Charges Against Sison Dropped

Dutch prosecutors drop false murder rap against poet and Filipino people's leader for lack of evidence

by J.D. Benjamin
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

Prof. Sison and his supporters are celebrating the decision of the Dutch prosecutors to end their year and a half long investigation into his alleged involvement in the murders of two military assets working for the Philippine government. Sison is a poet, writer and activist living in exile in the Netherlands.

"I've long expected the decision to be dismissed because in the first place I'm innocent of the charge," Sison said during a press conference.

The accusation was a result of false information fed by the Philippine government of current President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is eager to silence one of her most prominent opponents. The false charges were an attempt to distract Sison from his role as chairman of the International League of Peoples' Struggles, a coalition of democratic and anti-imperialist people's organizations from around the world, as well as his work as a political consultant for the National Democratic Front (NDF). The NDF has been fighting a 40-year-long civil war against the brutal and corrupt government of the Philippines.

Despite the clearing of Sison, the legal harassment against him has not ended. The Arroyo regime has announced that they will seek extradition of Sison, despite his recognized status as a political refugee.

Sison has announced his plans to sue Dutch prosecutors for legal costs as well as moral and material damages.

Montreal City Steps Up Repression

Basics Free Community Newsletter
28 January 2009

Wearing a face covering is legal. Attending a public demonstration is also legal. However, if Montreal city council gets it's way doing these two perfectly legal things at the same time would have you under arrest. A new bylaw currently being debated would specifically ban the wearing of face coverings while attending a public demonstration, even if no laws are being broken by any protesters.

The bylaw is designed to target the city's left wing forces. In an interview with CBC Radio Paul Chapelo, head of communications for Montreal Police, specifically mentioned anti-police brutality demonstrations as being one of the motivations for the bylaw.

Montreal has had increasingly militant resistance to police violence, especially since the cops murdered Fred Villanueva, an unarmed 18 year old, last August. Montreal police are known to engage in widespread racial profiling and assaults on the homeless.

Protesters wear masks in order to protect themselves from repression by the state, as the police regularly monitor, harass, and arrest on false charges people they know to be activists. Others fear they may lose their jobs if their employer finds out they attended a demonstration. Masks are also used by performers engaged in creative street theater.

Even though the bylaw is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the constitution (the prevention of crime is not within the jurisdiction of a municipality), it is likely to pass as the mayor's party has a majority on the council. In another troubling move, Montreal city council also considering a bylaw that would make it an offense to "insult the police" by using terms like "pig" or "doughnut eater".

People from all over Canada should protest this offense against civil liberties. If the bylaw is passed and upheld in Montreal, we will see similar laws enacted across the country.

Philippine State Tries New Tactic to Crush People’s Movement

Mass arrests and harassment charges being used against legal mass activists in Southern Tagalog

Issue #12 (Jan/Feb 2009)

Mass organizations across the Philippines and their allies around the world are condemning the persecution of legal democratic activists in the Southern Tagalog region by current Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

72 leaders of people’s organizations in the region have had false charges of multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder and arson slapped against them by the Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), an agency created by Arroyo. 6 of the charged are currently being held in prison. The charges are an attempt to derail the people’s movement against Arroyo by keeping their leaders busy fighting legal harassment.

The accused are alleged to have participated in a raid carried out by the New People’s Army in Puerto Galera, Mindoro Oriental on March 3, 2006. The legal team for the accused called the charges ridiculous, saying that “the judge did not even bother to check if there was probable cause... There is not an iota of evidence.”

This new tactic is the third method that current Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has adopted to try to cling to power. Widely despised for her corruption and electoral fraud, the Arroyo regime first tried to quell the opposition through targeted assassination of leaders in the people’s movement. Since coming to power in 2001, over 977 legal mass activists have been murdered by death squads that are mainly composed of military intelligence agents.

This tactic only further alienated the people and drew international condemnation, so the Arroyo regime switched to the method favoured by the Argentinian dictatorship of the 1970s: forced disappearances. Human rights organizations in the Philippines have documented 201 victims of enforced disappearances, where activist leaders would be snatched off the street by government agents, shoved into a vehicle and never seen again. Many were tortured and killed, their bodies hidden. The government would then deny ever having the victim in custody.
Fortunately for the people, nobody was fooled. The national and international outrage against the worst human right record of any Philippine government since the Marcos dictatorship only intensified. Unable to stifle the movement at home or the embarrassment abroad, the Arroyo regime is test driving the new tactic of harassment through false charges in the Souther Tagalog region. If it succeeds, it will be expanded across the Philippines.

