Indigenous representatives attending an intercontinental Indigenous gathering in Vicam , Sonora Mexico have called for a boycott of the 2010 Olympics Games. The meeting, which was attended by over 1500 delegates representing nations from the US, Canada, Mexico, Central America and South America, began on October 11thth and ended on October 14th. Indigenous people met to discuss 515 years of invasion and resistance to colonial occupation of Indigenous lands, with the Olympics a central theme.

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Julian Borger, The Guardian, Wednesday 6 June 2007

More than 2 million people have been moved from their homes over the past 20 years, many of them forcibly, to clear space for the Olympic Games, a human rights group reported yesterday. Three quarters of the displaced people are in China, where the authorities are clearing large swaths of residential districts ahead of next year’s Olympics, according to a new report by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE).

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Georgia Straight, May 31, 2007

The 2010 Olympics were still a gleam in Jack Poole’s eye when he addressed a roomful of real-estate developers in the spring of 2002. Vancouver had been shortlisted for the Games, but it would be more than a year until the winning city was chosen. The outcome of the race to win the Games didn’t seem to matter to Poole, who headed the 2010 Vancouver Bid Corporation. Western Investor editor Frank O’Brien sat in on the talk and later editorialized that, according to Poole, “the real purpose of the 2010 Olympic bid is to seduce the provincial and federal governments and long-suffering taxpayers into footing a billion-dollar bill to pave the path for future real estate sales.”

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Stand Up for Harriet Nahanee!

People across the British Columbia were shocked by the 14 day jail sentence handed down to 71 year old native Elder Harriet Nahanee in January, 2007 for peacefully protesting while inside an injunction zone (on unceded indian land) at Eagleridge Bluffs. Harriet served 9 days in prison at a maximum security pre-trial facility. She had filed an appeal, but became gravely ill and died from pneumonia shortly after being released from prison.

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Monte Paulsen, 7 May 2007, TheTyee.ca

A watchdog group has issued Vancouver Olympic organizers a grade of D- for nearly failing to keep their commitments to protect housing, the environment, and civil liberties. In a report released this morning, the Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition has accused the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) and its governmental partners of ignoring their commitments to build affordable housing, applying constitutionally questionable legal tactics against protestors, intimidating its opponents, financial mismanagement and excessive secrecy. The 32-page report card even raises questions of complicity in hastening the death of an ill, elderly woman.

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