Forest workers plead guilty in raid on environmentalist camp
Associated Press, Copyright 2000
December 5, 200
SQUAMISH, British Columbia (AP) -- Five forest workers have pleaded guilty for an attack last year on an environmentalists' camp in the Elaho Valley.
Four of the International Forest Products employees pleaded guilty Monday to mischief in Squamish Provincial Court and one to assault.
The case stems from a raid on September 15, 1999, by workers upset by environmentalist blockades and vandalism in a campaign to prevent logging in the valley, about 95 miles north of Vancouver.
Interfor spokesman Steve Crombie identified the men as Rick James, Leroy Zohner and Alex McLeod, who work for the company, and Don Kulak and Tom Lloyd, contractors employed by Interfor. All are from Squamish, a logging town about 40 miles north of Vancouver.
Crombie said Interfor officials will decide whether to take disciplinary action after the men are sentenced Thursday.
Joe Foy of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, accused provincial government and Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials of favoring the loggers.
"Only one of the men pleaded guilty to assault," Foy said. "There were over 70 loggers that day, many of them beating people."
Foy, who was not present during the raid, said the attackers used Interfor trucks to get to the camp and company radios to communicate.
"We're concerned that at every turn here we have not been afforded the protection that we deserve from the RCMP, in other words a full investigation," he said. "It just seems to me at every turn the corporations ... are given far more rights than the citizens."
Stands of centuries-old fir trees in the Elaho Valley have become British Columbia's hottest anti-logging battleground in recent years.
Several protesters were arrested for violating an injunction that barred interference with logging road construction and tree cutting. The injunction was overturned last spring, partly because of the loggers' retaliatory attack in which the camp was destroyed, then was reinstated.
Some protesters have been jailed for violating the injunction, including Betty Krawczyk, 72, who was sentenced to a year in prison because of earlier convictions.
After the loggers' attack, Interfor employees were required to sign a pledge to avoid confrontations and take counseling, chief forester Ric Slaco said.
Crombie said there hasn't been a face-to-face confrontation between loggers and activists since the raid.
"Our employees have done a very good job of turning away, as we've asked them to do," he said.
In the same period, he said, there have been 41 violations by protesters, work stoppages because of blockades and unsolved cases of vandalism as recently as last week. He estimated total costs, including legal fees, at $975,000.