“What the Arroyo regime could no longer accomplish through extra-judicial killings and abductions, it now tries to achieve through the filing of non-bailable criminal charges,” said Dr. Carol Pagaduan-Araulo, chairperson of Bayan. “The objective is clearly to neutralize the activist leaders by detaining them illegally or forcing them to go into hiding. At the same time, there is the intention to terrorize the remaining leaders, activists and the political mass base of progressive organizations and party-list groups.”

It is critical that people across Canada condemn the arrests in Southern Tagalog. The Arroyo regime is desperate to avoid the exposure of its crimes against the people and has shown that that it is vulnerable to international pressure. This tactic has already drawn criticism from the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, who called on the Arroyo regime to abolish the IALAG. We call on everyone to raise this issue in their union, their church, with local politicians – anywhere where support for the rights of the Filipino people can be found. The Arroyo regime can and must be forced to respect human rights!
These Southern Tagalog activists and one other have been imprisoned: Atty. Remigio Saladero, Nestor San Jose, Crispin Zapanta, Rogelio Galit, Arnaldo Seminiano, and Emmanuel Dionida.

“Terrorist” or Scapegoat? Youth Set Up, Convicted of Terrorism Charges

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan Basics #11 (November 2008)

We can all breathe a sigh of relief. Canada just convicted its first “terrorist” in September, and there will likely be more to come. The twenty-year-old man (who was seventeen at the time of his arrest and cannot be named) never endangered anyone’s life, never damaged any property, never made or used explosives, never used a weapon, did not produce any terrorist plans and did not even know about any specific terror plot. However, he did get caught red-handed shoplifting. He was also a Muslim convert.

So how was the youth convicted on charges of terrorism? It was done by altering the whole criminal justice system through new legislation (Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act), which was zealously passed after 9/11 and renewed shortly after the dramatic arrest of the convicted youth and 17 other Muslim boys and men in June of 2006 (the widely sensationalized and discussed ‘Toronto 18’). The Act created an entirely new category of criminal (“the terrorist”) whose crimes are motivated for religious or political reasons, and so requires investigation into the intention of the suspect, who he associates with and what he believes in. Such a directive is inherently prejudicial in application and promotes racist profiling. In addition, the new law also broadly defines what a “terrorist group” is, so less evidence is needed of any offence by the group and proof as flimsy as planning or even discussion of certain actions becomes the basis for conviction. This is particularly troubling because of the role played by two paid government informants in the ‘Toronto 18’ group, including the purchasing and storing of the alleged bomb making material, and possibly entrapping and encouraging the 18 arrested. These two rats were collectively paid over 4 million dollars for their “public service”!

Prosecutors were able to get a successful conviction simply because the judge believed a terrorist conspiracy existed and the youth happened to attend two camps with the alleged “conspirators”. It is sort of like guilt by association, except that the “conspirators” themselves have not been convicted of any crime.

The conviction of the youth is just another example of Canada legislating and legalizing state terror against Arab and Muslim communities, whether it’s security certificates that allow for indefinite detention of non-citizens, facilitated torture of citizens in foreign prisons, hyper surveillance of Muslim and Arab communities, hundreds of illegal detentions of Muslims and Arabs on a daily basis, or Canada’s murderous contributions in war in Afghanistan. This terror conviction, and the mass arrest of the ‘Toronto 18’ over two years ago, have and will continue to serve as justification for these various attacks on Muslim people, at home and abroad.

Ten of the eighteen arrested in 2006 remain in jail awaiting trial, and three of those men continue to be brutally held in solitary confinement since that time! The lawyers of the convicted youth plan to appeal the terror ruling in December. Regardless of the outcome, the current conviction has served to amplify fear in Muslim, Arab and other vulnerable communities – who fear the real terror that will be unleashed by Canadian security agencies invigorated by their first successful terrorist conviction.

Omar Khadr: Scapegoat for Canada’s War in Afghanistan

by Justin Panos
Basics #11 (November 2008)

October 28 of this year marks Omar Khadr’s sixth year as a detainee of America’s concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The detention centre is declared by the United States to be sovereign US territory (even though it is part of mainland Cuba).

Khadr, a Canadian citizen born in Toronto, was captured in a skirmish between Afghan civilians and US soldiers in an Afghan village in July 2002. It is claimed that Khadr threw a grenade that killed a US soldier. Khadr was found huddled in terror by the armed soldiers and was promptly shot twice in the back. Omar, now 21, is the youngest detainee at the highly securitized and secretive prison establishment. He has been there since he was 15 years old and has neither been charged with a crime nor faced a judge or jury of his peers.

