The Chilling Effects

My name is Andrew Abbass and I'm an independent researcher studying advanced agricultural practices in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. 

I'm also a green entrepreneur, and more recently a free speech activist. 

In April of 2015 I was detained against my will for comments made on Twitter following the shooting death of a local man. The shooting itself would result in a multi-million dollar inquiry that spent months investigating the events surrounding the death, exposing police incompetence and a completely one-sided investigation that could neither support or refute the testimony of the only remaining witness, but highlighted a series of charter violations that lead to the incident occurring and attempts to delete evidence after the fact.

In the wake of the shooting, I was among the first in the province to speak out against the narrative that the victim was mentally ill and had threatened the Premier. This offensive narrative has long been discredited, but the vehemence of my rhetoric on Twitter earned me a week of psychiatric observation on a secure ward, taken from my home by the local RNC.

A habeas corpus hearing was applied for and the judge declined discretion. I would eventually appeal this decision to decline jurisdiction to the Court of Appeal. That matter was heard in April of 2016. In April of 2017, they finally issued a ruling on the matter, deciding that the habeas corpus should have been heard.

The full text of their ruling is available here:

Abbass v. The Western Health Care Corporation, 2017

 They also ruled that the matter should be sent back to the Trial division with costs covered to have the matter heard. 

On July 7th, 2017, Justice Brian Furey heard arguments from the Western Memorial Regional Health Authority on why they believed they had the right to detain based on a handful of tweets passed along by a friend of the officer who had just killed a citizen in his own home two days earlier.

Even after all this, I have no retained legal counsel. Legal aid refuse to address the Charter issues in play. I did manage to save up enough cash to retain a local lawyer once, but he started asking for more money immediately and failed to secure the evidence I'd been requesting.

Despite being admitted with no disorder and being released a week later with a clean bill of mental health, the stigma of detainment is somewhat inescapable and the impact has been broad reaching, affecting my family life and ability to earn and income.

So, I'm hoping to secure enough financing to put the province of Newfoundland and Labrador on trial for violating both the Charter of Canada and a number of International Covenants. 

While the forthcoming ruling on the legality of my 'investigative detention' may spur interest in some lawyers who see that a civil remedy will be required, the larger issues are going unaddressed. 

I want to accumulate a fund to ensure people have the right to speak truth to power. A lot of the groundwork is already complete. A crack has been opened and a lever inserted. Now it 's just a matter of ensuring that enough pressure is applied that so that situations like this aren't allowed to continue to happen, not just for myself, but for anyone who thinks they live in a free and democratic society.

Funded Justice