Communication- November - December 2007

Communication

Contributions from readers who didn't object to having their email published in Vagabond Pages.

Candle of Hope Snuffed Out Again ..., Tasered to Death on his First Flight ...

Sometimes I don't receive an answer to my request to publish a letter and I don't know how to interpret it. So I've decided to simplify things and not oblige readers to answer. The most recent letters are at the top of the page.
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Candle of Hope Snuffed Out Again

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan is equivalent to the murder of Rabin by a Jewish terrorist, with the same consequences, a drastic reduction in prospects for a peaceful future.

Bigner Brown
bignerbr@yahoo.ca

Tasered to Death on his First Flight

Last night I saw the awful video that showed the RCMP tasering a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver airport. Robert Dziekanski died right there. I was yelling no, no when I saw it. Yes, I knew what had come before, how Mr. Dziekanski, unable to speak English, had waited in the airport security area for 10 hours with no food or water. This was his first airplane trip, he was confused and terrified. His Mother was waiting for him directly outside the security area. She kept asking airport personnel for help and they really just patronized her. Other travelers saw Mr. Dziekanski throw a chair and a computer but they said they weren't afraid of him; they tried to calm him. They knew he didn't speak English.

Then 4 or 5 RCMP walked into the area and within seconds Mr. Dziekanski was shot twice with the Taser gun and lay writhing and screaming, screaming on the floor and the officers piled on top of him, one of them pushing down on his upper torso, and then he died right there. His Mother had gone back home to Kamloops shortly before that because she was told her son had never been on the plane.

Shocked at the injustice, horrified by the ending! I feel the way I felt when I learned that Slobodan Milosevic had died in his cell, after being accused of faking his symptoms to buy time. He was proving his case and now it is routinely stated in the media that he was convicted. Within 24 hours the coroner suggested that he was to blame for his own death.

The airport manager is quite proud that hundreds of thousands of travelers go through without any problem. Well, those people, business travelers, frequent travelers, English speaking, managed. You only need help when you need HELP! Who was there to help a confused passenger? I know of more than one case of a helpless foreigner who didn't know what to do in the airport. I can remember going back and forth three times in a foreign airport, trying to follow signs that had me taking an elevator to a shuttle bus but not that elevator, the other one, no, go back to the receiving area and start again, no – here, no there. I made my connection simply by luck.

When Mr. Dziekanski's Mother returned home from the airport there was a message for her that her son had gone through security and she should return. With great joy she returned to Vancouver. At the airport she learned that Robert was dead. Who could bear it? The talk today is that the RCMP thought he had a gun. Or that the taser isn't supposed to kill people. If this had happened in the U.S., Canadians would be tut tutting on their supposedly higher moral ground. I won't ever be able to forget the last moments of Mr. Dziekanski.

Nikole

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William Markiewicz