Front de liberation du Quebec

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Flag of the FLQ

The Front de libération du Québec ( German  Front for the Liberation of Québec ), commonly known by its abbreviation FLQ , was a left-wing extremist - nationalist terrorist organization that was active in the Canadian province of Québec from 1963 to 1970 .

The separatist group carried out more than 200 attacks - mostly against representatives of the English-speaking part of the population in Montreal - and was responsible for the deaths of at least five people. The FLQ aimed for a Marxist Québec that was independent of Canada. The wave of terrorism culminated in the October crisis in 1970 , when the FLQ kidnapped a British diplomat and, a little later, the Deputy Prime Minister of Québec, whom the police found strangled. The Canadian government declared a state of emergency and deployed the army to calm the situation. This measure, as well as covert operations, led to the breaking up of the FLQ, which had intended to act with violent propaganda to provide the spark for a revolutionary workers' uprising.

Acts of violence

The movement, whose members and sympathizers are known as the Felquistes , arose at a time when Québec was undergoing a profound social and economic change known as the silent revolution ( révolution tranquille ). The structure of the FLQ could not be exactly reconstructed until today, but there were at least seven cells: Dieppe, Louis Riel, Nelson, Saint-Denis, Viger, Liberation and Chénier. The last two were the most common and were ultimately responsible for the October crisis .

The history of the FLQ can be broken down into six waves that preceded the October crisis. The first group to act as the FLQ was founded in March 1963 by Georges Schoeters , a Belgian left-wing activist whose model was Che Guevara and who rallied radicalized members of the left-wing nationalist party Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale . The group blew up, among other things, a railway line on which a train with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker on board should later have run. She also murdered a security guard at a Canadian Army recruitment center. By June 1963, the entire first group had been arrested.

A second group of six people (including two brothers of FLQ members who were arrested in 1963) were responsible for a second wave of violence between September 1963 and April 1964. It stole goods and money worth over half a million Canadian dollars in robberies. A few months later the third group became active. A failed bank robbery resulted in two deaths on August 29, 1964. Five members were sentenced to life imprisonment.

In July 1965, Charles Gagnon and Pierre Vallières united their "people's liberation movement" with the FLQ. This led to the fact that the FLQ increasingly adopted socialist ideas, showed solidarity with striking workers and pretended to stand up for their interests. This new fourth group robbed a New Democratic Party office and radio station and published a manifesto called La Cognée ("The Ax"). They also made increased use of explosives . On March 5, 1966, an office worker was killed in the bomb attack on a shoe factory.

By August 1966, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was able to arrest numerous FLQ members. Gagnon and Vallières, who had fled to New York City , went on hunger strike outside UN headquarters and were later arrested as well. Vallières then wrote Nègres blancs d'Amérique (“White Negroes of America”), a historical documentation with Marxist polemics. In 1967 he and Gagnon were extradited to Canada.

In 1968 a fifth FLQ group was formed, which planted 52 bombs in the course of a year and published a new manifesto entitled La Victoire ("The Victory"). An attack on the Montreal Stock Exchange on February 13, 1969 caused extensive property damage and injured 27 people. All members of this group could be arrested by May 1969. With the help of intelligence information, the RCMP prevented rioting by students at McGill University in 1969 . Two more FLQ groupings then formed, the Liberation and Chénier cells. They bought three houses, procured equipment and planned how to proceed together.

October crisis

The Liberation cell kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Richard Cross on October 5, 1970 , who was on his way to his office. The FLQ demanded the release of convicted and arrested members and the public announcement of their manifesto. Three days later, the manifesto was published in all of Québec's French and English-language media. The FLQ specified its demands, including the release of 23 "political prisoners", $ 500,000 in gold, the reinstatement of 450 dismissed postal workers, and an airplane to bring the kidnappers and their lawyers to Cuba or Algeria . In addition, the FLQ warned that Provincial Prime Minister Robert Bourassa would have to "face reality over the next year: 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized."

On October 10, the Chénier cell kidnapped Pierre Laporte , Québec's Labor Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. The provincial government, responsible for law and order, asked the army on October 15 formally to support in the form of an intervention, then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau the state of emergency imposed, for the first and only time ever in peacetime. The following day, civil rights were suspended. This enabled the army to briefly take control of Québec. By the end of the year, 457 people suspected of sympathizing with the FLQ had been arrested. Most were released without charge after a short time.

An anonymous caller reached out to a radio station on October 17 and said Laporte had been murdered. The police later found him strangled at the specified location, lying in the trunk of a car. On December 3, James Richard Cross was released after 60 days in captivity. The Canadian government gave five terrorists safe passage to Cuba with Fidel Castro's permission. Pierre Vallières, the ideological leader of the FLQ, announced on December 13, 1970 that he had renounced terrorism and was now advocating the usual political process as a means of achieving Québec's independence. The last three terrorists in the Chénier cell were arrested on December 28 and brought to justice.

Decline

The decline of the FLQ can be attributed on the one hand to the effective work of the police, on the other hand to the low support of the population. The Montreal Police Counter-Terrorism Unit had several high-level informants within the FLQ. On October 4th and 5th, 1971, a year after the October Crisis began, police arrested four FLQ members. More than 20 other arrests were made over the next 13 months. The wave of arrests meant that the FLQ could no longer recruit new followers.

The FLQ's support and political influence had dwindled dramatically in 1970. After the October Crisis and Laporte's assassination, the FLQ lost all public support that strictly opposed violence. An overwhelming majority of the population supported a state of emergency and the presence of the army in Québec. The separatist Parti Québécois , which wanted to achieve independence of the province by peaceful political means, was very popular.

The rise of the Parti Québécois moved active members and sympathizers of the FLQ to stay away from its dangerous activities. Pierre Vallières announced in December 1971 that he would also join the party, justifying this by stating that the FLQ was a “shock group” whose actions would only strengthen the “repressive forces”. Those terrorists who fled abroad returned by 1982 and received relatively low prison sentences. Many of them joined the Québécois Party.

literature

  • Louis Fournier: FLQ. Histoire d'un mouvement clandestin. Nouveau édition, révisée et augmumentée. Lanctôt Éditeur, Outremont Québec 1998, ISBN 2-89485-073-5 .
  • Dan G. Loomis: Not much glory. Selling the FLQ. Deneau Publishing, Ottawa 1984, ISBN 0-88879-118-6 .
  • Gustave Morf: Terror in Quebec. Case studies of the FLQ. Clark, Irwin & Company Limited, Toronto et al. 1970, ISBN 0-7720-0491-9 .
  • William Tetley: The October Crisis, 1970. An Insider's View. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal et al. 2006, ISBN 0-7735-3118-1 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.independance-quebec.com/flq/vague_1970.html