Millions of Canadians have seen the videotapes and photographs showing police blasting pepper spray into Elise Thorburn's face. With every new revelation about the treatment of APEC protesters at UBC last November those photographs and videos are shown as a backdrop.However, few people know how the 19-year-old SFU arts student found herself in the front line and on the front page.
SF News contacted Thorburn and asked her to share her experience and thoughts on the story everyone is talking about.
"People all around me were shouting and screaming -- police, protesters, the media," she says remembering the moment after an RCMP officer allegedly punched her in the face to lower her arm, which was shielding her eyes from the spray. "I've never experienced that kind of pain, as if large rocks were being shoved behind my eyes scratching my eyeballs, completely blinding me. My throat was closing up and I was hyperventilating."
Thorburn says she doesn't want the limelight. "It's ridiculous that so much attention is being focused on a bunch of poor, middle-class white kids," she says. "Rather than whine about what happened, I think about what could have happened if we lived in Indonesia, for instance -- torture, beatings, arrest without reason and in prison many women would likely suffer rape, a growing act of torture in these times."
But don't expect her to shut up. "We're citizens of this country who were treated like dirt while mass murderers and dictators were treated like royalty," says Thorburn. "And let's be clear about exactly what kind of dictators Jiang Zemin and Suharto are. Their human rights records are deplorable. It's common knowledge and a grave concern to many Canadians."
Thorburn isn't the stereotypical full-time activist. She prefers a party to a protest and would rather dance than wave a placard. She arrived on campus last September fresh from Carihi high school in Campbell River to pursue her most important goal in life: to speak fluent French. She worked briefly for Greenpeace and was active in her local recycling depot and women's centre. But she knew little about APEC. Curious, she began to ask questions, read and join in discussions before deciding to add her voice to the chorus of outrage over the warm welcome extended to dictators at the APEC summit. "My dad said, 'Try not to get arrested,' " she reports.
Frightened to see snipers on rooftops as she approached the phalanx of police officers and bicycles positioned between her, a makeshift fence, and world leaders, she vividly recalls what happened. "There was the initial rush to the makeshift fence by a few people, of course. The media shows that all the time, but not the next period of five to 10 minutes in which the entire crowd sat and discussed our next plan. "This was not a massive group of thousands approaching frightened police officers. We clearly stated that we were coming forward to be peacefully arrested, and did so in small, slow-moving and very innocuous groups of four. My "group," the first to go forward, ended up being only the two of us. "Suddenly there was no chance of escape. I was literally trapped between the media and police. I dropped my "APEC IS BAD" placard and struggled to protect myself. "I was pushed to the ground by police after being punched several times, but one arm was now linked with a fellow protester, so I was pulled to my feet into the full force of the spray. I was blind, nauseous and saturated with pepper spray as I was dragged by my backpack through the melee and the mud to be handcuffed and left under a tree."
More powerful than tear gas or mace, pepper spray's active ingredient is created from dried extracts of chili or cayenne pepper. Besides extreme pain, it forces the eyes to swell and close instantly, inflames mucous membranes, and causes coughing and choking.
Thorburn was crammed, soaking wet and sick, into a makeshift single-person cell with two other women, in the back of a paddy-wagon. She and the others pleaded for relief from the fumes. Hours later when police questioned her they had to open windows because their eyes were watering from the pepper spray that covered her.
"Finally my clothes were put in a bag and I was given a white paper suit to wear," she says, "but not before I had been strip-searched in front of another protester in a room with no door. "It was very intimidating and eye-opening," says Thorburn who was released at 10 p.m., 10 hours after being arrested. "But I met some great people. "When I got home friends helped me wash the pepper spray from my hair until their knuckles burned so badly they had to stop," she reports. "Then I went completely blind again."
She is part of the group that has come together as Democracy Street to file a lawsuit. And her spirits are buoyed by the fact the group was given the Carol Geller human rights award. She is one of a handful of protesters subpoenaed to appear before the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, although she never filed a complaint. It was eerie that police found her, she says, because no one knew she had just moved from SFU's student residences, where she was often interviewed by the media. Grateful for a quiet summer back home in Campbell River, she is now bracing for new rounds of strategy meetings, court appearances and press encounters. She thinks its "creepy" that politicians such as Preston Manning are using the incident for their own gains.
"Reporters and politicians just walk away when we want to talk about people being killed and tortured and human rights being trampled on for the sake of a global economy to benefit the rich," she says. "It blows me away that Bill Clinton refuses to deal with Cuba because it's a communist country but hangs out and plays golf with communist Chinese dictators," she adds. "Isn't the economy about people?" asks Thorburn. "People think I'm crazy to take arts courses and predict I'll end up working at McDonald's, but surely the whole focus of life shouldn't just be money."
Origin
Source: SFU
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