Amnesty International and Non-Violent Protest

Where is Amnesty International when Canadians are arrested for political – not criminal – offenses?

Canadian authorities have jailed 13 prairie farmers for such heinous crimes as giving away a bushel of wheat to a 4-H club in the United States. This violates the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board. The farmers’ action was a protest against this monopoly. It robs them of any real ownership of the grain they grow.

They may have violated the monopoly, yet Alliance MP Maurice Vellacourt argues there are no laws setting forth what penalties should apply. In the absence of law, judges and crown prosecutors have invented law to jail farmers, instead of calling on Parliament – the only place where law should be made – to legislate penalties, Vellacourt claims.

One might have thought that Amnesty International would be outraged at the sight of people jailed for months under an arguably imaginary law for an act of political protest. However, in our world of increasing hypocrisy, Amnesty’s outrage seems to be reserved “politically correct” protest that involves real crimes against people and property.

It’s quite odd how using violence to attack meetings of democratically elected leaders has become politically celebrated, like the violent demonstrations at last year’s Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.

Yet, Amnesty was outraged when some anti-globalist thugs, who committed crimes against people and property, were held in jail for just a few hours – not days, weeks or months like the farmers.

No rational person can now believe the police were responsible for these riots, as Amnesty’s website suggests through any number of accusations aimed at the police. In recent months, anti-globalist leaders have publicly discussed how activists strategize the use of violence prior to demonstrations. They have explicitly condoned violence by praising a “diversity of tactics.”

Thousands of peaceful protests occur every year, like recent ones across Canada against an Iraqi war. Violence happens only when anti-globalist thugs show up.

Given the celebration of such violent outbreaks, one might have thought the media and Amnesty would be even more concerned about farmers thrown in jail for a non-violent political protest. But, the news has been largely ignored and Amnesty is nowhere to be seen.

Property rights are essential. They liberate people from the tyranny of government by enabling them to make their living independent of official favour. No nation without property rights has become a democracy. No nation with property rights has failed to become a democracy over time.

Yet, farmers appear to have no property rights over the source of their livelihood, something that should concern Amnesty. As the imprisoned Ike Lanier, 72, asks, “Please, Ottawa, tell use whose grain it is. And when does it become the property of someone else – when we seed it or when it sprouts or when we harvest it.”

Many struggles for civil liberty have involved similar issues. While no one would compare the plight of India under British rule to that of Prairie farmers, Mahatma Gandhi made the principle behind the farmers’ protest into the “turning point” of his struggle against British rule.

Just as the Canadian government has a monopoly over western wheat sales, India’s British rulers held a monopoly over salt sales. Just as the farmers launched a peaceful symbolic protest against the wheat monopoly, Gandhi organized a peaceful symbolic protest against the salt monopoly.

In 1930, with about 80 followers, he began a 400-kilometre march to the sea to exact salt from seawater. The British government employed the full power of the state to battle the protest, but, in the end, the British government was embarrassed by its actions and the British public outraged. Gandhi won a huge victory.

As Gandhi said, “I want world sympathy in this battle of right against might.” That’s not what Prairie farmers, as they languish in jail, are getting, even from Canada’s loudest self-proclaimed protectors of liberty.