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Taken from the World Socialist Web Site of the International Committee
of the Fourth International at:  http://www.wsws.org

Ottawa rally against NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia

By Guy Leblanc
3 June 1999

Canada's national capital was the scene of a 5,000-strong demonstration
May 29 against the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia by the NATO
allies, including Canada. Serbian and Greek immigrants, students, and
anti-militarists comprised the bulk of the demonstration, which began on

Ottawa's Parliament Hill, then proceeded to the Ministry of National
Defence and the US embassy. There was a heavy, even intimidating,
police presence along the entire demonstration, but especially in front
of
the US embassy.

Eighteen Canadian warplanes are participating in the bombing of
Yugoslavia. Canada has also dispatched 800 troops to Macedonia that
are earmarked to join a NATO Kosovo occupation force and the
Chretien Liberal government is now considering a NATO request that it
double this troop commitment.

The demonstrators listened attentively and with great emotion to the
anti-NATO speeches. When the speakers began to rebut NATO's war
propaganda, they were frequently interrupted by cries of �Lies,�
�Shame,� or �Stop the bombing.�

About half of the demonstrators were Serb immigrants, most of them
working class and of all ages. Understandably, they were deeply
concerned about the fate of their friends and relatives who remain in
Serbia. In imitation of anti-NATO demonstrators in Belgrade and other
Serbian cities, many carried targets formed by concentric circles.

Most of the Serb immigrants were opponents of the Milosevic regime,
but nonetheless they tended to view the war in the Balkans as rooted in
historic, national-ethnic conflicts. Still, particularly among the older

workers who had grown up in the Yugoslavia of Tito, there was support
for the notion of a voluntary union of the Balkans based on the unity of

working people.

Given the lack of organized opposition to the war, there was a
surprisingly strong presence of students. Youth interviewed by this
correspondent indicated outrage at the high-tech slaughter being carried

out by NATO and saw the war as rooted in the needs of the armaments
industry and the military-industrial complex as a whole.

The Ottawa protest was organized by C-SWAY (the Coalition to Stop
the War Against Yugoslavia) and supported by, among others, the
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade and the Ottawa-Carleton District
Council of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

The speakers exposed the hypocrisy and brutality of NATO's assault on
a small semi-developed country. But the central political perspective of

the demonstration was to pressure the Canadian government to renounce
its participation in the NATO action so Canada could resume its
traditional stance as a force �for peace� in international relations. In
fact,
throughout the course of the twentieth century, Canada has been aligned
with the world's strongest imperialist powers, first Britain, then the
US.

C-SWAY leader David Orchard said Canada and NATO had �initiated
a war of aggression ... with the aim of making all the non-nuclear
nations
subordinate to NATO.� A virulent Canadian nationalist, Orchard came
to prominence in the late 1980s as a critic of the Canada-US Free Trade
Agreement. Last year, he joined the Conservative Party�claiming, with
some justice, that Canada's oldest political party is the traditional
standard-bearer of anti-Americanism�and to the consternation of the
Tory establishment, finished second in the race for Tory national leader

running on an anti-free trade platform.

Deborah Bourque, a national vice-president of the Canadian Union of
Postal Workers, observed that it is working people who are the principal

target of NATO's bombs. �In the US there is a wall dedicated to the
Americans killed in Vietnam. It is a very long wall. But if one had
erected
a similar wall for the Vietnamese killed in that war, it would have had
more than a million names. It was principally workers like you and me
who were killed in that war. It's the same in this war in Yugoslavia.
Ask
your letter carrier on Monday if he thinks he's a military target, and
he'll
probably answer no. But in Yugoslavia, were you to pose the same
question to a letter carrier or workers in an electricity generating
center
or a journalist he would answer yes.�

Apart from Bourque, there were no other speakers from the unions; nor
were there any union delegations. At last month's Canadian Labour
Congress convention the executive moved an emergency resolution
calling for an immediate end to the NATO bombing and the withdrawal
of Canadian fighter planes from the NATO campaign, but the resolution
was tabled after encountering widespread opposition within the union
officialdom. Since then, the CLC has fallen silent on the war.

Canada's social-democratic party, the New Democrats, were also
notable for their absence from Saturday's rally. Initially, the NDP
embraced the NATO bombing campaign, but in early May it issued a call
for a �pause� in the bombing. Subsequently, NDP foreign affairs critic
Svend Robinson visited Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. Robinson, who at
one point favored a NATO ground invasion of Kosovo, now describes
the NATO bombing campaign as a �complete disaster.� Yet neither he,
nor the NDP, have retracted their initial support for NATO's attack on a

sovereign country that had not threatened, let alone attacked, any NATO
member.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Canadian Defence Minister Art
Eggleton and Liberal Senate leader Al Graham are protesting Canada's
exclusion from a top-secret meeting last weekend of US, French,
German, Italian and British Defence Ministers that reportedly discussed
the possibility of a ground invasion of Yugoslavia. Their protests
underscore that behind the posturing about intervening in a
�humanitarian
crisis,� Canada's political and economic elite views this war from the
standpoint of gaining advantage and influence.

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