2010 Security Has Eyes on Protesters

By BOB MACKIN, 24 HOURS, Jan 27, 2009

The security force for Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics is reaching out to anti-Olympics protesters.

At least two Games' opponents said no thanks to a private meeting with police last week.

Aboriginal liaison constables David Marchand and Jeff Chartrand and a civilian activist liaison Derek Mcklusky approached Olympics Resistance Network members Garth Mullins and Alissa Westergard-Thorpe after the Jan. 22 Vancouver city council meeting.

"They said they were talking to a few groups, they didn't mention anyone specific, they said no one had met with them yet," Mullins said.

Mullins and Westergard-Thorpe had just appeared before council to support a motion aimed at kickstarting the community security consultations promised before Vancouver was awarded the Games in 2003.

"The 2010 plans should be discussed publicly," Westergard-Thorpe said. "Individual visits (with police) don't help the public and they end up helping the police to intimidate people."

"(A public meeting) seems much more intelligent than skulking around like this," added Mullins.

Chartrand refused to comment Monday when contacted by 24 hours. Cpl. Jen Allan of the RCMP Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit said Chartrand, Marchand and Mcklusky are mandated with "opening the lines of communications with a number of our key stakeholders that may be directly or indirectly impacted by our security plan."

Anti-globalization campaigners Mullins and Westergard-Thorpe complained about police brutality after a violent crackdown on protesters outside the 1997 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' conference at the University of British Columbia. A public inquiry found the RCMP violated civil rights and was ill-prepared for the operation.

Mullins and Westergard-Thorpe are not the only Olympic dissenters eyed by police. Peter Haywood said two RCMP officers came to the door of his east Vancouver house last fall.

"They wanted to know and understand my political beliefs about the Olympics," said Haywood.

Haywood said he assumed police were interested in talking to him because he was arrested, but not charged, after a 2006 anti-Olympics protest at the Vancouver Public Library.

The RCMP is hoping protesters will restrict their Games-time activities to protest zones.

A presentation to the May 7-8, 2008 Games Master Planning Program workshop, obtained under Freedom of Information, said so-called "free speech areas" would be discussed at a joint meeting of VANOC, City of Vancouver and the Resort Municipality of Whistler in April 2009. 24 hours has learned that one of the protest zones is planned for Hastings Park, the city-owned site of figure skating and short-track speedskating at the Pacific Coliseum.

"In a democracy you don't have a free speech zone," Mullins said. "The whole country is a free speech zone."

International human rights groups cried foul when protest zones at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics backfired. Nobody who applied was permitted to protest in one of three designated parks. The Chinese government sentenced some protest applicants -- including two elderly women -- to labour camps.

* see also "ORN Members Approached by 2010 Security Unit Fools", posted Jan 24, 2009, below.