OTTAWA Qub0065c City residents, social justice coalitions, protesters, volunteer medics and lawyers will gather at 10:30 a.m. in the Railway Committee Room on Parliament Hill today to demand a public, independent inquiry into suppression of protests around the Summit of the Americas held in Qub0065c City one month ago.
Dr. Michl0065 Brill-Edwards, a physician and specialist in drug and chemical safety will talk about why she is alarmed by the public health hazards posed by the decision to douse neighborhoods and protesters with dangerous chemicals.
Qub0065c City residents and protesters will provide sample testimony about their own experiences. Volunteer medic Sara Ahronheim will talk about her experience, washing out eyes burned by tear gas, wiping down exposed, burned skin and treating patients suffering from respiratory distress and severe asthma attacks.
My most shocking experience was realizing in the streets that I, and the entire street medic group, was being targeted by the police for providing medical care! said Ahronheim.
Many medics were shot at and hit with rubber bullets, and many barely escaped injury from gas canisters aimed directly at them, she said.
Representatives of Amnesty International, the Qub0065c Legal Collective, la Table de convergence du Qub0065c and Common Frontiers, one of the organizations that hosted the Peoples Summit, will outline the minimum requirements that would ensure an effective inquiry.
This is not about the actions of individual police officers and were not asking for another APEC inquiry, said William Sloan, speaking on behalf of a lawyers collective set up to help protesters.
We want an effective inquiry into who made the decisions at the top, and we want to ensure all relevant parties including Qub0065c City residents, demonstrators, and independent media have guaranteed legal standing with adequately funded, effective legal representation, he said.
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For more information please call Kerry Pither at cell: 613-276-8422, or Catherine Louli at cell: 613-851-0547.