RACISM IN THE RANKS

By Barbara Rudolph

The footage on the two videos was wobbly and out of focus, but clear enough to shock Canadians last week as they watched late-night national television news. One of the tapes showed soldiers of the elite Airborne Regiment at Petawawa, Ontario, a base 115 km northwest of Ottawa, participating in vicious and racist hazing rituals in 1992. In one scene a black recruit crawled across the ground, with symbols declaring ``I love the Ku Klux Klan'' daubed in excrement on his back. Another soldier was shown being forced to eat urine-soaked bread. The second tape depicted Airborne members in Somalia in 1993, where they were serving as U.N. peacekeepers. Asked to describe his tour, one soldier told the anonymous interviewer, ``I think it sucks, man. We ain't killed enough n_____yet.''

The two videos were only recently uncovered by journalists and made available for public broadcast. Shortly after the tapes aired, top officials in Ottawa again announced that there was ``zero tolerance'' for racism in the military. ``I can only express my outrage and disgust. These people denigrate our proud Canadian military heritage,'' said Defense Minister David Collenette, who ordered General John de Chastelain, chief of defense staff, ``to investigate this matter and to report on it'' by Jan. 23. Prime Minister Jean Chretien went a step further. ``If we have to dismantle the Airborne Regiment, we'll dismantle it,'' he said while on a trip to Latin America and the Caribbean to drum up orders for Canadian business. ``I have no problem with that at all.''

The revelations about trouble in the Airborne reopened an earlier wound. In 1994 Canada was shocked by the courts martial of nine members of the unit for torturing and killing a 16-year-old Somali boy who had trespassed on their compound in Belet Huen while he was looking for food. One of the troopers was sentenced to five years in prison; the other eight were either acquitted or are appealing lesser charges. During the pretrial investigation, officials discovered that a handful of soldiers in the Airborne, calling themselves the Rebels, had adopted the Confederate flag as their banner and openly proclaimed racist views.

The Rebels were forbidden to make open displays of racism, but there was no indication of how that vague order could be enforced. In any case, to anyone with firsthand knowledge of the racism problem, the prohibition seemed too tame and too late.

The Airborne is considered one of Canada's best military formations, a crack 660-man unit founded in 1968 whose members have taken part in many overseas peacekeeping assignments for the U.N. A contingent from the regiment is currently serving in Rwanda. All 660 Airborne soldiers are scheduled to ship out in April to join a U.N. operation in Croatia, but that deployment may now be in jeopardy.

The video taken at Petawawa shows soldiers urinating on recruits, along with scenes of simulated masturbation and oral sex. The black recruit seen crawling on all fours is depicted in another segment tied to a tree while a substance that looks like dirt is being dumped on his head. The tape from Somalia shows a soldier standing in front of a police station at Belet Huen and responding with a grin to questions about the peacekeepers' role in helping starving Somali children. ``There's no one starving here, O.K.?'' the trooper replies. ``This is where 150 people hang out and eat wheat. They never work. They're slobs. And they stink.'' Another soldier calls the U.N. peacekeeping mission ``Operation Snatch N ____...Hold the gun out. Tut-tut-tut- tut.''

``The videos show the prevailing culture of the Airborne was one that tolerated, and perhaps encouraged, racism and sadism,'' the Montreal Gazette said in an editorial last week. The daily urged the government to investigate the unit. ``The elite paratroop regiment looks out of control,'' declared the Toronto Star. ``We need answers,'' said Rubin Friedman, an executive of B'nai Brith in Ottawa. ``The issue goes beyond individual acts of racism and brutality and shows systematic dehumanization.''

Military officials insisted that the problem was an old one and that new procedures for enforcing discipline have changed the situation. One of Canada's best-known soldiers, retired Major General Lewis Mackenzie, who served as chief of U.N. peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia in 1992, claimed that the Airborne had been reformed. ``The hazing video,'' he maintained, ``is a historical document.'' But Scott Taylor, publisher of Esprit de Corps, the monthly magazine that uncovered the Somalia videotape, is not so sure. ``The level of depravity can't even be described,'' he says. ``This was not just a few misguided individuals.''

With reporting by Gavin Scott/Ottawa