REMEMBRANCE//REFLECTION//RESISTANCE…[across struggles]

**Outdoor Photo Projections honoring the Secwepemc defenders and Security Certificate detainees** Join us! These city streets and walls should be telling OUR stories.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 11th 4 P.M. VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY (corner Georgia and Homer)
Organized by No One is Illegal-Vancouver with the support of the Skwelkwek’welt defenders and Secret Trial 5 detainee families.

December 10th marks International Human Rights day – it also marks the anniversaries of two major affronts to human rights by the Canadian government in the struggles of those facing the greatest consequences of the war at home.

On December 10th 2002, because of their defiant stand in the defence of their unceded land against the Sun Peaks resort, the Secwepemc people of Skwelkwek’welt were brutally repressed by the government of British Columbia and the RCMP. The permanent home at MacGillvray Lake and two sacred sweatlodges were completely demolished, the RCMP ordered huge snowbanks on the road leading to MacGillvray Lake to prevent Secwepemc from returning to the site. The ongoing struggle at Skwelkwek’welt has led to over 50 arrests and the separation of families as Sunpeaks and Delta Hotels continue to expand the resort on land that has never been ceded. SUN PEAKS AND DELTA HOTELS OFF SECWEPEMC LAND!

Also on December 10th 2002, Mohamed Harkat, an Algerian refugee was detained under a Security Certificate – under secret evidence, through a secret trial. He spent almost four years in detention (released June 2006) without ever having known why he was being detained, without any open trial or right to appeal. He was released on bail this June but is far from free – under deplorable bail conditions and still facing the possibility of deportation to torture. Since 2001, Harkat and four other Muslim men have been detained under Security Certificates, which have been denounced by the UN and Amnesty International as grave violations of human rights. Hassan Almrei, Mohammed Mahjoub and Mahmoud Jaballah continue to be detained at Millhaven, a maximum-security prison in which they are housed in a special unit known as “Guantanamo North”, and are currently on a hunger strike for the basic demand of medical care. Adil Charkaoui, like Harkat, is out on bail but under equally draconian conditions.  Despite the outcries of their families, friends, communities, national and international human rights organizations, on December 10, 2004, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that security certificates used to detain refugees and permanent residents indefinitely without charge are constitutional. ABOLISH SECURITY CERTIFICATES NOW!

Join us as we remember these two important anniversaries that highlight the violence that the Canadian State has carried out against indigenous and racialized people in its brutal war at home – a violence that continues to grow under the self-serving “war on terrorism” and seeks to create a culture of fear & silence. No silence and no stepping back!