# taz.de -- Anarchopanda on prohibition of being masked: „It's unconstitution… | |
> On Monday, Québec hold elections. No cause for celebration, says Julien | |
> Villeneuve alias Anarchopanda. He struggles against the tightening of the | |
> right to demonstrate. | |
Bild: Anarchopanda is hugged by two of his fans during a student demonstration … | |
taz: Monsieur Julien Villeneuve, in Germany, one tends to paint a pretty | |
positive picture of Canada, often considering your country to be the better | |
half of Northern America: welfare-state oriented, multicultural and | |
peaceable. Is it a rose-tinted image? | |
Julien Villeneuve: Increasingly so, with our potentate Harper and his | |
Conservatives at the helm. | |
Why? | |
Austerity policies, anti-unionism, a most undemocratic view of | |
parliamentary politics have been the hallmarks of this government, and I’m | |
not sure the strong progression of the NDP in the last elections will be | |
sufficient to stem that tide. | |
Though, politically speaking, clocks are ticking at a different pace in | |
your home state Québec, don't they? On Monday, the Québécois elect a new | |
parliament, and the two leading parties are opponents of a federal | |
government in the hands of the Conservatives. | |
On paper that is the case, although in practice both the Parti Québécois | |
and the Liberals are collaborating or would collaborate with the federal | |
government on key economic issues, for instance the development of | |
pipelines, or the current secret negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and | |
Investment Partnership. The latter point is especially egregious insofar as | |
the currently ruling Parti Québécois is concerned, given that it is | |
ostensibly fighting for national sovereignty and we all know how free trade | |
agreements bring along several important limitations to national | |
sovereignty, usually in favor of big business. | |
No matter who wins on Monday, it will be pretty hard to rejoice, although I | |
believe the Parti Québécois deserves a spanking for dumping this noxious | |
election on us in a foolish grab for a majority. | |
In your role as wearer of the Anarchopanda costume you even put yourself up | |
as candidate for the Parti Nul which regards itself as an option for people | |
who would otherwise abstain from voting. | |
Yes, my main intention was mostly to initiate a public conversation on the | |
topic of the value of voting, as well as the limitations of our current | |
political system. I thought that would be more fruitful than simply | |
secreting yet another harangue in support of abstentionism. Besides, | |
although I do find enlightened abstentionism more philosophically | |
defensible than most of what passes for good arguments for electoral | |
politics these days, I don't think it's a straightforward matter that | |
abstention is always the right answer. People did talk, so I suppose it was | |
successful. | |
But, shortly afterwards, you withdrew your candidature. Why? | |
It became apparent that some people might actually be voting for me, as | |
opposed to simply using the Parti Nul as a mechanism to cancel their votes. | |
The idea was simply to offer the option, not to tell people what to do. | |
As Anarchopanda, you were first noticed in the public eye in March 2012 | |
when Québec experienced the biggest student strike in Canada's history, | |
triggered by a drastic increase in tuition fees. Why did you choose to | |
dress up in a costume to participate in demonstrations? | |
I was casually protesting, without a costume, from the beginning of the | |
movement because I believed in the cause, but it’s the police violence and | |
in particular the loss of an eye by a college student named Francis Grenier | |
at the beginning of March 2012 which prompted me to take a more active | |
role. I personally considered going on hunger strike to force the | |
government to meet with the student representatives and negotiate, which | |
they still refused to do after months of striking and several more students | |
and supporters injured. But everybody told me it was dumb and asked me to | |
think of something else. So I thought of Anarchopanda. | |
Why did you chose a panda costume as outfit for demonstrations? | |
The panda costume looked nice and was cheap. It could have ended up being | |
something else, although the correlation of the panda colours with the | |
colors of anarchopacifism is a nice coincidence. But it is a coincidence. | |
The student mass protest contributed to a political change in Québec in | |
September 2012, and the current minority government of Prime Minister | |
Pauline Marois withdrew the fee increase. Does this prove that civil | |
disobedience can actually make a difference? | |
I’m glad the students got most of the fee removed, but that’s not what I | |
call „making a difference“. The Parti Québécois used the student movement | |
to get elected, as parties always do, and then repaid the students for | |
their mostly unwilling collaboration. They're still indexing the fees | |
yearly based on the cost of living or some such metric, and one day they'll | |
change their mind and try for yet another hike. It goes without saying that | |
I don’t find any of this particularly edifying. But yes, the students did | |
scare the establishment a little, they did show other forms of organization | |
were possible, and they did teach each other many things that are of use in | |
current and future struggles. That’s making a difference. | |
The current struggles in Québec and particularly in Montréal concern the | |
limitations of the freedom of assembly that had been imposed as a reaction | |
on the students protest. Due to local regulation P-6, demonstrators are | |
obliged to submit in advance a venue or route of a demonstration in | |
Montréal to the relevant police authorities for approval. And there's the | |
prohibition of being masked during demonstrations – restrictions that are | |
firmly anchored in German law and hardly challenged. | |
Parades submit routes in advance, not protests: for one, protests can be | |
spontaneous, and more importantly, submitting a route and enforcing | |
