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For Immediate Release
April 8, 1996
INNU SUPPORTERS CLEARED OF CHARGES:
LEGAL DOORS NOW OPEN TO FURTHER CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, SAY PROTESTORS
TORONTO: Nine Innu supporters who were charged with trespassing during a
peaceful protest have been ruled innocent in a court decision which
declares that extreme actions are justified in order to prevent further
destruction to the Innu by low-level military flights over their lands.
"I am prepared to hold that the defendants broke the letter of the law by
non-compliance to prevent a greater evil, that is, to prevent the
destruction of the Innu people and their basic human rights," said Justice
of the Peace Robert Phillips, in making his ruling yesterday.
After years of lobbying and campaigning through conventional channels, Innu
supporters staged a dramatic civil disobedience action at the British and
Dutch consulates in November in an effort to dissuade NATO countries from
renewing an agreement that would allow, over the next 10 years, up to
18,000 military flights annually over Innu lands. The new Multinational
Memorandum of Understanding (MMOU), the agreement between Canada and NATO
partners to continue the flights, was signed with little fanfare at the end
of February 1996.
Over three days of moving testimony before a full to overflowing court,
evidence was given of the environmental destruction caused by low-level
military flight training over Innu lands in Labrador, and of the cultural
assimilation and systemic discrimination faced by the Innu and their fierce
resistance to cultural genocide.
Innu witnesses at the trial testified to the grave threat caused to their
communities' health, culture, and land by the low-level flights as well as
by the more recent development of the proposed Voisey's Bay nickel mine on
their traditional territories. After hearing evidence from the nine
defendants as well as numerous experts witnesses, including Innu Nation
President Peter Penashue, former Member of Parliament Dan Heap, economist
Mel Watkins, legal expert John Olthuis and others, the presiding Justice of
the Peace ruled that the November civil disobedience action was justified
given the grave and immediate threat to the Innu.
Defense lawyer Peter Rosenthal said that the decision clears the way for
similar protests, an assessment affirmed by defendant Carolyn Langdon, who
maintains, "This is a very important ruling for the Innu, but also for the
many of us who work for justice. Here is a positive ruling that others can
use in their defense, for example, when resisting in this way to the Harris
government in Ontario and its policies which critically harm vulnerable
people."
Defendant Lorraine Land, also one of the nine acquitted by the judge, says
"I am ecstatic about this decision. We intend to ask the Canadian and NATO
governments what they will do, now that the courts have ruled that the risk
these flights cause to the Innu is imminent and Canadians are justified in
taking extreme steps such as civil disobedience in order to stop them."
-30-
For more information contact:
Carolyn Langdon
Tel: (416) 531-5101
or
Peter Penashue, President of the Innu Nation
Tel: (709) 497-8398