Masked Avengers©Linda Dawn Hammond 2001
JOSÉ BOVÉ : provocateur extraordinaire!
French sheep farmer, co-founder of the Confédération paysanne and provocateur extraordinaire, José Bové, has landed once more on Quebec soil. He arrived April 17th with a 2 week visitor's permit in hand, reluctantly issued at the final hour by Federal Minister of Immigration Elinor Caplan. Unusual measures had been taken by Immigration Canada to keep him and other key activists from attending the upcoming People's Summit meeting in Quebec City. Bové is scheduled to address a projected crowd of several thousand demonstrators on Saturday, April 21st, at the invitation of the"Council of Canadians". In March it was learned that Canadian immigration officials had sent instructions to all border crossings to be on the alert for Bové. He was allegedly being denied entry as a result of a criminal record in France. In March of this year Bové was found guilty and sentenced to 3 months prison (since appealed), for the infamous August 1999 'dismantling' of a McDonalds restaurant in his hometown of Millau. Bové and his fellow unionists were acting in response to crippling sanctions imposed upon luxury European items, such as a 100% import tax on the Roquefort cheese his farm produces. The World Trade Organization had imposed tariffs on behalf of American interests following the European Union's decision to ban hormone-treated beef from the United States and Canada. Bové was already well known as a GMO activist. He committed the first successfully publicized direct action undertaken in France against GM products - the February 1999 destruction of seeds owned by Novartis on their own premises. Bové has also been busy on the International front. In 1995 he was the only French citizen to sail with Greenpeace on board the Rainbow Warrior, to protest France's resumption of nuclear testing in the South Pacific. In January 29, 2001, an exuberant Bové in the company of over 1,300 landless Brazilian farmers raided a plantation owned by biotech giant Monsanto. Together, they ripped out fields of genetically modified corn and soya bean plants and trashed company files. Their target could be considered justified. In 1999, Monsanto illegally introduced genetically modified soya to farmers in Brazil. Brazil is the world's second largest producer of soya. It was the last major source of GM-free soya to capitulate under pressure and authorize GM production and sales, which finally occurred later that year. Soya is found in over 60% of processed foodstuffs and, with corn, now accounts for 90 per cent of the world trade in GMOs.
In a press meeting prior to the FTAA summit protests in Quebec, Bové was quoted as saying, "The first violence is institutional violence. The free market is killing millions of people all over the world. Even if some windows are going down on Saturday, that is not violence. Violence is the free market... When laws are unjust, it's criminal not to resist them."
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Counter Set April 19, 2001