ORN Statement on Border Harassment

MEDIA ADVISORY ATTENTION: ALL NEWS EDITORS
OLYMPIC RESISTANCE NETWORK DENOUNCES UNFAIR AND TARGETED PROFILING OF ANTI-OLYMPIC PROTESTORS AND INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS

Feb 10, 2010: The Olympic Resistance Network is receiving news of a growing number of anti-Olympic protestors and Independent Journalists being denied entry at the Canadian border.

On Tues Feb 9, U.S. journalist John Weston Osburn was detained by US Homeland Security after being twice denied by Canadian Border Officials on his way into Canada to cover the 2010 Olympic protests. Martin Macias Jr., an independent media reporter from Chicago, was rejected by Canadian border agents and held without outside contact on Saturday Feb 6. At least two delegates, arriving from California, to the Indigenous Peoples Assembly in Secwepemc Territories were denied entry into Canada. Other anti-Olympic protestors report extensive laptop and cell phone searches as well as hours-long interrogations.

In anticipation of the unfair targeting by the Canadian Border Services Agency of those viewed as Olympic dissidents, the Olympic Resistance Network has setup an Immigration and Border Legal Support Line. Lawyers and legal professsionals taking these calls are deeply concerned by the pattern of arbitrary turn-backs without cause, as well as the lack of due process in allowing those who are rejected at the border to appeal the decision.

According to the Olympic Resistance Network, the series of border hassles,
interrorgations, searches, and refusal are the latest in a long-standing pattern of suppressing the growing movement of dissent and opposition to
the Olympic Games.

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