Robin Bourne, the former head of the federal Solicitor-General's security planning group, heads the committee investigating the arsons. He does not see the Doukhobors as terrorists. "I regard those that do use fire as a rather fanatical religious people," Mr. Bourne said. "They use that method as a form of protest.

Three groups band together Fasting death unifies Doukhobors

Saturday, December 07, 1985

RITA MOIR

GRAND FORKS, B.C. -- BY RITA MOIR Special to The Globe and Mail GRAND FORKS, B.C.

I T APPEARS that the death of a Sons of Freedom Doukhobor after fasting in a British Columbia prison may not have been in vain.

The strength of Mary Astaforoff's convictions appears to have become a major catalyst in unifying the fractured Doukhobor community, at least for a while.

In an extraordinary move that would not have been possible even a year ago, members of all three Doukhobor groups banded together last week to ask three other imprisoned women to end their fasts. Their efforts succeeded.

Mary Braun, 65, and Tina Jmaieff, 61, serving eight-year sentences for arson, were on the 57th day of their fast. Pauline Berikoff, 43, serving a 60-day sentence, had been fasting for 21 days.

Mrs. Astaforoff, 71, died Nov. 24 after going 54 days without nourishment.

The Reformed Doukhobors, Orthodox Doukhobors and Sons of Freedom, who have been involved in bitter ideological struggles for decades, have achieved enough respect for each other during their participation in the past few years in hearings on the Doukhobors that members of the three groups were able to travel in the same car for 600 kilometres to visit the three fasters.

They all urged the women to eat, and promised that the concerns that prompted the fasts would not be forgotten if the women agreed.

Mrs. Astaforoff, who was buried in her community of Gilpin last week, was always the chief spokesman for the hunger strikers. She had spent more than 22 years in prison for arson, contempt of court and nudity.

In court appearance after court appearance, she told judges and juries that fires are a sign of friction between opposing forces. She said she burned at times because she received a message from God, and at other times because she was manipulated by another Doukhobor group.

She said the Sons of Freedom oppose materialism and the worship of icons. She said the Doukhobor Museum, which she was convicted of burning, was an icon, a memorial to the Doukhobor culture, which the Canadian Government had constantly been trying to assimilate or destroy.

Mrs. Astaforoff, her body waif-like from the fasting, would appear in the old stone Nelson courthouse, naked or clothed, gesturing and speaking in broken English, calling on the court to acknowledge a legacy of oppression.

She recalled the unsolved assassination of Peter Verigin, the first Doukhobor leader in Canada, in 1924. She spoke of the deaths of Doukhobor hunger strikers in Canadian prisons, of the B.C. Government's seizure of Sons of Freedom children and their confinement in a Government school in the 1950s - education the Sons of Freedom saw as militaristic and against their paficist convictions.

As eloquent as Mrs. Astaforoff was, some Sons of Freedom and many other Doukhobors believe that the elderly fasters are living in the past. One Freedomite said that it is impossible to estimate the number of sect sympathizers, but, if that number is 50, there may be only five as dedicated as Mrs. Astaforoff, Mrs. Braun and Mrs. Jmaieff.

It is sometimes almost impossible, the Freedomite said, for Anglo- Saxons to understand the waves of activity in the group. But he said no one is afraid that dwindling numbers will mean the end of their struggle for a simpler life with more religious freedom.

Greg Cran, a representative of the B.C. Attorney-General's Ministry involved in hearings on the causes of arson, said some Sons of Freedom want to move out of their history and turmoil, but they are leaderless and are struggling to come to grips with their future.

Robin Bourne, the former head of the federal Solicitor-General's security planning group, heads the committee investigating the arsons. He does not see the Doukhobors as terrorists. "I regard those that do use fire as a rather fanatical religious people," Mr. Bourne said. "They use that method as a form of protest. They are far more difficult to deal with than the traditional terrorists . . . to get to the bottom of the spiritual, mystical nature of what makes a Sons of Freedom do what he has to do. "The Doukhobor philosophy is toil and peaceful life. Any violence is totally contradictory to what they tell you is what makes a Doukhobor different from other people. That's what makes it so complicated - the intellectual contradiction in their own heads about it." The delegation of Doukhobors met federal corrections officials after visiting the fasters, but Thomas D'Aquino said he and deputy commissioner Jim Murphy could offer no alternatives. He says the delegation knew that, in order to put the women in a halfway house, they must have served one- sixth of their sentence in order to qualify for day parole. He said the delegation asked him not to divulge details of the meeting.