compliance with it is inherently hierarchical, and we don't want to force | |
our social movements to organize in this way. At least I sure don't want | |
that. For masks things are even worse, as the federal parliament passed a | |
law last year including provisions for up to ten years in prison for | |
wearing a mask during unlawful assemblies and riots, which is plainly | |
ludicrous. There already were dispositions in the criminal code to further | |
penalize criminals for wearing a mask while performing criminal acts. | |
I do believe these dispositions are unconstitutional and just plain | |
unwarranted limitations to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression | |
and must be situated within a global context of the criminalization of | |
dissent and the tightening of forms of social control. Our streets and | |
squares have been where we gather to protest, such activities are a | |
legitimate part of a democratic society, and the right to protect one’s | |
identity while doing is all the more important in our world of increasing | |
mass-surveillance. | |
The latter is affecting your performance as Anarchopanda in particular. How | |
often have you received a fine because the police have claimed you're | |
wearing a mask during protest events since the legislation P-6 is in force? | |
Only once in April of 2013, the time they confiscated my head. I believe | |
only one other person has received that ticket for wearing a scarf in a | |
March 2013 protest against police brutality. It was cold, I would have worn | |
a scarf were I not in costume. | |
The police legitimated the confiscation of the panda head by saying that it | |
has to serve as evidence against you. Did it feel like they had lost their | |
marbles? | |
I was initially quite pissed off about the whole affair, because hey, it’s | |
my head. Maybe the police got kinky with it, who knows. It would be a | |
victimless crime. I had it washed just in case. But then the media ran with | |
it and went berserk, and I thought it was both ludicrous and wonderful. | |
People started talking about P-6 again, and we almost got parts of it | |
repealed by the municipal council. For that kind of shitstorm, frankly, | |
they could have kept the head as a tip. I’m kidding, it’s mine. | |
This shitstorm has revealed a massive popularity that far exceeds the | |
academic milieu in Montreal. How do you cope with your “celebrity status”? | |
People don’t know what I look like in human guise, which is the primary | |
thing. I’m not recognized in the streets, people don’t come bother me with | |
criticisms or praise, which is awesome, nobody buys me fancy drinks when I | |
go out, which kind of sucks but is a small price to pay for having a | |
private life. Of course one has to be careful with what one does with | |
whatever ‘status’ has accrued to oneself, I just try to use it to help | |
other people and I don’t think about it otherwise. I’m fine with people | |
respecting me, but anything above that is pretty silly. | |
Has anybody ever imitated you since you perform as Anarchopanda, disguising | |
him/herself in a panda costume and attending a demonstration? | |
There have been a small number of other costume wearing protesters, most | |
notably the Rabbit Crew, but we weren't doing the same thing. They were | |
mostly following the grand tradition of protest clowns, dicking around with | |
police and adding an element of fun and absurdity to protests, which in | |
themselves can be quite boring. I did that too, I suppose, but the main | |
idea was about what happened during police charges. | |
When was the last time you put the plush costume on? | |
During the April 3rd demo against austerity, organized by [1][ASSÉ] | |
(Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante), the main driver | |
behind the 2012 student strike. I only wear the costume for them or for | |
things having to do with P-6 these days. Wearing the costume in and of | |
itself is a pretty unpleasant experience, and I try to avoid it when I | |
don't feel it's useful. | |
And, when was the last time you hugged policemen during a demonstration? | |
Oh, it’s been a while, in 2012. I’ve only succeeded in hugging about ten | |
policemen overall. In truth, hugging police officers is not that important | |
to me, they should already know that during protests we’re not dangerous | |
unless they repress us, one shouldn’t need to hug them to try to get that | |
point across. But it’s something to do when not walking or intervening | |
during police charges. | |
On [2][Twitter], Anarchopanda soon will be followed by 9000 people, whereas | |
Anarchopanda follows no one – except recently the Montreal Police. They, in | |
turn, refuse to follow Anarchopanda! Isn't that an act of unfriendliness, | |
given that the police are in such a privileged situation? | |
The real following is on [3][Facebook], over 19000 people. I only follow | |
the police during protests, usually in order to refute whatever false or | |
incomplete information they're broadcasting to influence the media. Rest | |
assured that the police are in fact following me, and that I do not | |
interpret this as a sign of friendliness. | |
7 Apr 2014 | |
## LINKS | |
[1] http://www.asse-solidarite.qc.ca/ | |
[2] http://twitter.com/Anarchopanda | |
[3] http://de-de.facebook.com/Anarchopanda | |
## AUTOREN | |
Oliver Pohlisch | |
## TAGS | |
Quebec | |
Vermummungsverbot | |
Demonstrationsrecht | |
Studentenproteste | |
Reiseland Kanada | |
Quebec | |
Kanada | |
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA | |
Montréal, der frankophone Treffpunkt: Ein Boulevard der Vielfalt | |
Küche, Kunst und Klamauk. Die neuen Rebellen beleben die Stadt mit ihrer | |
Selbstverwirklichung. Auch die Älteren schätzen das zunehmend. | |
Anarchopanda über Vermummungsverbot: „Das ist verfassungswidrig“ | |
In Quebec wird am Montag gewählt. Kein Grund zum Jubeln, so Julien | |
Villeneuve alias Anarchopanda. Er kämpft weiter gegen die Verschärfung des | |
Demonstrationsrechts. | |
Kanadisches Protestmaskottchen: Polizei raubt Plüschbärschädel | |
Er ist die Symbolfigur der Studentenproteste. Doch Anarchopanda verstößt | |
gegen das Vermummungsverbot. Das kostete ihn kurzzeitig den Kopf. |