Pigs Issue 'Scary' Warning to Anti-Olympic Protesters

'Unlawful' actions will be met with swift response, RCMP assistant commissioner warns, as activists vow to take on 'two-week circus'

ROD MICKLEBURGH, Globe and Mail, January 23, 2009

VANCOUVER — The head of security for the 2010 Winter Olympics is warning protesters to think twice about plans to disrupt activities at the Games.

"We have an obligation and a responsibility to support and facilitate lawful protests, and we will do everything we can to do that," said RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bud Mercer, who commands the Games' Integrated Security Unit.

"But when protests become unlawful, those incidents will be dealt with quickly," Assistant Commissioner Mercer affirmed in an interview yesterday.

Recent public events connected with the Games have been marred by small but raucous protests that have included shouting, swearing, throwing paint bombs, drowning out an elementary school choir and grabbing an on-stage microphone to issue a profanity-laced denunciation of the Olympics.

Spearheading the protests is an organization called the Olympic Resistance Network, which has invited activists from around the world to converge on Vancouver during the Olympics "to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents."

Assistant Commissioner Mercer said the ISU's Community Relations Group has been meeting with local activist organizations in an attempt to facilitate "free and democratic protests," including discussion of possible protest zones sanctioned by police.

"We're looking for an understanding of where they'd like to stand, where they'd like to sit, and how we can help facilitate that," he said. "We're looking for any opportunity at all to be engaged to help them."

But he acknowledged that not all of these efforts to date have been positive. "Some groups have agreed to co-operate ... but we've been less successful with others."

Anna Hunter of the strident Anti-Poverty Committee, a regular participant in anti-Olympic protests, said the RCMP has not approached her group. "The only contact we've experienced is home visits by the RCMP to some of our members in the last three months to try and gather information."

Ms. Hunter said she has no interest in co-operating with the ISU over demonstrations at the Olympics. "We don't want them to define what's legal and illegal. Other world events have shown what that means, when there are protest zones," she said. "They simply say anything outside those zones is illegal, and that's a violation of our rights."

She defended the tactic of disrupting Olympic events, rather than protesting peacefully. "Disruption has been our greatest form of protest. It's been highly successful in halting Olympic operations."

The APC activist noted that Olympic organizers have not held a single public event since demonstrators interfered with ceremonies last fall to launch a cross-Canada Spirit Train extolling the coming Winter Games. "We're saying we don't want the Olympics, so your tactics follow that line," she said.

On other matters, the ISU security chief said he was disappointed the unit's contract to accommodate 5,000 officers on cruise ships had floundered, leaving the RCMP facing a multimillion-dollar civil suit. But new ship proposals are being reviewed, "and we are confident our accommodation needs will be met."

And he said he hoped "from the bottom of my heart" that the huge security budget, still to be announced but expected to be well over half a billion dollars, will not lead to a huge, distracting public outcry. "There's not a family in the world that sends its children to the Olympics that doesn't expect them to come home safely."

Meanwhile, Assistant Commissioner Mercer threw cold water on a Vernon RCMP officer's comments that criminals and the homeless will be forced out of Vancouver to outlying communities to keep the streets "clean" during the Olympics.

"I don't agree with those comments, and I would actually suggest that they are wrong," he said. "I know of no plan for the aggressive removal of homeless people from Vancouver, and I wouldn't be part of any such plan.

"This is a free and democratic society ... and such a tactic would not be morally and ethically right," he declared.

In Vernon, RCMP Inspector Steve McVarnock had said police there want to hire four more officers to create a special unit to deal with "criminally transient" people who resort to petty crime and street disturbances in the city.

"There is a high probability of some displacement as a result of the Olympics. And if that happens, I want to make sure we are prepared to deal with it," Insp. McVarnock said.

"If Vancouver is going to be very aggressive in trying to clean up their backyard for the international stage of the Olympics, it stands to reason we may see a spike in population coming to the Okanagan."

With a report from Wendy Stueck