Mrs. [Astaforoff] was force-fed July 20, but the practice has been discontinued because, said the deputy director, "it's dangerous to insert a gastric tube if they are resisting." "When I spoke with her," Mrs. [Esther McMullen] said this week, "she was lying outside. She was cheerful and said she was happy. . . Mary now tells me about the flowers of her soul." She said the Doukhobors don't fast to the death. "It's not of their own will.

BRITISH COLUMBIA Not the Maze - it's Oakalla prison

Saturday, August 15, 1981

ANDREA MAITLAND

Vancouver BC -- BY ANDREA MAITLAND VANCOUVER A 66-year-old woman belonging to the radical Sons of Freedom sect of the Doukhobors has been fasting in Oakalla provincial prison in Burnaby for more than a month, apparently protesting against being treated as a criminal.

Mary Astaforoff and the four Freedomite women who started the fast with her July 5 were jailed in relation to arson cases. Mrs. Astaforoff is awaiting trial. The other four women have stopped fasting.

Sons of Freedom Doukhobors have a long history in British Columbia of arson and nude parades to protest against materialism. Esther McMullen, deputy director of the women's unit at Oakalla, said the seven Freedomite women held there feel they are being unjustly treated as criminals.

Their average age is 57 and some are serving three to nine years on arson convictions.

Mrs. Astaforoff was force-fed July 20, but the practice has been discontinued because, said the deputy director, "it's dangerous to insert a gastric tube if they are resisting." "When I spoke with her," Mrs. McMullen said this week, "she was lying outside. She was cheerful and said she was happy. . . Mary now tells me about the flowers of her soul." She said the Doukhobors don't fast to the death. "It's not of their own will. God tells them to do it." As many as 20 Doukhobor women have been held in Oakalla in the 14 years Mrs. McMullen has been there. They sleep on air mattresses in their own special arson-resistant section of the jail and prepare their own vegetarian food.

About half of the communal, pacifist vegetarian Doukhobors, a Christian sect, migrated to Saskatchewan from Russia in 1899, fleeing persecution by the church and state. About 10 years later, a large group moved to British Columbia and in the early part of this century the minority, breakaway Sons of Freedom began a campaign of arson to protest against materialism. They were accused of burning schools in the Thirties and a special prison was set up for them. Doukhobors refused conscription during the Second World War.

In the early 1950s, in response to a wave of burnings, the Government of W. A. C. Bennett started six years of mass arrests of the Sons of Freedom. The most important part of the Government program was seizure of children who were forcibly educated at a school in New Denver, B.C.

In their book, The Doukhobors, George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic calculate that there have never been more than 50,000 Doukhobors altogether in Canada and Russia.

The authors say a provincial attorney-general admitted to them in 1963 that only 800 of the 2,500 Freedomites were under suspicion for acts of protest including arson, less than one-twentieth of the Doukhobor population at the time.

They say that probably only about 200 took part in terrorism.