B.C. Students Demonstrate from Raft

VANCOUVER (CUP) — Stu- dents from five local campuses demonstrated against nine U.S. warships visiting Vancouver during a recent series of demonstrations.

Students from Langara, Capilano and Emily Carr col- leges, and the universities of British Columbia and Simon Fraser, participated in the Vancouver Peace Flotilla Coalition, which Sept. 11, 12 and 13 protested against the warships and the nuclear weapons they are believed to be carrying

“Our plan was to meet the warships and then slow them down,” said Langara student Dave Roscoe, who protested from an inflatable raft operated by the environment group Greenpeace.

Roscoe said he called to the U.S. sailors and told them to jump ship if they had any concern for the world.

“We told them they were welcome as civilians and their ships were welcome without nuclear weapons aboard,” he said.

While the U.S. navy will not say whether’ particular warships are actually carrying nuclear weapons, Roscoe and other activists say this is a safe assumption to make.

Johanne Paradis, a UBC

You onty have one vote.

NUCLEAR WAR BALLOT

- YES([] Let’s have a nuclear war. I'm sick of waiting. :

NO[] I'd rather wait a little longer.

graduate student, called the aircraft carrier Constellation a “death machine” and said the protestors’ actions were not anti-American.

“We have nothing against the sailors enjoying our city — we just don’t want nuclear weapons in our harbour,” she said.

“If the warships were from anywhere in the world we would protest against them,” said Paradis.

At a press conference coin- ciding with the warships’ arrival, Peter Brown, executive officer of the Ottawa-based peace group Operation Dismantle said the U.S. navy experienced 620 accidents with nuclear weapons in the period of 1965 and 1985.

“Everytime one of these ships comes in here we are risking an accident on the sacle of Chernobyl,” he said.

“Bear in mind that we are dealing with plutonium, the most toxic chemical that we are aware of — one millionth of a gram, if inhaled, can almost guarantee you lung cancer,” he said.

Brown also said U.S. navy visits to Canada are increasing dramatically, with warships spending 272 ship days in

;

Canadian ports in 1985, an increase of 250 per cent over the average for the past ten years.

The 1986 rate has increased by half again, he said. Of the total number of Canadian visits, 83 per cent came to the west coast ports of Vancouver, Esquimalt and Nanoose Bay; the others stopped at Montreal, Quebec City, Charlottetown, Halifax, and St. John’s.

At the same press conference city councillor Libby Davies, and Frank Kennedy, president of the End of the Arms Race Coalition, said the warships contradict both the city’s status

as a nuclear-weapons free zone and federal policy against stationing nuclear weapons on Canadian soil,

But in a letter to Kennedy, federal minister for inter- national trade Pat Carney said, “while nuclear weapons may not be store on Canadian soil, having them pass overhead or else dock temporarily is not something we oppose.”

Councillor Davies then announced a nuclear free zone campaign for the province, a move which she said already

' palities,

had the support of 46 had the support of 46 munici- representing more than half the province’s ' population. Both Langara’s Roscoe and . UBC’s Paradis said students have a part to play in the , Campaign. “If we want a future, then we _ have to fight for it,” said Paradis. “‘Because you’ve got to get to Chem 200 isn’t always ‘an excuse for not becoming involved. If you can only ‘ contribute a little that’s okay, but you should at least give it a shot.”

National Peace Groups take arms race to court

By James Young Canadian University Press VANCOUVER (CUP) — Two national peace groups are developing a legal case to charge the federal government with complicity in American

nuclear war-fighting strategy.

At a recent conference in Victoria, both Lawyers for Social Responsibility and the World Federalists of Canada agreed to be lead plaintiffs in the case and plan to gather evidence for it over the next six months.

‘“‘We think we have a good chance of winning,” said Fred Knelman, a former Concordia University professor who presented research on Canada’s role in U.S. nuclear strategy.

“We could have as many as two or three million people represented — all the nuclear weapons free zones in Canada, some of the major unions, the major churches, and native people’s organizations are flocking to be co-plaintiffs on the issue,” said Knelman.

While previous cases chal- lenging the legality of nuclear weapons themselves have

- failed, Knelman said the new

case could be based on “‘intent”’ law, and examine American nuclear war fighting policies. Similar cases currently underway in Britain and the Netherlands are using intent laws to challenge acceptance of cruise missiles and participa- tion in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), on the basis that American policyt has moved beyond the

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nuclear stand-off. known as deterrence, to plans to fight and’ win nuclear war.

“In numerous ways, Canada is now in complicity with the American nuclear war fighting strategies,’ said Knelman, citing the 245 classified

oe”

| anti-submarine warfare testing.

“The cruise missile has a clear first use function — it ‘means you commit a nuclear lobotomy on the body politic by knocking our command, ‘control, communication and intelligence centers,” he said,

WAS (7 Become * eHno’s Game? A Witos GAME, WITH ouR Lives? _.

Canada-U.S. military agree- ments and the 84 Canadian military installations inte- grated with American nuclear policy.

“The opportunity exists for us to be one of the major abstacles to the fulfillment of a global strategy which will

_ inevitably lead to a nuclear

Armageddon,’’ he said. Knelman said some of the ways which Canada participates in American strategy are cruise missile testing, uranium exports, the manufacture of MX missile components, and

arguing there is no defensive or -deterrent use for the weapons. With regard to uranium mining, Knelman said Canada ' violates its own treaties of 1955 and 1980, which state no ‘ Canadian uranium will ever be ‘ diverted into U.S. weapons. “It turns out that there isn’t a nuclear weapon in the U.S. - arsenal that doesn’t have Canadian uranium in it,” he - said. “And there is probably a bulk of weapons in the British -and French arsenal now that have Canadian uranium in : them.

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October 30, 1986