Canada Squashes Civil Rights As Olympics Invade Vancouver
Vancouver may be the world’s most livable city, at least according to one survey, but many of its residents are upset by what they see as an assault on civil liberties intended to silence critics of the Olympic Games.
For months, this picturesque metropolis of 2 million people, sandwiched between forest-covered mountains and the Pacific Ocean, has been the site of an increasingly bitter dispute between the city’s Olympic organizing committee and civil rights activists who say the city has stepped over the line in its efforts to keep dissent as far away as possible from international news cameras.
The controversy began in earnest last summer, when a group calling itself the Olympics Resistance Network accused the city’s Olympic security unit of harassing their members by showing up at their homes and issuing “thinly veiled threats to interfere with their jobs and invasions of personal spaces,” Vancouver’s The Province reported.
Concerns over civil liberties were ramped up when the provincial government of British Columbia passed a law allowing Vancouver to ban anti-Olympic signs, even when they are on private property. Under that law, residents can be imprisoned for six months and fined $10,000 ($9,500 US) for not removing “offensive” signage. Equally alarming to some was a provision that allows police to enter private property without a warrant to remove the signs.
Read more at: Ahead of Olympics, Vancouver assaults civil liberties (Raw Story)
Tags: olympics
