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Deporting Free Speech
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Deporting Free Speech
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by Amit Srivastava
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I TRIED TO VISIT Canada, last week. Flying in from the Bay Area area where I
live, I was on my way to Calgary to give a speech about human rights and the
environment. I didn't get past the immigration desk.
Instead of participating in the Counter Petroleum Congress -- an activist
event set up to shadow the World Petroleum Congress, a global oil industry
gathering -- my colleague, Bay Area resident Carwil James, and I found
ourselves detained, jailed and then handcuffed, shackled and transported in
a 4-foot by 4-foot cage.
Officials also rifled through and scrutinized all of our possessions, making
copies of my work documents, phone lists, handwritten notes and computer
files.
Our crime?
Authorities told us that our very short records of misdemeanor
arrests (Carwil has two, I have three) made us undesirable elements. My last
arrest was nine years ago for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience in
protest of the Persian Gulf War. Carwil was arrested last year while
nonviolently protesting the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Canada used
this pretext to keep us out of the country.
Immigration officials informally told us that they had been instructed to
single out activists coming to Calgary to speak out about the global effects
of oil. Such expression was apparently menacing at a moment when Calgary was
hosting some very important people -- the leadership of the world's largest
and most powerful transnational corporations.
If I had been allowed into Canada, I would have given a speech pointing out
that the oil industry is perhaps the world's single greatest contributor to
climate change.
Just five global corporations -- BP Amoco, Exxon-Mobil,
Shell, Texaco and
Chevron -- produce oil that contributes some 10 percent of the world's
carbon dioxide emissions -- by far the major global-warming gas.
In the speech I never gave, I was to say that the petroleum industry is also
continuing to relentlessly destroy the health and well-being of local
communities and ecosystems where oil is found. Be it in the mangrove swamps
of the Niger Delta, the far reaches of the Amazon Basin, or the fragile
environs of the Arctic, oil generates social and ecological havoc.
Finally, I would have argued that the nonviolent protests against the World
Petroleum Congress in Calgary were part of a growing new movement for
Climate Justice -- one that links the local battles for human rights with
the global effort to protect the world's climate. This new social movement
is part of the broader effort to challenge the brand of economic
globalization that is set up to benefit these and other global corporations.
Instead, I found myself being treated like a criminal in a paranoid Canadian
effort to assert that Calgary was not to be another Seattle. To prove this
point, they sent us packing -- making a mockery of the democratic principles
they are purportedly upholding.
What happened to us was no isolated incident. It is part of an emerging
pattern of pre-emptive government harassment of activists protesting free
trade and globalization.
In Washington, D.C., prior to the April demonstrations against the World
Bank and IMF, police used a ``fire hazard'' technicality to confiscate
protest props such as banners and giant marionettes. As one witness quipped,
``They have kept Washington safe from puppets.''
Following in the footsteps of their U.S. cousins, Canadian officials in
Windsor arrested
and jailed Bay Area activist David Solnit earlier this month after he
finished conducting a puppet-making workshop. The charges against him were
the same ones leveled at us -- a misdemeanor conviction more than a decade
ago -- which made him a threat to Canada.
David was released after an immigration review board determined that the
charges against him were wholly unfounded. But the action, together with the
9-foot chain link fence set up to keep protesters far away from the
Organization of American States meeting sent a chill into the Windsor air as
the delegates discussed democracy in Peru.
The end result of this repressive behavior, be it in the United States,
Canada or elsewhere, is the stifling of free speech and free expression in
the interest free trade. Their actions prove our point. Institutions like
the WTO, the World Bank, the OAS and the global oil corporations are
antithetical to democracy. They rely on the police power of the state to
protect their interests. We are accustomed to seeing this power crudely
wielded in Burma or Nigeria. But it is also deployed (usually in more subtle
ways) in Washington, D.C., and Calgary.
Since returning to San Francisco, I've had a chance to reflect on my ordeal.
Certainly I've learned one lesson the hard way: With free trade,
corporations move easily across borders, but people, especially those
critical of corporate globalization, apparently cannot.
Amit Srivastava is Climate Justice Coordinator for TRAC -- Transnational Resource & Action Center. TRAC's Corporate Watch Web site, www.corpwatch.org monitors the social and environmental effects of globalization.
©2000 San Francisco Chronicle
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