Crash Canada: Robert Dziekanski's Short Citizenship  

by C. L. Cook

Nearly 6 O'clock on the west coast of Canada. In a few minutes time, the television news promises to carry video images released just today of the "tasering" death of a man at the hands of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

 

Robert Dziekanski, a Polish emigre to Canada died last month before seeing any more of his adopted country than a Vancouver International Airport arrivals holding area.

 

Paul Pritchard, right, accompanied by his lawyer,

truth. (CBC)
 

The RCMP had a story to explain what happened, but their story changed when the existence of a video of Dziekanski's death went public.

 

 

[UPDATE: Youtube, the video file-sharing giant, pulled the recording of Robert Dziekanski's final encounter with the RCMP, saying it was "not appropriate" for the site. Here's an article about that decision, and, as of writing, a link where it is still available. - lex]

The video itself, taken by a bystander and held as "evidence" by the Mounties for a month, was just released; and, it's little wonder it took the threat of a lawsuit for the force to finally relinquish it.

While the sound and sight of Robert Dziekanski's agonized final moments is a truly grotesque portrait of what passes for "law enforcement" in Canada in 2007, more troubling is the broader tapestry revealed; a cavalier "system" of official disassociation from the well-being of people necessarily forced through its maze of glass-walled corridors and opaque corrals.

Never, from the time immigration and border officials allowed Dziekanski remain "missing," (though thirteen meters away, in a glass room!) for ten hours without mounting a search, despite the repeated and increasingly frantic imprecations of his mother, until the final RCMP despatch, was Robert Dziekanski treated (save by a few fellow travelers who despite their own captivity in adjacent holding-areas did try help) with anything but callous, casual disregard; much as a steer in a feed-lot might expect; right down to the electric coup de grace.

 

And: What does that say about us?

 

 

Sofia Cikowski, Robert Dziekanski's mom, drove down from Kamloops; five, or so hours. CBC television news reported her saying Robert didn't speak English; "not having one word," she said.

 

Cikowski spoke briefly in this day's CBC report, answering presumably to questions of how she felt when going to Vancouver to meet her now-dead son, who was arriving to move in with her, and begin a new life in Kamloops.

What can it say to those back in Poland?

What does it say to Canadians?

Are we ready to make our border known as a place where visitors, travelers, and citizens can expect public electrocution? Are we willing to be recognized as a place where a risk is run, at airports and seaports and every border crossing, of being mistakenly perceived as a threat to Canada, or one of America's myriad enemies, and refused transit; or worse?

 

 

 

In the interim, onlookers, already concerned for Dziekanski can be heard in the background telling police the man can only speak "Russian;" but they are ignored.

 

As it turns out, Robert Dziekanski could only speak Polish, but it may as well have been Greek: the RCMP approach to the whole situation was the epitome of a "take-down" operation, where the facts on the ground, especially coming from "civvies" on the scene, police aren't interested in and here made no acknowledgment of.

 

Dziekanski was shocked at least twice, before he was jumped on and violently pinned by four RCMP officers. This as his body apparently went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics arrived 12 minutes after being called, but too late for Robert.

 

Naturally, there will be a coroner's inquest, but what inquiry will there be of us?

 

So, is this our new Jerusalem? the place where we are now to be not only the Grand Inquisitor's torture agents abroad, but apparently too a nation willing to publicly electrocute "trouble-making" travelers in airport "greeting centres" across the homeland? 

 

It's a pretty grim picture; kind of like that of the de Menezes kid slain on a subway car by police in London; citizens zapped dead, or blown away by hyper-security methods employed as regular police practice within a context of practical impunity.

 

Paul Pritchard was at the airport with his camera, ironically just returned from Red China, when his video was seized, ("voluntarily" handed over). Its return later become a matter of contention, leading to his promise of legal action against the RCMP.

 

Pritchard told the CBC he was approached at the scene by one of the four RCMP officers involved in the lethal incident. He subsequently handed his tapes into police custody.

 

The video clearly puts to the lie early RCMP reports, reports that draw a picture of a combative Dziekanski whose subduing required repeated 50,000 volt charges and a four man dog-pile.

What remains unsaid on the CBC is just what this all says about Canada, and the state we have come to where police powers over-reach has summited with this casual erasure of a human life through the agency of willfully ignorant policies, enacted by blank-minded secur-matons, pre-determined to a course of violence.

 

This isn't Robert's problem anymore. Just as it's not Jean Charles de Menezes' problem. For the rest of us "little people" trying democracy's promise, the increased willingness of police forces across the country to use violence and lethal force against the citizenry, with an escalating arsenal, the death of "Canadian for a Day" Robert Dziekanski should be a warning of a big problem; a problem that must be addressed; and addressed by all Canadians.

 

The CBC reports the holding area being without water, and presumably toilets. So why did Robert stay, hour after hour after hour? He could have walked out the automatic doors, but didn't. He seemed to be trying to prop the doors open for ventilation, (perhaps because he had fouled himself and was embarrassed for the smell?), but he stayed in the restricted zone until the end.

Robert Dziekanski was in distress. Witnesses describe him as breathing heavily, sweating profusely, and behaving erratically. He was ranting in a language no-one understood, but witnesses say he didn't seem a threat, and was isolated from other passengers and the public.

 

Four police arrived, shocked, tackled and restrained him; and, his first day in Canada was his last.

 

The National too goes on to relate tonight the long obvious Canadian Forces' connection to the torture chambers of Afghanistan.


cbc source