A public inquiry into Toronto G20 and police accountability rally — Saturday
The deets:
Toronto rally
Saturday May 28, 2011
2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Yonge and Dundas Square
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/g20inquiry
The call out:
– The most mass violations of Canadian Charter rights and freedoms in the history of Canada
– The most mass arrests in Canadian history — over 1100 people arrested, 900 charges have been dropped.
– Secret laws passed — the Ontario Public Works Act was deemed illegal by the Ontario Ombudsman.
– A 5 metre rule that had Canadians fearing arrest never existed.
– Numerous assaults by G20 police on innocent Canadians, activists, journalists.
– G20 police accused of making sexual threats.
– Over 100 G20 police disciplined for not wearing mandatory name badges.
– Police accused of displaying fake G20 weapons.
– Police initially denied using rubber bullets for a month after G20.
– Horrific conditions at the Eastern Ave detention centre, the movie studio used to detain hundreds of innocent people was re-named “Torontonamo Bay.”
– A 57-year-old amputee was “brutalized” and “humiliated” by police patrolling the G20 summit when they confiscated his prosthetic leg, labeled it a “weapon” and ordered him to “hop” into a paddy wagon.
**
WE “THE PEOPLE” DEMAND JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY — WE DEMAND A PUBLIC INQUIRY!
The police and governments of Toronto, Ontario and Canada, have now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they THINK they can literally round up hundreds of citizens, gathered together to exercise their Charter rights to protest, for no legal or discernible reason — AND THAT WE THE PEOPLE OF TORONTO, ONTARIANS AND CANADIANS WILL SIMPLY STAND IDLY BY.
The suspension of civil liberties-the snatching and grabbing of citizens off the streets, and throwing them in a cage, in many instances without access to legal counsel and in a few cases after being threatened or physically harmed by the police services.
The arrested citizen then has to bear the cost of trying to defend themselves. If the police acted illegally where is the accountability? The citizens of this city again have to bear the cost of trying to prove that, and the public pays the damages-not one single person in government or the police agencies has been held accountable. So in fact, the police are totally and utterly unaccountable.
The bureaucrats who made the decision to round up peaceful protesters, or just people walking down the street, are unaccountable. The politicians are also unaccountable, as apparently they have veto power over investigating themselves and apparently don’t even have the guts to conduct any kind of investigation, instead some semblance of an investigation has to be conducted by the Ombudsman. Who the hell is accountable?
So WE THE PEOPLE say, if the police can illegally detain Canadians without any kind of accountability or oversight, how is this in any functional way for the citizen, any different from a police state? Arbitrary arrests and detentions on the basis of secret laws that nobody knew about, with no accountability. That is the very definition of a POLICE STATE.
WE THE PEOPLE are still absolutely appalled by what we saw on that weekend and shaken to the core by the hundreds of examples of police brutality that we witnessed and experienced and utterly disgusted by the silence and sheep like acquiescence from the people who are supposed to be representing all of us in Toronto and Ottawa.
#30#
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