National Security and Society

For this week’s commentary, the related reading is from:

Pearlston, K., “APEC Days at UBC: Student Protests and National Security in an Era of Trade Liberalization” in Whose National Security? Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies, Kinsman, G., D.K. Buse, & M. Steedman, eds. (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2000).

As demonstrated in previous blog postings, many actions taken by the state can appear to be justifiable under the umbrella of national security. In the case of the APEC protests at UBC, civil liberties such as freedom of speech were curtailed, not only for security purposes, but also to avoid embarrassment. As the protesters were expressing their discontent with some of the human rights abuses by APEC member countries like Indonesia, Prime Minster Chretien and the police deemed it was necessary to quell such civil disobedience in order to protect Canada’s image on the international stage. While the government has stated that its intention was not to divert or quell the protesters, it is apparent from excessive measures used by the police that shielding foreign dictators from signs of civil disobedience in Canada outweighed citizens’ rights to freedom of speech during the APEC meetings.

In addition, this case also effectively demonstrates the ever-expanding nature of national security and its links with other aspects of government. The government essentially had two choices: 1. Allow the protests to occur and risk Indonesia, who is a major economic player in Asia, from attending the meetings; or 2. Repress the protests in order to maintain economic ties. Because the government at the time chose the latter decision, the question that then must be asked is how far will the government be willing to go in order to maintain economic ties with other countries? It has already been demonstrated that the state is willing to violate basic free speech rights guaranteed under the Charter.

With that said, it is not to say that protesters should be completely absolved of any wrongdoing. They were involved in vandalism at the university, and the author admits that protesters did somewhat rush the barricade and take it down. Her justification for the collapse of the barricade was that the plastic ties holding them together was clearly not strong enough. Regardless of the physical strength of the barricade, individuals still new where the line was being drawn in terms of the fenced in area and decided to cross it. Thus, the civil disobedience, while not violent in nature, escalated in terms of disorderliness.

Nonetheless, this does not justify the other acts of intimidation and harassment on behalf of the police. Numerous leaders of APEC-Alert! were watched for several days, and on the day of the meetings they were taken away by plainclothes officers in unmarked cars. Similarly, the author of the book was prevented from posting signs along the barricade that said things like “APEC off campus.” While the government may be able to justify the pepper spraying of the crowd of people who rushed the barricade, it is more difficult for them to justify individual instances such the author's, where an individual is prevented from posting a sign up on public property.

In this case, security did not mean the security of Canadian citizens and the security of their basic rights. Security in this case actually meant the security of a foreign dictator to be free from seeing any signs of dissent in Canada.

One thing to note from this incident is the somewhat wide public attention that was generated regarding the actions of the police. As evident in the video I have below, the collective action amongst UBC students and some members of the public in general resulted in widespread media reports. At this point, I have not seen as great of media attention for other issues related to security, like the targeting of minorities by law enforcement officials. Of course there are reports of individual cases of minorities being targeted as a result of national security measures, but the individual nature of it is what is problematic to it gaining widespread public concern. The public views these incidences as isolated happenings, which are simply aberrations. The APEC case demonstrates that one of the ways to generate public awareness on any issue is to engage in a collective action rather than have disconnected individual voices. If it was simply the author of the book posting signs up along the barricades, and the police approached her and threatened to arrest her, such an incident on its own would not likely be of any public concern or generate any widespread public attention. However, if the same scenario happened to hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, the general public may begin to reconstruct their perception of what security should entail, reconsider what rights they are truly willing to give up in the name of security, and perhaps move one step towards changing that status quo.