Canadian protesters to show faces or get 10 years in jail

 

A demonstrator with a Guy Fawkes mask protests against the tuition hikes and Bill 78 in Quebec City.(Reuters / Mathieu Belanger)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/canada-mask-bill-riots-759/

Canadian lawmakers weren’t exactly in the Halloween spirit when they approved a new bill on Wednesday. The legislation makes it illegal to wear masks during riots and protests. Guilty parties could face up to 10 years in prison.

Bill C-309 passed with a vote of 153 to 126 in the Canadian Parliament. It will now move on to the Senate.

If it becomes law, mask-wearers at riots face up to 10 years in jail. Those busted wearing a disguise at an unlawful protest could be sentenced to up to five years in the big house.

The sanctions would not apply to those taking part in peaceful demonstrations or protests.

Parliamentarian Blake Richards, who sponsored the bill, says the measure is aimed at targeting the “growing threat” of vandalism and violence.

Lawmakers are particularly targeting the Blak Bloc anarchist group, whose members dress in black and hide their faces with glasses, scarves, and hoods. The group engaged in violence during the Quebec student protests earlier this year.

MPs supporting the bill are unsurprisingly thrilled that it passed through parliament.

"To have the support of the house, to get the bill through, obviously we're on the way to where we want to be, which is having the opportunity to better protect public safety," Richards said in a statement.

The legislation was brought forward as a response to the 2011 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver.

Police documented 15,000 criminal acts during the riots, but were able to make very few charges because they couldn’t identify the people involved.

However, not everyone is so quick to support the bill. Some say it could be the beginning of a slippery slope.

"I don't think people understand the implications that it has — when does wearing a toque low on your face become a mask? Are we going to ban people from appearing in a protest because they are wearing a burqa? Are we going to say that on a cold day that people can't wear a mask?" Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said in a statement.

Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett said the bill could have unintended consequences by encouraging pre-emptive arrests, which may lead to lawsuits by demonstrators who feel they were unlawfully detained.

Other opposition members say the bill is unnecessary because it merely criminalizes what is already criminal.

It is already illegal to wear a disguise while committing an offense, including rioting. However, unlawful assemblies do not fall under the current law.

The bill is controversial as it makes it difficult to draw a line between a peaceful demonstration and unlawful gathering, Michael Forian, reporter at CJAD Radio, told RT.

“What this law basically does is that it will criminalize people who are in protest if the police of that city deem the protest to be an unlawful assembly,” he argues.

“Let’s look at Montreal for example and any major city in Quebec, where if you are 50 people or more in a peaceful protest, a non-violent protest – that could be deemed an unlawful assembly if you have not presented your itinerary, and the directions of your protest routes to the police force of the municipality on Quebec.”

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Third anarchist jailed for refusing to testify before secret grand jury

Leah Plante (Image from leahxvx.tumblr.com)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/refusing-grand-jury-plante-196/

A third self-described anarchist from the Pacific Northwest has been jailed by federal officials for refusing to speak before a secretive grand jury that the accused have called a politically-motivated modern-day witch-hunt.

Leah-Lynn Plante, a mid-20s activist from Seattle, Washington, was ushered out of court by authorities on Wednesday after refusing for a third time to answer questions forced on her by a grand jury — a panel of prosecutors convened to determine if an indictment can be issued for a federal crime.

Plante was one of a handful of people targeted in a series of raids administered by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force on July 25 of this year which the feds say were in conjunction with an investigation into acts of vandalism that occurred during May Day protests in Seattle nearly two months prior. As part of their probe, search warrants were issued at multiple residences of activists in the area, including Plante’s, demanding that dwellers provide agents with“anti-government or anarchist literature” in their homes and any flags, flag-making material, cell phones, hard drives, address books, and black clothing.

“As if they had taken pointers from Orwell’s 1984, they took books, artwork and other various literature as ‘evidence’ as well as many other personal belongings even though they seemed to know that nobody there was even in Seattle on May Day,” Plante recalls in a post published this week to her Tumblr page.

