Pro-Palestine Activists Hold Press Conference at Vancouver Police Headquarters

About ninety people attended a press conference held by civil rights advocates in support of pro-Palestine activists who staged a CN railroad blockade last month, resulting in fourteen arrests and a rare display of brutality even by the Vancouver Police Department’s standard.

The above crowd count does include ten journalists, but not the ten VDP officers (including one in plain clothes) who were not invited to the event, yet watched most intently and even recorded it, manifestly in an effort to profile attending protesters, to the dismay of multiple speakers.

The event was attended by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), World Beyond War Canada, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC).

The culminate point of the press conference was the BCCLA’s announcement that it filed a complaint with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) pertaining to the incident. Its main grievance was the presence among the dispatched force of an officer already under investigation for wearing a patch with a skull and a Star of David, and who allegedly was by far the most violent at the protest crackdown last month.

All speakers at the event stressed the fact that the blockade, while a brazen act of civil disobedience, was a peaceful protest against the Canadian government’s tepid policy toward Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The protesters did no worse than lay baby clothes on the rails, to symbolise the thousands of children killed by the Israel Defence Forces, many with weapons supplied by Canadian weapon manufacturers with the approval of the government.

Nevertheless, police officers went out of their way to drive not only activists but also passive bystanders not merely off the rails but all the way to a nearby parking lot. A pregnant woman is said to have been punched in the stomach by an officer, while another activist was subjected to an illegal chokehold. Legal advocates decry the level of violence as shockingly excessive.