by Carol Brouillet
March 7, 2010
from
DailyCensored Website
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Splitting the Sky, indigenous activist,
seized by security forces in Canada last year when he attempted to make a
citizen's arrest of George W. Bush will have his day in court on Monday,
March 8th.
According to Professor Anthony J. Hall,
this case will demonstrate whether Canada is ruled by law or fear and
highlight the need for new principles, the Calgary Principles to amend the
victor's justice of the Nuremberg Principles, in light of the new impunities
for high level crimes against humanity and the Earth in this era, and the
need to protect and honor civil resistance to those high crimes.
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Dacajaweiah, John Boncore, or "Splitting the Sky," is not a man of
few words.
If you read his hefty
653-page autobiography, it is very clear
that he has lived an extraordinary life and has survived more than his share
of violence, to find deep within himself a well of energy and spirit
enabling him to not only endure hardships, but to serve his people and the
land in the timeless struggle against oppression and tyranny.
From the Attica Rebellion to Gustafen
Lake to Calgary in 2009, when he attempted a citizen’s arrest of
George W. Bush, “Dac” has consciously taken a leadership role to
politically challenge the powerful forces that dominate the North American
continent.
Brutally arrested for his action, he earned his
“day in court” to voice not only his defense, but,
“to highlight the hypocrisy and criminality
of the Canadian government for allowing Bush into Canada, and to firmly
establish the legal defense of ‘civil resistance’, the duty of citizens
to act when our governments and their agents are derelict in their duty.
This will be very useful in the future to rein these criminals in.”
Prior to Bush’s visit, the Canadian group
Lawyers Against the War asked Canadian
officials to bar entry or try Bush for his suspected crimes since Canadian
Law prohibits,
“people suspected of any involvement in
torture or other war crimes and crimes against humanity from entering
Canada for any period and for any purpose.
The most recent report of the War Crimes
Program affirms the necessity of barring war crimes suspects from
Canada:
‘The most effective way to deny safe
haven to people involved or complicit in war crimes or crimes
against humanity is to prevent them from coming to Canada.’”
Lawyers Against the War and protestors
implored the government to do their duty and arrest Bush.
“Dac” was carrying papers detailing the evidence
against George W. Bush, which he had planned to serve him with on behalf of
the victims and the people of the world, and he raised his hands to show
that he was “non-violent.”
Dac was then thrown down, stomped on, kicked,
handcuffed and led off to be brutalized in a Calgary jail.
Monday, March 8, 2010, he will have his opportunity to put forward his case
and present evidence, with support, testimony and affidavits on his behalf
from respected scholars, including,
Professor Anthony J. Hall, author of
The American Empire and the Fourth World
and founding coordinator of
Globalization Studies at the University of
Lethbridge,
stated last December:
“Splitting the Sky’s action in Calgary
highlights the abject failure of law enforcement agencies to do their
job. It highlights the unwillingness of police and those who direct them
to apply the law equitably and independently…
“As the Nuremberg principles make clear, the implicated law enforcement
officers cannot claim in their defense that they were merely following
orders in deciding to arrest Splitting the Sky rather than George W.
Bush.
“I propose that the trial of Splitting the Sky presents a platform for
the elaboration of a new set of juridical rules and protocols to be
known as The Calgary Principles.
“It has been six decades since the UN general assembly agreed to a
succinct refinement of the principles that emerged from the trial of
some of the top Nazis, as well as their juridical, medical, and
industrialist accomplices. During those decades, there has been an
intensification of the culture of impunity that immunizes those at the
top of the hierarchy of wealth and power from any legal accountability
for their crimes.
“Like the Tokyo trials of the defeated leadership of imperial Japan, the
Nuremberg Trials were a classic example of victors’ justice.
“As long as the power politics of victors’ justice continues to protect
the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the rule of
law remains a fraud. Under present conditions, the rule of law is a sad
hoax designed to disguise the role of law enforcement agencies as
protectors of the ill-gotten wealth often stripped from the branches of
humanity that Frantz Fanon once labeled ‘the wretched of the earth.’
“The elaboration of the Calgary Principles will have to entail the quest
for new language and juridical concepts to capture the full extent and
complexity of international crime in the twenty-first century...
“Consider, for instance, the nature of the crime that takes place when
whole populations are sentenced to endless futures of disproportionately
high rates of genetic deformity through the saturation of their mother
lands with depleted uranium. Consider the nature of a crime that would
see a drug company covertly introduce a new disease strain in order to
market a prepared antidote of vaccine to cure the disease it had
disseminated.
“What names, what prohibitions, and what punishments do we need to
respond to and discourage crimes that infect populations, deform
populations, and even destroy whole ecosystems, making the renewal of
all kinds of life, including human life, impossible to sustain?
“Hence it can be said that these days the most important agencies of the
military-industrial complex and the national security state are the
media conglomerates. These agencies of propaganda for an aggressive war
bombard us on a daily basis with mental missiles of psychological
warfare.
“The constant barrage of messages we receive that peace is to be found
in war, that freedom is to be found in slavery, that wealth is to be
found in indebtedness, and that truth is to be found in lies, is pulling
humanity away from our fragile inheritance of reason, rationality, and
enlightened discourse on the real menaces we face…”
Splitting the Sky’s action mirrors the actions
of countless people in countless demonstrations that are taking place across
the world where lives, land, forests, lakes, jobs, homes, species, and
communities are threatened by powerful forces, making decisions in luxury
and comfort, protected by men with guns from citizens trying to make their
voices heard to protect that which they love and care deeply about.
The trial will illustrate whether or not Canada
is ruled by laws or by fear.
Whatever happens, the struggle for truth,
justice, and peace will continue.
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