic was forced to suspend its operations and move down the hill to the Center for Media Alternatives in Quebec (CMAQ, or the Independent Media Center of Quebec City).
CMAQ itself was yet another neutral site that was targeted by the police. Cliff Pearson from the local Direct Action Network group, Uproar, told reporters about how "around 11pm, about 20 cops fired plastic bullets down the stairs into the foyer. They hit one activist in the leg, who was treated by medics." Pearson added that CMAQ had to subsequently barricade their offices against the police and fast encroaching tear gas.

"Worse than Seattle"
Earlier during the day that proceeded the tear gas bombing of the clinic, rue Saint Jean was marred by police violence as well. On an ordinary weekend, Saint Jean would be a bohemian hodge-podge of eclectic stores, bars, restaurants and night clubs. During the chilly Saturday afternoon of the second day of protests, this street became a hot spot of action as Saint Jean was turned on its face, as almost every business was boarded up while its respective residents, who were just beyond the fence perimeter, were continually subjected to tear gas and concussion grenades throughout the day. By 4:00 pm, protesters, who were apparently frusterated with the relentless barrage of tear gas by the police, tore down the metal chain link fence that stood above another fence in front of a cemetery. This prompted police to launch yet another flurry of tear gas grenades but not before the fence had been completely torn down. Nevertheless, the fence to the the cemetery itself remained and completely blocked access to anyone clearing the perimeter. This was not enough for the police though, who effectively disallowed peaceful protest in this area.

The police demanded and instructed the peaceful protesters, who far outnumbered those who had torn down the fence, to move away from the cemetery and down the street of Saint Jean. The protesters complied and began a peaceful sit-in at the intersection of Saint Jean and Saint Genevieve.

I was at this intersection and spoke with Elaine Briere during the sit-in. Briere is a internationally traveled photojournalist and human rights advocate. As she showed me a huge bruise from being shot with a plastic bullet, she stated quite simply "this weekend has definitely been worse than the police violence I saw in Seattle." I was taken aback by this and when I asked her if she really felt that way she reaffirmed, "oh yeah, definitely." Interestingly, even though I had witnessed a significant amount of police violence at this point of the protests, I still had not seen anything quite as remarkable as what was about to take place only moments after my conversation with Briere.

Despite the fact that the protesters had complied with police orders and were clearly beyond the perimeter (one city block beyond it to the east and one block beyond it to the south), riot cops began fiercely descending upon this pacifist contingent of protesters [including a nine-year old child] [use italics on words in brackets]. The sit-in was broken in half when the police, suddenly and without any verbal warning whatsoever, trampled across the people while repeatedly firing concussion grenades [directly at demonstrators]. Just seconds beforehand, about 500 protesters had been singing and holding peace signs in the air while sitting in the intersection. The street medic clinic reported that dozens of injuries were received from this incredibly unprovoked and brutal offensive by the police. The half of the sit-in that was pushed down Saint Jean was less lucky than the other half pushed down Saint Genevieve, as these demonstartors were subjected to a line of riot cops who the police continued to fire away at with concussion grenades while banging their night sticks on top of their shields at retreating protesters.

I was with the group that retreated two city blocks from the firing of the concussion grenades, as was a Canadian ex-patriot, whom I spoke with just minutes after this incident. The woman, who now lives in California, said she had returned to Canada for these protests and "did not expect the cops to be this way, I thought they were this way only in the States," while sobbing, "I am sorry, I am trembling right now, but I have to say that I am so ashamed of my country today. They have effectively made peaceful protest illegal these last two days. What they just did to us now is just one of many examples."

Journalists, Activists both brutalized by the police:
"I have been treated better than this during wars," a photographer said

Jaggi Singh, a visible organizer with CLAC, and Chip East, a photographer who was assigned to photograph the summit by the Sipa Press agency for Time magazine, were both arrested and brutalized by the police in the protests during the Summit. In Singh's case, who was arrested only hours after the protests first began on April 20, no one knew his whereabouts until the late evening of the first day of the protests, and thus at one point, the legal team reported that he had been kidnapped by the police.

