Project Accompaniment and Solidarity Colombia

PROTEST THE CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT IN TORONTO

The highest number of arrest in the history of Canada

Montreal – Demonstration against repression and in solidarity with the arrestees of the G20

Thursday, July 1st, 1pm - Carré St-Louis Square St-Louis

(St-Denis & Rue du Square St-Louis, Sherbrooke metro)

Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Québec and others cities will also be holding solidarity demonstrations

In the face of police violence, attacks against our protesters of resistance and arrests without president of the anti-G20, the CLAC 2010 - the Anticapitalist Convergence - calls out to all social movements to mobilize and act in solidarity with the victims of the repressive systems who have fallen in the hands of military police.

More than 900 have been arrested during the end of the week in Toronto either by kidnapping, political profiling, raids in private residences and places of accomodation, violence, brutality, intimidation, as well as varying assaults. To date, this is the largest number of arrestations in the history of KKKanada, and has been effective towards the protestors who have expressed their disagreements towards the capitalist, security enforced, sexist,colonialist and anti-social politics of the G20 and their large financial interests in the world.

MONTREAL DEMO THURSDAY JULY 1ST

CLAC 2010 denounces the magnitude of the police repression that has arrived in Toronto during the G20 summit as something never seen before in KKKanada. The police violence has added with it the anouncements of different measures within economic austerity(cutbacks in deficits, rising taxes, cuts in social services) that constitute even more economic violence directed against the population. The workers are called to pay the bills for the last finacial crisis, all the while the banks and financial sectors who are responsable and who benefit over 20 000 billion dollars survive off their economic stimulus plan without imposing any new regulations.

The 900 arbitrary and political arrestations in Toronto never seen in the history of KKKanada, came close to three times more than that of October 1970. The police violated the fundamental rights, detaining people for hours without formal charges, without accesibility to contacting legal help, and without food or water for extended periods of time. The police were guilty of breaking and entering without a warrant, profiling, intimidation, assault, kidnapping, using extreme measures of force against the protestors, as well as journalists. We see that the police state and the economic violence go hand in hand.

Each day everywhere in the world people are dying from direct social and economic political consequences put into place by the elite that were gathered together in this illegitimate instance that we know as the G20. The proudly announced deficit cutbacks do little more than make worse the conditions of millions of people in the world. Stephen Harper has remembered that the given objective was to maintain and reassure the financial markets. Nothing about the environment, crumbs for womens health, nothing around the social consequences of the economic crisis, where migrant are the first victims. All of this to consider once again that capitalism, is an economic system that prvilidges the smallest minority at the expense of the larger majority.

During the weekend inside the detention centre in downtown Toronto, women arrestees around the age of 17-25 experienced instances of sexual harassment, threat and sexual profiling. One woman who later spoke to the public witnessed a woman traumatised from intimidation and sexual violence imposed by police officers inside the detention center itself. Other detainees experienced threats of gang bang and rape that the police insured would advance their retirement from political and apolitical activities. Also, many LGBTQ folks were segregated from the rest of the arrestees and put in a separate cell only for them.

We were witnesses to the lock down of dissidence and criminilization of social movements in Toronto. This is a well known tactic to divide the populations, break the resistance and impose regressive politics. We have climbed over a new step in the intensifying police repression and in the demanded concessions of the people.

La CLAC 2010 is hosting a demo thursday July 1st 2010 12pm at Carré St-Louis, in front of Sherbrooke metro.

We invite all social and progressive movements, families and childern, to this grand demo that will be ending with a baby block.

CLAC -convergance des luttes anticapitaliste is a network of groups and individuals who unite together to consolidate their respective struggles at a local level and mobilize their communities in the face of the G8 and G20

Video compilations of resistance during the G20 summit can be found @ www.clac2010.net