(The following article is from the June 16-30, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Kimball Cariou

With just eight months to go before the 2010 Winter Games open in Vancouver, the Games security apparatus is putting the heat on local anti-Olympic activists. Early June has seen about a dozen visits by the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit and VISU's Joint Intelligence Group (JIG) to the homes and workplaces of Olympics Resistance Network members. The cops lowball their motives, claiming they want to "help ensure that protests are peaceful", but  behind this rhetoric is the threat of police and military repression before and during the Games.

     The recent police visits are not technically an illegal tactic by the state, and VISU/JIG have engaged in this tactic for some time. In one case, they went so far as to visit a progressive bookstore in Victoria, unsuccessfully probing the staff for information.

     But this form of harassment has suddenly become so frequent that ORN organizers are preparing a letter to VISU/JIG, to inform the security forces that all correspondence (including attempted visits) must go through a designated representative. The activists are working with civil rights lawyer David Eby to elaborate their collective response to this police tactic. People who have been involved in opposition to the Olympics are advised that they do not have to provide information or speak to the VISU, unless the police have a subpoena or a warrant.

     In one typical case, an ORN activist was contacted via cellphone by someone saying, "Hi, this is the RCMP" and asking to meet and talk. Another person was sitting on the porch waiting to go to school when two VISU-RCMP officers pulled up in a van, introducing themselves as Intelligence Investigator Chuck Kolot and Andrew Matwick.

     And yet another anti-Olympics campaigner reported that "two VISU agents came to my house again. They flashed their badges to my neighbour and were using high pressure tactics asking her what I do..."

     Garth Mullins, a Vancouver activist who has been involved in a wide range of democracy struggles since the APEC protests of 1997, reports that a neighbour told him that two plainclothes police officers came looking for him at home. He was "ambushed" later that day outside his workplace by two plain clothes police, Greg Smith of the RCMP and Ken Stoarchuk of the Vancouver Police Department. "Very quickly," according to Mullins, "they appeared on either side of me. However, it's no great trick to sneak up on a blind guy on a crowded street."

     This latest incident, says Mullins, follows an official public information meeting about "transportation and operation plans for the 2010 Winter Games" at the Japanese Language Hall in east Vancouver. He and others used the meeting to ask how police would treat protests, a question which invariably meets with waffling non-answers by the police and Olympics representatives.

     But this harassment campaign certainly increases fears that the 2010 Games will include a high level of state repression of visible protests. Some 4,000 Canadian military personnel will be based here as part of the security forces, along with thousands of RCMP officers and city police from around the province, at a cost now estimated at about $1 billion.

     Hundreds of security cameras are being installed to monitor the public during the Games, with no guarantees that this highly intrusive tactic will end with the closing ceremonies. Large areas of downtown Vancouver will become virtually armed camps for weeks before and during the Games, making it difficult for residents to buy groceries, use recreation facilities, or get to medical appointments, work, or school. In one shocking case, students at a central Vancouver elementary school will be deprived of their playground for the 2009-10 school year, as a result of an agreement between the city and Olympics officials.

     The escalating cost and disruption of the Games have led many formerly supportive Vancouverites to fear that the negatives of hosting the Olympics outweigh any positives. Many of the promised benefits have been drastically scaled down, such as the bid book pledge to turn much of the athlete's village into social housing. If a second referendum on the city's Olympic bid was held today, the "No" vote would be likely higher than the 37% racked up in 2003.

     The Olympics Resistance Network is the most militant expression of this growing opposition to the Games. As well as pointing out the horrendous economic, social and environmental costs of the Games, the ORN stresses that this huge project is taking place on unceded indigenous territories - at a time when the Campbell Liberal government of BC hypocritically continues to talk about "reconciliation" with First Nations.

     By targetting prominent ORN activists, the security forces hope to accomplish two related goals. First, they aim to divide the anti-Olympic movement by seeking to sow suspicions among its participants. Second, the police want to send a message to the public that the anti-Olympic movement is somehow engaged in illegal activities, rather than fighting to protect civil rights and free speech. The latest harassment campaign makes it clear that the full force of the state will be used to block and isolate expressions of protest during the Winter Games. Behind all the glitz and glamour, scary times are coming for British Columbians next winter.