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December 9, 2005: Injunctions an injustice

B.C.

Injunctions an injustice

By MATT KIELTYKA

24 HOURS

Friday, December 9, 2005

PHOTO: Activist Betty Krawczyk, along with a group called Women in the Woods, held a demonstration on the steps of B.C. Supreme Court to challenge the courts' use of mass injunctions as a way to stop protesters. (Rob Kruyt, 24 hours)

The sight of activists being bopped on the head by a judge wielding an inflatable hammer may have been humourous, but the message was dead serious.

A group called Women in the Woods, led by 77-year-old B.C. activist Betty Krawczyk, gathered outside B.C. Supreme Courts in Vancouver yesterday to protest court injunctions.

"We're trying to show people how injunctions deprive people of the right to a fair trial and how they're used as a cheap, fast and easy tool against democracy," said Krawczyk, who has spent two and a half years in jail because of injunctions.

Injunctions give police the right to arrest citizens and keep them in jail without being charged for a crime.

Krawczyk experienced this first hand when she was arrested for blocking a logging truck on Vancouver Island.

She was then kept in jail because she didn't agree with the restrictions imposed in her release agreement.

"With an injunction you're pitted against a legal system that already knows what the outcome will be," she said. "You have no legal defense and (it) sends the message that you're not allowed to express your views and democratic rights."

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/News/2005/12/09/...