The Canadian government expresses their international solidarity with the US government’s war crimes and disregard for international laws and conventions that both countries worked together to legislate after World War II in response to the Nazi onslaught of Europe.
As Human Rights Watch points out in their 2007 report “The Omar Khadr Case: A Teenager Imprisoned at Guantanamo”, “both U.S. and international law requires governments to provide children (persons under the age of 18) with special safeguards and care, including legal protections appropriate to their age.”

There have been widespread reports of torture and ill treatment towards Khadr as well as many other detainees in the facility. Many have begun to question if the confessions that have been obtained by U.S. officials at Guantanamo can be taken seriously when so many of its detainees are subject to various forms of torture.

One report documents one of Khadr’s days at the jail: “At Guantanamo, Khadr was beaten; drugged; ridiculed; subjected to sleep deprivation; subjected to solitary confinement and sensory deprivation; choked repeatedly to the point of passing out; force-fed and beaten after he participated in a detainee hunger strike; and, in one oft-cited incident, denied the use of a bathroom until he lost control of his bladder and was used as a “human mop” to clean up the puddle of urine, then refused a change of clothes for two days.”

An expose by Rolling Stone magazine points towards the psychological effects that Khadr’s rendition and subsequent torture have left him with: “He cried frequently. [ . . . ] His appetite diminished; he took on the appearance of the permanently malnourished. He entered what clinicians call a state of hyper vigilance: He started thinking he might be attacked at any time - without reason, his heart rate would jump, and he would sweat and hyperventilate. He began hearing sounds - screams, bombs, things he could not identify - when the cellblock was silent.”
Khadr’s case, however, is not unique in that Canada falsely surveilled, detained, and transferred another innocent civilian to the United States without questioning the U.S.’s terrible human rights policies. Maher Arar was tortured for one year in Syria after being transferred there by the United States and Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has shown callous disregard for the safety of this man, the rights of Canadian children in international disputes, and an altogether hostile and demonizing attitude towards Muslim peoples in Canada.

On July 15th, Kory Teneycke, the prime minister’s director of communications, told CBC News that “Mr. Khadr faces serious charges. There is a judicial process underway to determine Mr. Khadr’s fate. This should continue.”

This statement was delivered despite the growing evidence of torture, the lack of due process, and denial of fundamental rights that most would be led to believe that children possess.

In 2007, a Federal judge ruled that Canada has violated numerous doctrines of international law by withholding documents about Khadr’s captivity that might prove his innocence. The refusal to release the documents on the grounds of ‘national security’ have been called by some as ‘embarrassing’ as well as ‘illegal’.

Recently, the widow of the dead US soldier won $94 million in a civil suit against the estate of Khadr’s father. It was said that Khadr’s action was an act of terrorism and not an act of war. American law does not allow civil suits against acts of war and the lawsuit was the first of its kind against an act of terrorism. This has raised numerous ethical and judicial questions about the definition of terrorism. How has Khadr been sued for terrorism but not found guilty of such a crime?

Is it not a morally repulsive irony that thousands of Afghanis are being bombed and terrorized by Canadians forces, indiscriminately killed in the thousands, and Omar Khadr is sued for $94 million for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? The injustice of the Omar Khadr case is proving to be a very useful way to try to convince Canadians that some of their citizens are terrorists – born right here in Toronto! – and thus that the occupation of foreign lands and wars against foreign peoples are justified. Justice for Omar Khadr would be a serious blow to Canada’s pro-war propaganda offensive and would thus be a step in the direction of justice for all victims of Canada’s role in the “War on Terror”, be they Afghani citizens, Canadian soldiers coming back in body bags, or working-class Canadians who are paying for these wars from which only the rich are benefiting.
Justice for Omar Khadr now!

Philippine Legislators Tour Canada for Human Rights

by J.D. Benjamin
Basics Issue #9 (May 2008)

Three Philippine Congresspeople – Satur Ocampo, Crispin Beltran, and Luz Illagan – conducted a cross-Canada tour in April, meeting with local communities, academics, journalists, and politicians to help raise awareness of the rampant human rights abuses in the Philippines.

Since current President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took power in 2001, over 900 activists have been killed and 180 forcibly disappeared. Ocampo and Beltran were victims of abuses through repeated criminal prosecutions based on fabricated evidence and false testimony provided by government agents. These and other abuses have been condemned by UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Philip Alston, man countries and numerous international human rights organizations.

The tour featured public events and press conferences in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, a presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, and a meeting with Manitoba premier Gary Doer.The legislators called on the Canadian government to review the foreign aid going to the Philippines to find out if any funds had been used by the Arroyo regime in its campaign of violence.

