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OPP outrage: Seeks couple's return to jail for speaking to media
Asking court to revoke bail for G20 protest pair because they spoke to CBC radio, Toronto Sun and others, and intends putting them back in jail until trial
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Alex Hundert
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Going out with a bang is Julian Fantino, the politician who wears a badge and will leave his post as head of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) at the end of this month, denying he is seeking a public office for now. On his exit, he has his OPP striking out at free speech and making the media an unwilling part of this manoeuvre.
In an outrageous ploy, the OPP have a couple of alleged G20 protest ringleaders, Alex Hundert and Leah Henderson, in court defending against a motion to revoke their bail because they are speaking to the media. The claim is they are violating a condition of their bail by doing so. That can’t possibly be a valid bail condition in a democratic society, but the OPP is trying it on for size, which says a lot about that organization’s leadership.
Hundert is a known radical activist and his opinions make a lot of people cringe. But this is Canada, and we seek to avoid becoming a police state as the U.S. has become under the Orwellian-named Patriot Act in the wake of 9/11/01. Opposing their continued freedom on bail on grounds they speak to the media is a police-state tactic of the sort we in Toronto have had more than enough of during the G20 disaster. Neither of the couple have been convicted, merely accused like hundreds of other citizens who may be guilty of no law breaking.
An outfit called resist.ca fills in the details about the two radicals and makes a statement:
On the morning of July 28, OPP officers called the sureties of alleged G20 protest ringleaders Alex Hundert and Leah Henderson and threatened to re-jail them if they persist in speaking to the media. Leah and Alex were released on bail on Monday July 19, three weeks after they were arrested at gunpoint in a pre-emptive nighttime raid on their Toronto home.
“The OPP are claiming they are not silencing Leah and Alex. But they have yet to clarify how making statements to the media constitutes a violation of any of their bail conditions. The OPP are now trying to weasel out of the fact that they have clearly been trying to illegally intimidate Alex and Leah and their families to not speak to media,” says Marika Heinrich, a local activist and supporter of Alex and Leah.
“There could hardly be a clearer indication that the police are trying to silence the voices of these organizers at all costs. Alex and Leah refuse to be intimidated from speaking out about their experiences and the daily injustices perpetrated against our society’s most marginalized communities,” says Faraz Shahidi, their supporter and member of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG – Toronto).
Leah and Alex recently appeared on CBC radio, Toronto Sun, Vancouver Media Co-op, and Rabble decrying the politically-motivated nature of the charges against them and calling on all people to support Indigenous communities, poor people, precarious migrants, and communities under occupation in the face of attacks by the leaders and policies of the G20 on their lands, livelihood, and health.
“Freely expressing opinions is not illegal. These violations of the right to free speech and the freedom of the press to speak to G20 defendants have a grave impact on all of us,” said Ryan White, a lawyer with the Movement Defense Committee.
“Our movements will not be silenced. We dare to dream of a world with freedom, justice, and equality; without tanks and prisons and borders and other oppressive institutions that steal sustenance from the world's majority,” says Rachel Avery, member of AW@L and a music student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. “We will continue to organize against the G8 and G20 leaders and their corporate villains that pillage the earth with industrial projects and profit from war.”
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2010-07-30 11:23:54
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