Democracy Dies in Canada:

Toronto Mass Arrests Mark Turning 

by C. L. Cook

In the wee hours Sunday, hundreds of citizens bunking at the University of Toronto were woken by armed troopers and dragged into custody.

 

Police guard the entrance to the detention centre on Eastern Avenue, where officers clashed with protesters. (CBC) Canadian state media organ, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) reports more than 500 arrests had been made by midday local time. The CBC also reports violent reaction to heavy-handed police actions in East Toronto. 

 

Though careful to remain "neutral" in their criticism of the unprecedented mass arrests, the CBC does concede, many arrested do not "appear" to be Black Bloc, or those that would "fit the profile" of violent demonstrators. Video of some of the arrests reveal belongings, especially footwear, being taken from nylon zap-strapped people being led into custody.

 

A new "temporary law" allowing arrests without warrant or suspicion is cited as justification for the detentions.

 

CBC coverage has, throughout the G20, been unapologetically apologetic for the G20 policies that demonstrators traveled to Toronto to object to; unfailingly, it toes the official line, refusing to entertain the deeper contextual questions behind both the economic programs being debated, or why so many would travel so far at their own expense in an effort to make their objections known.

 

The police, or "security" strategy, is too barely mentioned, beyond the eye-popping billion dollar price tag, or what the precedent-setting, "temporary" abrogation of the constitution means for the notion of Canadian rights and freedoms.

 

Presumably, left off that billion dollar estimate too are the hundreds of false arrest and civil liberty violation court cases certain to flood through the Canadian judiciary system in the coming weeks, months, and years.