Bern Jagunos of the Stop The Killing Network echoed the call, saying, “It’s appalling to think that Canadian taxes may have contributed to the intimidation, detention, torture and executions of innocent people.”

Philippine activists have noted a decrease in the number of killings in the past year and credit increased international attention. Ocampo told Canadian parliamentarians, “The resolute efforts of human rights and people’s organizations, religious groups, and progressive political parties to document cases and bring them up to the United Nations, international bodies, governments and Parliaments paid off in 2007 [and] largely contributed to the noticeable decline in the killings and abductions.”

With $1.5 billion in bilateral trade, $1 billion worth of mining projects, 32 different development programs, and a military and police assistance program that has members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police receiving training in Canada, our government is heavily involved in the Philippines. We must demand that the Canadian government withdraw its assistance to the Arroyo regime and respect human rights of Filipinos!

Sadly, on the morning of May 20, after suffering head injuries due to a tragic accident at his home, Crispin Beltran died in hospital later that day. ‘Ka Bel’, as he was known, will be dearly missed by all Filipinos as their memory of him gives strength to their struggle. ∗






Crispin Beltran in Toronto, August 2008. Rest in Peace, 'Ka Bel'.

Native Political Prisoners & the Struggle for their Land

by Sara Falconer
Basics Issue #9 (May 2008)


A recent standoff between First Nations people and the cops has ended in six new arrests, bringing the total number of First Nations people facing charges from land struggles into the double digits. Are they Ontario’s political prisoners?

The storm around First Nations land claims has been brewing over the past several years around several controversial uranium mining and development projects. On April 25, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) drew guns in a confrontation on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Deseronto. Solidarity blockades and actions took place at Six Nations, Akwesasne, Kahnawake, Guelph, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver over the following four days. After the OPP withdrew from Tyendinaga on April 29, the other blockades were dismantled.

Mohawk warriors have occupied a quarry on the disputed Culbertson Tract for over a year. The latest conflict began when spokesperson Shawn Brant was arrested on an outstanding weapons charge, less than two weeks after he was acquitted of uttering threats at soldiers at a 2006 demonstration.

During his arrest, which took place in the midst of an interview with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Brant offered some pointed criticisms. “This is it, justice for First Nations communities: Lock us up.”

The Supreme Court noted in 1999 that although aboriginals make up only 3 per cent of Canada’s population, they make up 12 per cent of the prison population. Skyler Williams, a Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, says that more and more it seems to be a case of “Canada settling land claims by arrests.”

Williams was arrested in September along with eight others at a protest against construction of a subdivision in Caledonia and charged with mischief, as well as a previous assault charge.

Robert Lovelace, aboriginal student counsellor at Fleming College in Peterborough, is serving a six-month sentence for contempt of court for protesting Frontenac Ventures’ uranium exploration near Sharbot Lake on traditional Ardoch Algonquin land. Paula Sherman, a Trent University professor and single mother of three children, was arrested along with Lovelace but paid a $15,000 fine to avoid jail time.

In the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation (known as KI) in Northern Ontario, six council members are serving six-month jail sentences for refusing to obey a court order to allow Platinex to resume mineral exploration near Big Trout Lake. The community has rallied for the release of the KI6, as they have become known, including Chief Donny Morris and Cecilia Begg, a community leader and grandmother.

“Solidarity is a big thing for all native people,” Williams says. “It’s something that’s happened throughout our history... Struggle will always bring those nations together.” ∗

“Toronto 18”: Home-Grown Terrorism by the Canadian Government

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan
Basics Issue #9 (May 2008)

One of the largest counter-terrorism raids in North America took place in Ontario starting in June of 2006. The excessively brutal operation employed over 400 heavily armed police and security forces dressed in commando-style uniforms, and ended with the arrests of 13 men and 5 teenagers. The youngest was 15 and the oldest 43, while most were under 25. All were Muslim.

The Canadian spy agency CSIS and the RCMP leaked reports to the press, and wild accusations were reported that a homegrown radical Islamic terrorist cell had been conducting “jihadist-training camps” in Ontario, and was plotting to storm government buildings, take hostages, behead leaders and detonate bombs. Security forces assured us that the powers granted under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act (warrantless arrests, unconstitutional monitoring, preventive detention) had been critical to avoiding a major terror attack, while Canada’s Minister of Public Safety warned that there were “more jihadists out there”. While not a single accusation was proven, editorials nationwide called for a 5-year extension of the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act, coincidentally set to expire within weeks of the raids.

Last September, just as a preliminary hearing was underway where the credibility of the case would have been determined; the prosecution suddenly (and oddly) stopped the proceedings. Instead, a publication ban was imposed and the case was ordered directly to trial. This means the public will not learn the truth about the accused or the actions of their accusers until the trials are completed, possibly in the year 2014 or later.

