Excerptcize

Photo from Mr. Macias' Twitter Account

On Saturday, after undergoing several hours of questioning from Canadian customs officials, Martin Macias Jr., an activist with ties to the Olympic Resistance Network attempting to travel to Vancouver to cover and participate in various anti-Olympic protests and rallies, elected to return to the US instead of remaining in Canadian custody. The above linked to CTV news report does indicate that Macias was the given the choice to remain detained in Canada and await trial for withholding information. Being a working student, this was not an option for Macias and he returned to the States. The ORN reports that Macias has no criminal record that they are aware of.

While the decision to grant entry to the country ultimately lies with Canada Border Services, I am of the opinion that we should only be turning people away with just cause; as of right now there does not appear to be any in the case of Mr. Macias. Personally, I have a much different viewpoint of the Games than the members of the Olympic Resistance Network, but I completely defend their rights to participate in peaceful protest (although other tactics have been espoused by the group), as well as report on it. The city, VANOC and ISU have all been slow in the past when addressing free speech concerns. While this is a slightly different case, in that it involves a US citizen travelling across our border, it still falls into the same broad category, and Canada Border Services joins that group of organizations engaging in poor information management that only serves to make them look bad. With the ORN hosting a two day conference (or ‘convergence’ as they term it) set to begin on February 10th we can be certain that Mr. Macias will not be the only one with a negative Olympic voice attempting to enter the country. One certainly hopes that they will have better luck than Mr. Macias had should there be no overt reason to deny them entry. Border services have currently indicated that the specifics of Macias’s case cannot be discussed due to privacy concerns; with the agency indicating that “Canada’s admissibility requirements will not change for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic games” a better accounting of the reasons for denying entry to Macias are certainly in order.

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