The mass repression at the G20 summit in Toronto

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The mass repression at the G20 summit in Toronto
30 June 2010

The violence and repression carried out this past weekend by the authorities in
Toronto, where the G20 summit was taking place, was worthy of a police state. An
army of security officers, both in uniform and undercover, took over the
downtown portion of Toronto, a major world city, creating conditions of “martial
law,” in the words of a columnist for the right-wing Toronto Sun.

The police operation was used to violently repress an overwhelmingly peaceful
protest by thousands of people opposed to the policies of the governments
represented at the summit. Even prior to the demonstration, police preemptively
arrested alleged leaders of the protest. The massive state operation was a
brazen assault on basic free speech and assembly rights.

A spree of window-breaking Saturday by so-called “Black Bloc” anarchists, which
bore the hallmark of a state-organized provocation, became the pretext for mass
arrests and beatings. Over the ensuing 36 hours, reports the Canadian Civil
Liberties Association (CCLA), “over 900 people (possibly close to 1,000) were
arrested by police—the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Media, human
rights monitors, protestors and passersby were scooped up off the streets.
Detained people were not allowed to speak to a lawyer or to their families.
Arbitrary searches occurred in countless locations across the city, in many
instances several kilometers from the G20 summit site. Peaceful protests were
violently dispersed and force was used. In an effort to locate and disable
100-150 vandals, the police disregarded the constitutional rights of thousands.”

The CCLA report understates the level of repression. According to diverse
accounts, the police—outfitted in riot gear and wearing gas masks—acted in an
extremely provocative and brutal manner, beating marchers and bystanders alike,
firing rubber bullets, charging into peaceful crowds, trapping protesters and
making them wait for hours in the pouring rain, depriving detainees of food and
medication, and generally trampling on the most elementary rights with sadistic
glee. The cops were given a green light to do as they pleased against the
population.

This was the culmination of a lengthy process. According to the CBC, “CSIS
[Canadian Security Intelligence Service] has spent the last 12 to 18 months
gathering intelligence it hopes could help the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted
Police] with ‘any breaches of the law that might occur’” at the G20 gathering.

In a deeply antidemocratic move, the provincial cabinet passed a new regulation
June 2 under the Ontario Public Works Protection Act of 1939 allowing the police
to require individuals approaching the “security zone” around the G20 meeting to
show identification and to subject them to searches, under penalty of arrest.

The authorities harassed and intimidated protest groups and individuals “in the
lead-up to and during the summit,” according to the Toronto Media Co-op. The web
site notes that “four community organizers arrested and charged with conspiracy
were picked up hours before yesterday’s ‘violent’ demonstrations even began. One
of the organizers was detained on her way to give a press conference to denounce
the raids on the houses [of other protest organizers].”

The attacks on democratic rights prior to the G20 and the massive police action
last weekend had little to do with locating and disabling “100-150 vandals,”
among whom there were no doubt a considerable number of police provocateurs—any
more than the US war in Afghanistan is about capturing or eliminating 50-100 Al
Qaeda members.

The security operation in Toronto (and Huntsville, Ontario for the preceding G8
Summit), which cost the Canadian government in the area of $1.2 billion, was
aimed at further criminalizing political protest, intimidating opposition and
creating the conditions for even greater repression.

It had the character of a dress rehearsal for even bigger operations. The state
violence outside the G20 meeting was closely linked to the policy discussions
going on inside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which centered on plans to
make working people around the world pay for the capitalist economic crisis.

Every head of state present, most of them despised by their own citizens, knows
that the measures to be taken against the living standards of hundreds of
millions of people worldwide will provoke anger and opposition, as the Greek
events have demonstrated. The austerity policies cannot be implemented
peacefully and democratically. They must ultimately be imposed by force.

The transformation of downtown Toronto into an armed camp, for the purpose of
protecting the cabal of bourgeois politicians, joined by the managing director
and chairman of the International Monetary Fund and the president of the World
Bank, is expressive of the real state of social relations on a global scale.
Ranged on one side—the bankers, the corporate elite and their political
flunkeys; on the other—broad layers of the population, as yet politically
unclarified but determined to fight for decent conditions for themselves and
their families.

The ruling elite has the advantage at this point of a higher degree of
consciousness about its crisis and the steps it needs to take. The right-wing
minority Conservative government of Stephen Harper in Canada, along with the
Ontario provincial Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty and the local Toronto
authorities, took pains to organize a major confrontation with protesters, which
they hoped they could use to their political advantage.

The holding of the event in the middle of Toronto was itself something of a
provocation. The city has been a center of anti-globalization sentiment and a
mass showing of opposition could be counted on.

A columnist from the Vancouver Sun, perhaps hinting at more than she meant to,
referred wonderingly to “a Conservative decision last fall to hold the G20 in a
congested place like downtown Toronto,” and mused, “It is hard to understand why
Ottawa knowingly would have agreed to provide a venue for the mischief-makers.”
A good question, which hardly permits an innocent answer.

The violence itself was largely stage-managed. With thousands of police on hand,
none could be found to do anything to protect stores and banks in the downtown
area. A column in the Ottawa Citizen, written by an eyewitness, noted that
despite the $1 billion spent on security, “on Canada’s longest street [Yonge
Street], at Canada’s busiest intersection, in the middle of the afternoon, the
police were nowhere to be seen as members of the so-called Black Bloc darted in
and out of crowds, just long enough to take pick-axes to store-front windows.
Where were the police then?”

The claims by police, who had infiltrated and carried out surveillance against
organizers of the G20 protest for a year-and-a-half, that they were taken aback
by the violence are too crude and transparent to be taken seriously. One should
have no doubt that the police knew the anarchists’ plans better than the
anarchists, even helping to draw them up.

The burning of police cars, which had been conveniently left in the path of the
“Black Bloc” forces (one of them reportedly with its gas cap removed), was
another dubious event, primarily intended for the national news programs. The
Harper government hopes that the sight of anarchists “rampaging” through the
streets of Toronto will inflame the more naïve and backward sections of the
Canadian population and beef up support for its law-and-order, anti-working
class policies.

The events in Toronto are a serious warning. The level of official violence is
being ratcheted up. In the face of the upheavals to come, the state in every
country is working up plans for mass repression.

What dominates the politics and social relations of every country is the global
economic crisis, which has reached an advanced stage. All the emphasis must now
be placed on the development of a consciously socialist and internationalist
movement of the working class, the only progressive response to the police state
provocations and violence of the ruling elites.

David Walsh

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