However, what is public knowledge is troubling enough to demand a complete public investigation. All of the accused have had their basic legal and human rights violated, including their Charter right to be informed of their offences, their right of reasonable bail and their right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment. Most of the accused have been kept in solitary confinement for longer than what is humanely allowed, and most have reported systematic abuse and assault by their jailors.

The initiating factor for the surveillance of the eighteen had been the monitoring of Internet chat sites. It should be noted here that many of the accused were vocal critics of Canadian foreign policy, as are most Canadians. Two years of thorough CSIS and RCMP surveillance did not turn up anything to warrant arrests. However, the planting of two paid informants among the Muslim men by Canadian security agencies suddenly provided the “evidence” needed. One of the informants was paid $370,000 for a year’s work, and the second was paid $4,000,000.

The only physical evidence in the case, the 3 metric tons of fertilizer purportedly to be used for bomb making, was ordered by the CSIS informant and paid for by the RCMP. In fact, it was during the cross-examination of one of these informants that the preliminary hearing was suddenly and suspiciously shut down by the government lawyers.

At the time of the writing of this article, three of the youth and four adults no longer face charges, including 43-year old Qayyum Abdul Jamal who was first identified as the “Islamic firebrand” leading the young plotters. As the government case unravels, and the “Terror 18” shrinks to the terrorized 11, two other recent cases should be remembered. Project Thread in 2003 and Operation Shock in 2001 where mass arrests of Muslims and Arabs were politically motivated round-ups, targeting innocent people based solely on ‘racial profiling’.

At the end of the day, the political gain from the arrest of the “Terror 18” for Canada’s governing elite was the opportunity for the encouragement of domestic racism and Islamophobia, which was needed to extend Canada’s oppressive Anti-Terrorism Law. The fall-out for ordinary people is the continuing destruction of civil liberties, allowing for the crackdown on legitimate dissent and the creation of a climate of fear and terror.

The response for Canadians must be to demand open and fair proceedings for all the accused, a removal of those still in solitary confinement, a complete public investigation into the case and a repealing of the brutal Anti-Terror legislation that allowed the government to carry out this act of terror. ∗



Father of one of the accused headed to court next to machine gun totting cops

Jose Maria Sison Freed

Dutch attack on political refugee shows danger of “terror lists”.

Progressive Filipinos and their allies are celebrating the severe blow dealt to the Dutch government’s campaign of harassment against Jose Maria Sison. On September 11, the court in The Hague ordered the release of Sison, who had been held for two weeks on trumped-up charges of having ordered the killing of two counter-insurgency agents in the Philippines.

A poet, scholar, and respected political commentator, Sison has spent most of his life struggling for the national liberation of the Philippines. As founding Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines/New Peoples Army, Sison led the underground movement against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos until his capture by the military. Following his released after the fall of the dictatorship, Sison traveled the world on a speaking tour. The government of the Philippines cancelled his passport and with the threat of assassination should he return to his homeland, Sison was stuck in The Netherlands as a political refugee for the next 20 years.

Currently, Sison is the chairperson of the International League of Peoples Struggles and Chief Political Consultant to the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front currently in peace talks with the government of the Philippines to seek a just and lasting peace to the civil war that has been raging between the two parties for the past 30 years.

Rather than provide a safe haven from violent repression, the Dutch government has gone out of its way to attack Sison. It has prevented his earning any livelihood or access to personal bank accounts and denied him refugee status, even after the highest administrative court in the land ruled that he was a legitimate political refugee. During his recent arrest he was held in the National Penitentiary in Scheveningen - the same prison used by the Nazis to torture Dutch resistance ighters during WWII - without access to any media, warm clothing, or prescription medication.

Canadian activists immediately condemned the arrest and launched a Free Jose Maria Sison campaign that included petitions and rallies outside the Dutch embassies in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. Similar actions occurred worldwide, with rallies held in Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Manila, and other major cities.

Every charge brought against Sison has proven to be nothing more than empty propaganda and dismissed by courts both in the Netherlands and the Philippines. Yet Sison has been labeled a “terrorist” and blacklisted by the US and EU. When Sison’s inclusion in the EU terror list was overturned by EU courts, the Dutch government launched its attempt to criminalise Sison and the entire National Democratic movement in the Philippines and those that support it abroad.

