Canada Bars Fabled Farm Activist
POSTED March 31, 2001- Globe and Mail- By MARK MacKINNON
Ottawa, Canadian immigration officials have put out an all-points bulletin to try to keep José Bové, the French farmer who gained notoriety for trashing a McDonald's, from attending next month's Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. And, in what appeared to be part of a concerted effort to keep leaders of the antiglobalization movement out of the country, another leading activist was being held up last night at the Ottawa airport. A spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada told The Globe and Mail yesterday that a notice has been sent to all the country's ports of entry, warning staff to be on the lookout for Mr. Bové. "It's just another example of how our civil liberties are being suspended," said Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the nationalist Council of Canadians, the group that had asked Mr. Bové to speak in Quebec City. "He speaks for millions of people, for farmers and landless peasants." The moustachioed sheep farmer became something of a Robin Hood figure after he and four others were imprisoned for vandalizing a McDonald's restaurant and locking up agricultural officials in France. Attacking the fast-food chain, he said, was a symbolic gesture to protest against the rise of genetically modified foods, as well as against tariffs imposed by the United States on French delicacies such as Roquefort cheese and foie gras . He was fined and sentenced to three months in prison, but is currently out on appeal. Since the incident, Mr. Bové has emerged as one of the most notorious members of the protest movement that has hit several international gatherings in recent years, including the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle that were effectively shut down by massive street demonstrations. Mr. Bové recently predicted that the Quebec summit, a gathering of 34 heads of state and government from across North and South America. would generate a protest that would make the Seattle street battle pale in comparison. Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to descend on Quebec City for the April 20-22 summit to show their opposition to a proposed so-called free-trade area of the Americas (FTAA) that would include every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba. Immigration spokesman Richard St. Louis said Mr. Bové would be kept out of Canada because of his conviction related to the McDonald's incident. "There is a lookout for Mr. BovŽ because he is technically inadmissible to Canada . . . he has a criminal background," Mr. St. Louis said. Those with a criminal record cannot enter Canada without a special ministerial permit. However, Mr. St. Louis acknowledged the bulletin specifically advising customs officers to keep an eye out for Mr. Bové was unusual and tied to his stated intention to attend the summit. The campaign appears to be a broad one. American activist George Lakey, who was to give a keynote speech on non-violent protest at a planned event Sunday on Parliament Hillm was stuck for several hours at the Ottawa airport while authorities questioned him about what he would be doing while in Canada, before finally being released. He and others were to march on the Department of Foreign Affairs and demand that draft texts of the FTAA be released for public scrutiny. "The first thing they asked him was, is he protesting in Monday's action," said Kerry Pither of the Solidarity Network, one of the event's organizers. Anticipating a confrontation with protesters at the summit, the RCMP is planning to have the largest police presence in its history, as many as 6,000 officers, on hand. As well, a three-metre-high chainlink fence has been built to keep demonstrators several kilometres from the meeting site.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0130-01.htm
Published on Tuesday, January 30, 2001 by Agence France-Presse
Anti-Globalization Activist José Bové Is At It Again
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - José Bové, the anti-globalisation activist who has been given an ultimatium to leave Brazil, revels in controversy. Already under threat of a prison sentence for his part in ransacking a McDonald's fast food outlet in his native France, Bove is a determined campaigner who refuses to compromise his firmly-held principles. This time he is in hot water for leading an invasion by 1,300 Brazilian farmers of plantations run by US biotechnology firm Monsanto. They uprooted genetically-modified corn and soya bean plants, burned seeds and destroyed documents in the company's offices. His initiative at an anti-globalisation forum here -- an alternative to the annual gathering of the world's political and business elite taking place in Davos, Switzerland -- was another publicity-seeking success. Bove, 47, has become an instantly recognisable figure, with his extravagant moustache and pipe-smoking habit, popping up wherever there is an ecological axe to be ground. He has travelled the world lecturing anyone who will listen on the evils of globalisation and genetically-modifed crops and has earned the nickname 'Asterix' -- after a French comic strip character -- for his determination to repel alien invaders in the form of foreign capitalist concerns. A sheep-farmer and producer of the celebrated Roquefort cheese, he has become the standard-bearer of the fight against new economic and gastronomic imperialism. His appearances at anti-globalisation gatherings in Seattle and Davos shot him to fame and his conviction for the trashing of a McDonald's fast-food restaurant in his home town of Millau served only to reinforce his reputation as a swashbuckling resistance hero. A crowd of 30,000 turned out in Millau to support Bove when he and nine colleagues from his radical farmers' union, the Peasant Confederation, went on trial over the McDonald's escapade. Popular French singer Francis Cabrel has described Bove as "one of the last courageous, natural, honest voices left in a world where the rest are tarnished by compromise." Ironically, for a man who epitomises the virtues of the traditional French son-of-the-soil, Bove speaks faultless English, learned when his bourgeois parents spent four years in the United States.In the 1970s he and his wife Alice were among the leaders of a successfulcampaign to defend the starkly beautiful Larzac plateau outside Millau against plans to extend a military camp there. His story is typical of many of the 1968 generation of French students who rose up against middle class conservatism, turning his back on the city in search of a simpler life on the land. In 1987, he helped set up the Peasant Confederation, whose aim has been to champion the cause of small producers against the interests of big business and agricultural barons. With his honed sense of publicity Bove once organised the ploughing of the park under the Eiffel Tower in the centre of Paris to protest EU farm policies. In 1995 he was aboard the ship Rainbow Warrior in the south Pacific to protest France's resumption of nuclear tests. Three years later he was convicted for destroying a consignment of genetically-modified maize. But it took the shock-tactics of an act of criminal damage against McDonald's to propel him into the public eye. Bove enjoys broad public support. Criticism of America comes easy in France and most French people believe the cause of small farmers is just. Both Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac have felt it worth their while to hear Bove's views at first hand.
Missing photo: French rural leader Jose Bove pulls out a soy plants with more than 1,000 poor Brazilian farmers who
raided a farm owned by U.S.-based Monsanto in the small city "Nao Me Toque" in Rio Grande do Sul,
January 26, 2001. Protesting
genetically modified food, the
activists and farmers yanked out
some three hectares of soybean
crops at the life sciences giant's
experimental farm plant in a
Monsanto experimental farm. REUTERS/Jamil Bittar
Missing photo: French rural leader José Bovéand the Brazilian Main workers
landless leader Joao Pedro Stedile during a press conference at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre
January 29, 2001. REUTERS/Jamil Bittar
Common Dreams NewsCenter is a non-profit news service providing breaking news and views for the Progressive Community.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
BACK to
FTAA
Index
Counter Set April 15, 2001