Only one week after the raid, Neil Fox of the National Lawyers Guild told Seattle Times that raids like this are create a “chilling effect” by going after lawful, constitutionally-allowed private possessions.

“It concerns us any time there are law-enforcement raids that target political literature, First Amendment-protected materials,” Fox said.

This week Plante still maintains her innocence, now she has reason to believe that the raid that has left her suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome may have been more than an investigation into an activity, but an ideology. Plante says a Freedom of Information Act request she filed in the months after her apartment door was broken down by armed officials reveals that the grand jury investigating her was first convened in March, two months before the vandalism she is being accused of even occurred.

“They are trying to investigate anarchists and persecute them for their beliefs. This is a fishing expedition. This is a witch hunt,” she says this week.

On the day of her third meeting with the grand jury on Wednesday, Plante wrote on her blog that she’d almost certainly be jailed on charges of contempt for refusing once again to testify about herself but said she was willing to face the consequences for exercising her right to remain silent.

“I do not look forward to what inevitably awaits me today, but I accept it,” she writes. “My convictions are unwavering and will not be shaken by their harassment. Today is October 10th, 2012 and I am ready to go to prison.”

Hours later, her Tumblr was updated with a note authored by one of her supporters confirming that Plante “was thrown into prison for civil contempt” after her court date. Plante is now the third anarchist to be imprisoned in the last month for refusing to answer questions about their belief and behavior before a grand jury.

Last month, Plante spoke openly about the grand jury before refusing their questioning for only her second time. “I believe that these hearings are politically motivated,” she wrote in a September 16 statement. “The government wants to use them to collect information that it can use in a campaign of repression. I refuse to have any part of it, I will never answer their questions, I will never speak.”

“While I hate the very idea of prison, I am ready to face it in order to stay true to my personal beliefs. I know that they want to kidnap me and isolate me from my friends and my loved ones in an effort to coerce me to speak. It will not work. I know that if I am taken away, I will not be alone.”

Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik, a fellow anarchist from the Seattle area, was taken into federal custody on September 28 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury, a decision she said was based on humanity and her First Amendment protections.

“I cannot and will not say something that could greatly harm a person’s life, and providing information that could lead to long term incarceration would be doing that,” Olejnik wrote before being booked. “Icannot and will not be a party to a McCarthyist policy that is asking individuals to condemn each other based on political beliefs.”

On the No Political Repression blog, a support of Olejnik writes that she was prohibited from taking notes during her time on the stand, during which she says she resisted questioning.

Days before her imprisonment began, Matt Duran was also jailed for contempt. According to his attorneys, Duran was not only imprisoned by placed in solitary confinement, denied intimate contact with his lawyer, denied visitor requests forms, personal dietary requirements and sunlight an fresh air.

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Bahrain court upholds jail sentences for 9 doctors

 

Bahraini medics are seen helping a wounded protester at Salmaniya hospital in the capital Manama. (File photo)

Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/10/01/264392/bahrain-upholds-verdicts-for-9-doctors/

A Bahraini court has upheld the prison sentences handed down to nine doctors for treating protesters during anti-regime demonstrations.

Bahrain's Court of Cassation, the country’s highest court, dismissed on Monday an appeal by the medics against their controversial verdicts that have drawn international condemnation to the US-allied Persian Gulf state.

General Abdul-Rahman al-Sayed said that the court confirmed the previous sentences given to the doctors.

In June, the medics, who were working at the Salmaniya hospital in the capital Manama, were given jail terms ranging from one month to five years.

International rights groups have criticized the rulings, with Amnesty International calling it a "dark day for justice."

The Bahraini revolution began in mid-February 2011, when the people, inspired by the popular revolutions that toppled the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt, started holding massive demonstrations.

Dozens of people have been killed in the crackdown, and the security forces have arrested hundreds, including doctors and nurses accused of treating injured revolutionaries.

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