The arrest of Sison - as well as the raiding of the NDF oices and homes of Filipino refugees in the Netherlands - is part of the Arroyo government’s campaign to demonize the patriotic national democratic movement and to cover up its own heinous human rights abuses, including the murder of over 1,000 unarmed civilians (men, women and children), the creation of over 1 million internal refugees, two stolen elections, ruining the economy by selling out national interests to foreign corporations, massive corruption and theft of state assets, and the arrest and prolonged detainment of political opponents on false charges. Instead of condemning these abuses, the Dutch government has gone along with this campaign because of its economic interests - Shell Oil (a Dutch company) is currently negotiating with the government of the Philippines for lucrative oil extraction contracts.

These crimes have been aided and abetted by the governments of the other G7 nations, including Canada. Canadian aid, rather than being used to beneit the Filipinos, has gone to death squads and supported Canadian mining irms that have caused environmental catastrophes. The Canadian government refuses to put human rights before trade in the Philippines, and continues to use it’s anti-democratic “terror lists” against any forces waging just struggles for social change. Sison’s case shows that you don’t have to actually commit any crime to get on these lists - they are arbitrary tools of repression and could be used against anyone who speaks out against the government. The Canadian people should defend Sison, not just to protect his rights, but to protect their own!

Will Police Cameras Stop Crime In Toronto?

After last year’s media panic surrounding a rash of gun crimes in Toronto and the recent tragic shooting death of a 15-year old boy, many people are concerned: about the safety of their communities. The police have been heavily promoting the installation of security cameras as a solution to crime in Toronto and are moving forward with plans to install security cameras in several areas in the GTA. Locations for the new surveillance technology include the downtown club district and several poor (and predominantly black) areas in North York and Scarborough. But do security cameras really make for safe communities? The experience of Britain shows otherwise.

The scale of government surveillance in Britain is difficult to truly comprehend. With over four million security cameras, Britain is the must watched society on earth. Cameras are everywhere: in the streets, subway and bus stations, airports, taxi cabs, shops, restaurants, bars, and public housing areas. The average Londoner will be on camera more than 300 times in a single day. Wherever you go, you are under the eyes of the state.
Many cameras do more than just watch. Increasing numbers of cameras are linked to software programs designed to record car license plates that cross reference the plate number with lists of “suspicious persons” or check for outstanding parking fines or other infractions. Efforts are currently underway to create large-scale facial recognition programs that would make an anonymous walk in public a thing of the past. Other programs analyze body language to detect “abnormal behavior” and alert monitors. For example, if you happened to be waiting for a friend while standing near a bank machine, you would quickly draw the attention of the authorities because your motions don’t match those of someone using a bank machine.
The surveillance program is also incredibly expensive. The British government spends between 150 to 300 million pounds (340 to 680 million dollars Canadian) of taxpayers money on the surveillance industry, pleasing the corporations that supply this technology to no end. In Toronto, police plan to spend $2 million. While not a major expenditure, these funds will only cover a six month pilot project of 15 cameras. Any large scale permanent project would quickly run into the tens of millions or more.
Surveillance is intrusive and expensive, but is it at least effective? While early studies commissioned by the police were wildly enthusiastic about the potential of surveillance technology, more rigorous independent studies have shown the results to be far less impressive. In a review of 22 different studies, the British Home Office found that security cameras are good for protecting cars, but not for protecting people. When cameras were placed in parking lots, vehicle crimes (mainly thefts) were significantly reduced. But when it came to preventing violent crime or crime in city centers or public housing areas the cameras had little to no impact.
Some areas even reported negative results from security cameras going up. When security cameras were installed in high-rent commercial districts crime in the area dropped, but only because crime was displaced to nearby poor residential neighbourhoods. In short, the amount of crime didn’t decrease, it just moved next door. As long as the root causes for crime were ignored, the best security cameras could do is displace crime.
When one looks at the British experience, it becomes clear that Toronto police want to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to stop the types of crime in the types of places were security cameras will have the least impact. This raises the issue, what else could this money by spent on? Criminologist have found that proper street lighting and keeping areas in decent repair have a far greater impact on crime than security cameras. Yet Toronto Community Housing is notorious for taking forever to repair burned out lighting, repair vandalism, or fix broken locks. The government also continues to do little about the lack of decent jobs in our communities, driving some people into criminal activity just to survive.
We need to demand that all levels of government deal with the root causes of crime in our communities and not waste our money on ineffective, intrusive, and expensive surveillance cameras! We need jobs, decent housing, and healthy communities!

Hands Off Satur Ocampo!

Congressman. The image evokes fancy offices with big leather chairs, powerful and wealthy members of the elite in expensive suits making deals. For Satur Ocampo, a congressman in the Philippines, his position has led in a very different direction: to a prison cell and the danger of assassination. Ocampo’s pro-people politics and leadership of the Bayan Muna (People First) party-list has earned him the ire of the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and placed his freedom and life in grave danger.