Naomi Klein is a chronicler of the anti-corporate globalization movement and author of a book journalist Marc Cooper calls the political manifesto of the movement, No Logo. She spoke with six witnesses of Singh's kidnapping which was only later to have found out to have been an arrest: "All say Mr. Singh was standing around talking to friends, urging them to move further away from the breached security fence. They said he was trying to de-escalate the police stand off." Mike Staudenmaier, an American activist who was talking to Mr. Singh immediately before he was taken, said Jaggi told him that "it was getting too tense," right before Singh was grabbed from behind and then surrounded by three large men. "They were all dressed like activists," said Helen Nazon to Klein, a 23 year old from Quebec City. "They pushed Jaggi on the ground and kicked him. It was really violent."

"Then they dragged him off" said Michele Luellen. Nazon also spoke with CMAQ reporter David Creighton, whom she told that police "picked Jaggi up, dragged him into an unmarked panel van . . . and sped away."

Klein reported further that:

All the witnesses told me that when Mr. Singh`s friends closed in to try to rescue him, the men dressed as activists pulled out long batons, beat back the crowd and identified themselves: 'Police!' they shouted. 'Police!' Then they threw him into a beige van and drove off. Several of the young activists have open cuts where they were hit.

Indeed, Singh was not only held in custody during the protests on April 20, but wound up spending almost 3 weeks in the Orsainville jail which is right outside of Quebec City. Singh's trial is set for June 4. He is charged with possession of a deadly weapon and inciting a riot. The weapon he is charged with using is a catapult used to launch teddy bears. The creators of the teddy-bear launching catapult, however, have all signed a declaration stating that Singh had nothing to do with the creation or the organization of the catapult.

According to an April 23rd report from the CBC, after having cleared "five check points within the security zone at the summit," a photographer was arrested and charged with "assaulting a police officer and participating in a riot." That photographer was Chip East. From prison, East remarked that he has covered far more dangerous situations, such as when he "was in the Balkans for the Kosovo war." However, East said that he was "better treated" in those situations than he had been "here in Canada." East was detained for at least over a week (the last report said he was in prison at least through April 28).

East was not the only journalist that was victimized. Many others were as well, including myself. Although I was not arrested, I was tear gassed at nearly point blank range during the middle of an interview, late at night on April 21 on Cote d'Abraham (a street the CMAQ headquarters was on). Even though I was wearing a gas mask, the extent of the gas was so great that it leaked into my mask. "Your face is almost as black as a miner's face," one medic told me. "Oh my god, you are totally contaminated," said another medic. I was treated for over an hour before I could walk again, yet the burning remained for days afterwards.

Condemnations of the police violence rang far and wide even as the president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions' Central Council of Metropolitan Montreal, Arthur Sandborn, demanded compensation for those who were injured in what he described as a "completely unconstitutional event." CNTU is demanding an independent public inquiry into the use of force by police during protests.

Anti-corporate globalization effectively made illegal, yet again

The protests against the Summit are often dubbed as "Seattle, without the surprise." Indeed, the protests are part of the same growing anti-corporate globalization movement that is consistently staging massive demonstrations wherever any of the major neo-liberal institutions meet. In the case of Quebec City, it was the first time that plastic bullets were used and vulnerable targets such as babies and medical clinics were exploited.

Disturbingly, however, is the pattern that has been present at all of these demonstrations. The most brutal uses of "less-lethal" weaponry (as the manufacturer has described it) and force have been used at every one of these protests. As a result, peaceful protest during neo-liberal summits have effectively been made all but officially illegal. M-J Milloy of the Montreal Hour (April 26), a reporter who was on the scene and gassed during the protests, wrote that "if the truest measure of a democracy is how it handles dissent, this weekend's police actions – the truest indicator of the values of the people . . . behind the barricades – are revealing." Indeed, the police violence during the Summit was revealing and all too similar to the violence against anti-corporate globalization protests in the past, giving little indication to believe that such violence will not continue into the future as well.