A group of Quebec protesters say people from their province were targeted at last weekend’s G20 summit and arrested simply for speaking French or having fleur-de-lys license plates.
Hmmm, something smells fishy.
So says the CLAC, Montreal’s Anti-Capitalist Convergence group, which said Monday that only 125 of its 450 members who had taken buses to Toronto had returned.
Many of its members were detained over the weekend and remained unaccounted for.
The anti-capitalist, anti-state, anti-authority group describes the controversial Black Bloc tactics, blamed for many of the incidents in Toronto, as a legitimate form of protest.
Smashing windows is a legitimate form of protest? And you are wondering why they were targeting you?
The protest tactic sees people using black clothing to blend into larger crowds and, in many cases, taking advantage of that anonymity to escape arrest for vandalism.
“We respect a diversity of tactics. People are angry, particularly in the context of an event like that,” said Mathieu Francoeur, another CLAC member.
“For us it’s vandalism against certain institutions . . . it’s symbolic and doesn’t compare with violence in general in society.”
But organizers for the Quebec-based group said they were surprised by the targeting of French-speaking protesters.
One member who was detained on Sunday said she and two other Quebecers driving along College Street were stopped only because they had a Quebec licence plate.
Camille, a slight redhead who refused to give her last name, said police then rifled through her possessions and found some black clothing.
She also had a lawyer’s telephone number scrawled on her arm and an anarchist book in the car.
Ever think the license plate NUMBER could be used to identify you???
The CLAC organizers deflected allegations that people affiliated with their group were in large part responsible for the damage.
The CLAC says about 1,000 members went in Toronto, but were immediately targeted as soon as their buses pulled into the city on Friday.
“Anyone who had the protester look,” Francoeur said.
“There was institutionalized profiling, and we figured it might happen, but we never thought politicians would also give police carte blanche to do as they pleased.”
The CLAC had spent months organizing trips to Toronto to protest the G20.
But the spokespeople said they did not produce a video that appeared on their website entitled “Mon voyage a Toronto” (My trip to Toronto); the video shows off different points of interest using skulls as landmarks.
The Montreal protest group is planning to hold a demonstration on Thursday to denounce police handling of the G20 protests.
OK, let me get this straight. You think it is because you are from Quebec that you were arrested? If the police didn’t target you I would say they had really bad intelligence. They should have kept you all on the busses for a week and give you Lake Ontario water to drink in used Starbucks cups and cold McDonalds to eat.