Ocampo, the son of landless peasants, has a long history as a political activist fighting for social justice. As a student during the late 1960’s he was a founding member of Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth) and the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism. When the Marcos military dictatorship took over the Philippines in 1972, Ocampo went underground and was instrumental in the foundation of the National Democratic Front, uniting the forces fighting to overthrow the dictatorship.

In 1976, Ocampo was captured by the fascist government and for the next nine years held in various prison camps where he was regularly and brutally tortured. Even in the camps he continued to organize, leading protest actions by thousands of political prisoners. Despite his long imprisonment and cruel treatment, the military courts set up by the dictatorship could not convict him of any crime. After nine long years of captivity, Ocampo escaped from prison and rejoined the underground movement.

With the fall of the dictatorship in 1986, Ocampo resurfaced as the lead negotiator for the NDF with the new civilian government of Corazon Aquino. Hopes were high for a peaceful settlement to the civil war in the countryside. These hopes were dashed when Aquino ordered the military to open fire on peasant demonstrators during a rally against Aquino’s policy of fake land reform. 18 farmers were killed and scores more injured. The peace talks collapsed and Ocampo returned to the underground until he was captured again in 1989. Again the courts could not convict him and after three years in prison he was released.

Popular pressure by the common people of the Philippines forced the government to allow the social movements to form party-lists to run in elections. Ocampo was a founding member and leader of Bayan Muna party-list and was elected to Congress in 2001 and again in 2004. The Filipino people saw tangible results in the form of the Overseas Voting Act and Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, legislation introduced by Bayan Muna and enacted into law. Ocampo spearheaded the Legislators Against War alliance to oppose the American war in Iraq and elsewhere as well as the Legislators-Businessmen-People’s Forum to protect Philippine businesses and agriculture from the destructive effects of globalization.

The Arroyo government, more concerned with protecting American business interests and the power of local elites, has responded to Bayan Muna’s success with repression and violence. They attempted to silence Ocampo with trumped-up multiple murder charges allegedly committed in 1984 – while Ocampo was still in prison! The weakness of the state’s case was proved in April when the Supreme Court criticized the state’s case as “defective” and ordered Ocampo released on bail, even though the charges were non-bailable. Despite this victory, Bayan Muna members and supporters are still being arrested, beaten, kidnapped, or murdered by security forces.

Bayan Muna is not the only group facing repression. Rep. Crispin Beltran, a 75 year-old labour leader and member of Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) party-list has been held for 16 months in a military prison hospital, also under trumped-up charges of rebellion against the Marcos dictatorship 25 years ago. There has also been an escalation in the number assassinations, particularly against members and supporters of progressive party-lists, trade unions, peasant, womens, and indigenous peoples associations, human rights monitors, and even members of the clergy.

The method of killing is repeated over and over again: two young men on motorcycle shoot their victims in broad daylight in close proximity to a military or police camp. Witnesses to assassinations are themselves killed in “mop up” operations. While all evidence points towards state security forces as the perpetrators investigations are done only for show, arrests are incredibly rare and convictions rarer still. After 840 killings and 200 disappearances since Arroyo’s taking office, only three low-ranking soldiers have ever been charged.

On a business trip to China last year, Prime Minister Harper promised the Canadian people that he would not “sell out important Canadian values - our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights” for the sake of trade and investment. Yet with $1.5 billion in trade between the Philippines and Canada every year, the Canadian government has failed to use its influence to pressure the Arroyo regime to stop harassing and killing their political opponents. People in this country must demand that their government stop supporting the Arroyo regime!

Gov't Death Squads Run Rampant in the Philippines

2001 was a year of great hope in the Philippines. Joseph Estrada, the notoriously corrupt American puppet president was overthrown by a popular uprising and replaced by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. It was hoped that the new president, who owed her place in office to the mass movement of the Filipino people, would usher in a new more democratic era. Instead, the Philippines today has turned into the new killing fields of Asia.

The Philippines is a land of tremendous natural resources, but also tremendous inequality. Over 30 million Filipinos live on less than $2 a day while a small group of wealthy landowners control the government, the courts, the armed forces, and various paramilitary death squads, which they use to maintain their brutal exploitation of the Filipino workers and peasants. It is these conditions that gave rise to the civil war between the government and the National Democratic Front, led by the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Rather than use her position as President to deal with the terrible sufferings and poverty of the Filipino people, GMA launched full scale war against the NDF, displacing whole communities in their drive against the New Peoples Army. Unable to defeat the CPP/NPA on the battlefield - and in many cases facing reversals - the government decided that rather than battle the guerrillas they would target the unarmed and legal mass movement.

