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Demonstration against G20 -Toronto
Montreal demonstration - Thursday July 1st
CLAC 2010 denounces the magnitude of the police repression in Toronto during the G20 summit. Police violence in Toronto is an immediate articulation of the social violence perpetuated by the G20 economic agenda of economic austerity, that will deliver economic cutbacks to social services that will hit the most vulnerable in societies around the world. It is the people who will be forced to pay the bill for the last financial crisis, while the major banks and the financial sector responsible for the crisis, move in to benefit from the massive economic stimulus packages built via public finances.
In Toronto a police state and the policies of economic violence enforced
by the
G20 go hand in hand.
900 arbitrary and politically motivated arrests in Toronto, a number
never seen
before in Canada, amount to almost three times more than those during
the
October crisis in 1970. Police forces in Toronto violated fundamental
rights,
detaining people for hours without charge, without access to legal
council and
without access to food or water for extended periods of time. Toronto
police are
also guilty of breaking and entering without a warrant, political
profiling,
intimidation, assault, kidnapping and utilizing extreme measures of
forces
against protesters as well as journalists.
Across the world people are living in extreme poverty and suffering due
to the
political and economic consequences put into place by unaccountable
financial
elites gathered together within structures like the G20, we view the G20
as
illegitimate and will fight for the G20's abolition.
Stephen Harper's hosting of the G20 assured that the main focus for the
summit
was to assure financial markets and big capital, nothing consequential
on the
environment, womens health, or the social consequences of the economic
crisis.
All of this to consider once again that capitalism, is an economic
system that
privileges the smallest minority at the expense of the larger majority, a
system that we are committed to fighting.
This past weekend inside the detention center jail in downtown Toronto,
women
arrestees between the ages of 17-25 experienced instances of sexual
harassment
and sexual profiling. One independent journalist arrested arbitrarily
has
spoken out to the public after witnessing a woman traumatized from
intimidation
and sexual violence imposed by police officers inside the detention
center.
Other women detainees experienced threats of 'gang banging' and rape.
Also many
LGBTQ people were segregated from the rest of the arrestees, put in a
separate
cell because they were queer.
We were witnesses to the lock down of dissent and criminalization of
social
movements in Toronto. Police tactics in this forum are a well known
tactic to
divide the people, break the resistance and impose regressive politics.
In
Toronto the police delivered before unseen levels of repression and we
will
fight back.
CLAC – the anti-capitalist convergence - 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.
Last modified 2010-07-01 06:03 PM
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