CPTnet
26 August 2006

KENORA,ON: Of Pampers and OPP

By Esther Kern

  "I am very concerned about my one year old granddaughter," said a friend
from Grassy Narrows in a phone call. "She is at the blockade with her
mother, and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) are not allowing anyone to
leave the site." Her plea sent me on my journey toward the Separation Lake
Bridge, carrying a supply of Pampers, formula, baby food, bottled water,
bread and a jar of peanut butter.

Environmental groups and Grassy Narrows residents had set up a road blockade
at Separation Lake, to protest the harvesting and clear-cutting of the
Whisky Jack Forest surrounding their community.

According to one resident, "Weyerhauser consistently clear-cuts the best of
the region's forests, exports the profits, and then abandons the area,
leaving --.devastated communities and destroyed forests." As logging trucks
emerged from the forest, activists blocked their passage across the bridge.
  Very quickly, OPP had surrounded the blockade site, and a day later, still
refused to allow any of the activists--including two children and two
infants--to leave.

Because I was responding to a humanitarian need, the police permitted me to
drive to the site. Two OPP officers escorted me to the spokesperson of the
group, where I explained my reason for being there and turned over the
supplies.

I returned to Kenora. Around midnight, my cellphone woke me. One of our
partners told me that two hours earlier, a convoy of forty OPP officers had
descended upon the camp of eighteen people. She said the police threw them
all to the ground, cuffed their hands behind their backs and dragged them to
police vans for transport to prison

I spent the rest of the night at the OPP detachment where each detainee was
processed, charged with several counts of mischief, and asked to sign a
conditional release promising to leave the area within twenty-four hours.

The OPP treated an Aboriginal woman differently from her white
counterparts. The white Canadian women had been placed together in one
police van, and their handcuffs removed for the ride to the OPP detachment.
The second van contained a woman of color, an Aboriginal woman, the lone
white male and a woman who was a citizen of another country.

 Following her release, the Aboriginal woman massaged her painful swollen
wrists. The police had handcuffed hands behind her back in an upward
position, while all the others had their hands in a down position. "My arms
felt as though they were being pulled out of their sockets," she said
later. She had complained of pain and asked to have the cuffs removed, but
the officers refused her request. She was also the only one in the group
who was taken back into the station for a second round of questioning.

Delivering food and Pampers to babies in need is easy.Expecting justice
for Grassy Narrows people and respectful treatment from authority figures
continues to be the challenge.