Karapatan, an independent human rights organization in the Philippines, has documented that as of September 12, 752 activists have been murdered and 184 more have been forcibly "disappeared" by the GMA regime. The main targets of the military-backed death squads have been the political coalition BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, or New Patriotic Alliance, representing thousands of grassroots peoples organizations), as well as trade unionists, peasant leaders, members of progressive partylists, and clergy. After being eliminated, the victims are labeled "terrorists" by the government to justify the killings.

Rather than condemn these grave human rights abuses, the United States has aided and abetted.

"After 9/11, American military assistance to the Philippines skyrocketed by 1,111% between 2001 and 2002. US support has allowed the government to increase the military budget by nearly 11% from 2003 to 2005."(ibon.org)

Even non-military assistance tends to be channeled in ways that benefit the military campaign against the peoples movement, such as pacification programs or psychological warfare operations, often masked as "civil society initiatives" through NGO fronts. Canada also continues to assist the GMA regime as its sixth largest donour of foreign aid. In other words, the tax dollars of workers in Canada are being used to oppress workers in the Philippines.

Yet the popular outcry in the Philippines has not gone unheard. A growing international solidarity movement is getting the word out on what is going on in the Philippines. Recent presentations by several human rights groups to the United Nations may result in the Philippines losing its seat on the UN Human Rights Council, and maybe even a loss in foreign investment. This would not be unprecedented: after worldwide outcry against human rights abuses in King Guyanendra's Nepal and the military dictatorship or Burma, those countries lost much of their military assistance and foreign investment. By affecting the policies of their "own" governments, workers at home can positively impact the struggles of workers the world over. The government of Canada must stop supporting death squad regimes!

Fear and Loathing in the UK and Toronto Terror Plots

Last weeks arrests in the UK of an alleged terorist ring was accompanied by the usual hype and hysteria, as the media reprinted uncritically every apocolyptic image spun out by the British police. Massive security crackdowns were justified with images of a "new 9/11" - of thousands of people meeting their flaming deaths in simultaneous suicide bombings of trans-Atlantic flights unless flyers poured out their bottles of wine or mouthwash.

Yet there are some facts about the recent "terrorist plot" that the British government has either neglected to mention or downplayed:

* No bomb had been constructed.
* No airline tickets had been purchased.
* Many of the men arrested didn't even have passports.
* None come even close to matching the psychological profile of a suicide bomber.
* Most of the evidence against the "plotters" comes from a man currently being "interogatted" by Pakistani intellegence. Given the methods frequently used in "interogations" conducted by military dictatorships, he has probably also linked the men to 9/11, the Kennedy Assassination and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Craig Murray, who was fired from his position as British ambassador to Western-allied Uzbekistan for critcizing that country's horrendous human rights record, points out:

"...the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered."

Such was the outcome of the terrorist scare in Toronto two years ago. Project Thread, carried out by the RCMP and CIC, alleged to have uncovered a "sleeper cell" of 26 Pakistani Muslims out to detonate "dirty bombs" at a nuclear power plant. Coincidentally, the arrests took place just as CSIS (Canadian Security Inteligence Service) was raising demands for more funds to "fight terrorism." In the end none of the Pakistanis were charged with any criminal offence and most were deported, their only offence having been getting ripped off by a phoney business school.

The more resent arrests in Toronto are equally suspect. Little information has been released and so far the only evidence against the accused is that they engaged in trash talking on internet chatrooms. The explosives on display by the police turned out to be props brought for the photo-op, and there is no evidence that anyone other than an RCMP agent ever had anything resembling explosives.

If the cases are so flimsy, then why the hype? It's not for public safety, but it does attempt to accomplish other important objectives:

First, to build social support for ever-greater state intrusion into our lives. The state creates fear and then paints a picture of a trade-off between freedom and security, demanding that we sacrifice the former for the latter. Of course if we accept this trade-off, we will wind up with neither. First the repression was directed against "foreigners", then the "foreign-born", then "Canadian-born of X descent". It seems we are already pretty far down the slippery slope. Second, it encourages passivity in the face of the war for empire in the Middle East. By demonizing Muslims and Third World peoples anything can be justified - be it invasion, occupation, or war crimes.

War and the restriction of civil liberties go hand in hand, so we must demand an end to both! We should have the right to privacy and security from government witch-hunts just as the Afghani, Iraqi, and Hatian people should have the right to be free of invaders and occupiers!

For additional info on these and other "terrorist" cases, see
William Blum's article on Counterpunch.