Canadian frame-up trials unravel

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SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1985 15 ployed, a laid-off miner faces a lifetime on the dole. This fact must be considered before a mine that is still producing coal is shut down, the miners say. And they have walked the picket lines for a whole year to make that point.

Pitched battles

The ruling Conservative Party had pointed out in a detailed strategy report written as long ago as 1977 that the coal industry would be "the most likely battleground" for an assault on the labor movement. This showdown had been set in motion in 1982 when the NUM-traditionally the most militant of British trade unions-overwhelmingly elected a radical leader, Arthur Scargill, to the national presidency.

And it was a battleground. For a year the miners confronted all the repressive force the British ruling class commands. They faced 8000 police sent into the coal fields from all parts of Britain to convoy scabs through the picket lines.

For the first time in a hundred years, the British people saw pitched battles between pickets and police, with blood flowing on both sides. Two strikers died. Over 9000 were arrested, and 300 were sent to prison, some for up to five years.

Over 700 miners were fired from their jobs including, for example, the entire strike committee and most union officials at the militant Betteshanger mine in Kent. The fight to obtain TORONTO-Charges of attempted murder against three Armenian political activists, in connection with the shooting of Turkish diplomat Kani Gungor in 1982, were dropped by a provincial court judge in Ottawa on Jan. 8 at a preliminary hearing.

Harout Kevork, Raffic Balian, and Haig Gharakhanian will go to trial on lesser charges of conspiracy to commit murder, despite the scarcity of evidence against them. Melkon Gharakhanian, who was arrested with the others on March 12, 1984, was discharged on attempted murder and conspiracy charges last summer. The remaining three activists have spent the past 10 months in confinement.

The nightmare of systematic legal harassment began in earnest for the four Armenian residents of Toronto in May 1982 when they were arrested and charged with various counts of conspiracy and extortion. After being held without bail for 112 days, all were released following an eight-week preliminary hearing, which resulted in a number of charges being dropped.

None of the activists, contributors to the magazine Azad Hay (Free Armenian), has been convicted of any offense-despite the many months they have languished behind bars.

The four are partisans of a unified, socialist Armenia. They disavow the methods of terrorism with which they have been linked by the commercial media.

Many see the harassment of the four activists, and the Armenian community at large, as an act of appeasement by the Canadian government toward its NATO ally Turkey, whose repressive right-wing regime still refuses to acknowledge the 1915 genocide of 1.5 million Armenians.

The political nature of the frame-up of the four Armenians was revealed when the new federal government's Security Intelligence Service, citing "national security interests, blocked release of surveillance information requested by lawyers for the defendants.

The defendants claim that the surveillance evidence would show conclusively that the four closely monitored activists were nowhere near and had nothing to do with the wounding of the Turkish trade counsellor. But a federal court judge, in a separate proceeding, ruled against the release of this information.

State harassment of the Armenians and cover-up of spy-agency wrongdoings raise growing concern about the Security Intelligence Service and the controversial legislation (Bill C-9) that created it.

These actions and statements of intent make clear that the new Conservative federal government has picked up where the former Liberal regime left off. It is engaging in the conscious strengthening of police powers to spy upon, intimidate, and disrupt the legal activities of advocates of social change, be they trade unionists, feminists, ecologists, or international solidarity activists.

The need to defend the three remaining imprisoned Armenian activists is no less urgent, even as the legal case against them continues to unravel. Their families have been bankrupted by defense costs. The three, if again denied bail at the new hearing they have requested, face many more months behind bars during what is expected to be a lengthy trial.

Without public outcry, the authorities will be encouraged to continue to victimize the innocent. It's time we fought back.

Any contributions to the defense fund should be sent to: CIDAPP, P.O. Box 456, Station Z, Toronto.