Jorge Barrera, Canwest News Service
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Canada’s spy agency has been monitoring anti-Olympic activities for more than a year and found the strongest opposition to the athletic event to be among “the more extreme elements” of First Nations groups, particularly in alliance with anti-poverty groups, according to an internal government document obtained by Canwest News Service.
The censored document was sent by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to the Department of Public Safety and refers to an event hosted last spring by the Vancouver Olympic Committee. The six-page, French and English document, titled CSIS Threat Assessment and marked “secret,” provides little detail about the seriousness of the threat by the groups.
However, it does highlight their convergence in opposition to the Olympics, a concern recently voiced by a former RCMP intelligence and national security expert.
Dated March 21, 2007, the threat assessment analyzed potential disruptions to a planned “Urban Aboriginal Friendship Celebration,” which was to take place three days later. The event was hosted by the Vancouver Olympic Committee “to reach out to the aboriginal community in Vancouver,” said the assessment, which was released under the Access to Information Act.
“VANOC has been criticized for not taking enough action to address the concerns of Vancouver’s aboriginal community,” said the assessment.
In a partly censored passage, the assessment noted that “opposition to the 2010 Olympic Games is most noticeable amongst the more extreme elements of First Nations communities.”
It then referred to Native Warrior Society members who stole the Olympic flag on March 6, 2007 to “protest against the Games.” The rest of the passage, like other large chunks of the assessment, is blanked out under a section of the Access to Information Act allowing for censoring of information that could be “injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada… or the detection, prevention or suppression of subversives…”
The assessment also highlights that First Nations and anti-poverty groups joined together during a Feb. 12, 2007 protest at the unveiling of the Olympic countdown clock.
“Eight individuals were arrested for mischief and assault when they disrupted the ceremony,” the document noted. “Specifically, members of the Native Youth Movement and the Anti-Olympic Coalition were arrested when they rushed the stage.” A section of this passage is also blacked out.
In the following passage, which is uncensored, the assessment described the coalition as “a Vancouver-based special interest group comprised of members of the groups No One is Illegal, the Anti-Poverty Coalition, and the Downtown Eastside Residents Association.”
A passage on the Native Youth Movement is almost totally blanked out, except for its description as ” a group of aboriginal youth who challenge land treaty issues in British Columbia.”
A member of the Native Youth movement described her group as “freedom fighters,” but expressed surprise that they were named in the threat assessment.
“We are a native youth organization and we are not out there to cause destruction, but to protect and preserve the natural environment,” a member of the organization, who goes by the name Kanahus, said in a telephone interview from the B.C. First Nations community of Neskonlith.
“If they feel any type of threat from us [it is because] we are exposing the real issues. The way they deal with native people standing up for our rights is by using the police and things like CSIS.”
Kanahus said her group planned to continue its campaign against the Olympics.
“We are not doing anything wrong, so I have no fear about what we are doing because what we are doing is educating the public,” she said.
“We are fighting for the land and need the masses to get onside with the native youth movement, to get onside in the fight to defend our land, our hunting grounds, our mountains, all our food … If we don’t speak for the salmon the salmon are not going to continue to exist.”
Tom Quiggin, a former RCMP intelligence and national security expert, wrote recently that the “forward planning” by native and anti-poverty groups for Olympic protests was “unprecedented” and warned authorities were moving too slowly in preparing for the threat.
“A clear upturn in violent protest activity is occurring,” Mr. Quiggin wrote last month from Israel in a report for the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. “Most disturbing, there has been an increased identification of public and private figures by name in numerous postings which announce or encourage violence.”
Assembly of First Nations national Chief Phil Fontaine has already warned that First Nations could launch protests in the run-up to the Olympics.
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