A high-profile activist testified yesterday that he used loudspeakers at an anti-globalization protest in Montreal to inform and amuse participants, not to incite them to violence.
Jaggi Singh said he went to the Oct. 23, 2000, demonstration outside a hotel where G20 finance ministers from around the world were meeting. He carried about 600 copies of a tract he wrote and notes for a speech because he wanted participants to understand the "farce" of the G20.
"A lot of people think (protesters) are stupid, we don't know what we are saying, (that) we are into protests so we can dance and maybe pick up" dates, he told the Quebec Superior Court jury.
His speech, delivered via loudspeakers from the bed of a truck in front of the Sheraton Hotel, was a "drastically shortened version of presentations" given in schools, said Singh, a writer and independent journalist.
Singh, 31, and two other activists, Christina Xydous and Jonathan Aspireault-Massé, are on trial charged with participating in a riot. Singh is alleged to have been a leader.
Singh said he later used a megaphone to tell his usual joke about Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and to try to lead a round of chants.
According to his often rambling account, Singh became an activist in high school and has a reputation as "a nerd too focused on analysis stuff" among some in the protest circuit.
In earlier testimony, the court learned that a few protesters commandeered a couple of garbage bins and eventually set them on fire. In short order, riot police, including some on horseback, bore down on sectors of the protest. Projectiles were hurled at police. Pepper spray was used by police.
Singh recalled suddenly catching sight of police horses heading his way at full gallop.
"I was scared but I was also in awe," said Singh, adding that the scene was "just like the cossacks in Czarist Russia."
At the request of a medic, Singh used the public address system to advise protesters not to panic and to tell those hit by pepper spray that they could get help by calling "medic," he said.
Singh said he didn't use it to advise protesters that lawyers would be available should they get arrested.
That stance was attacked as prosecutor Kathleen Caron began her cross-examination of Singh yesterday. It continues today.
lmoore@thegazette.canwest.com
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