Come Help Csaba (Part 3 of 5)

'They pushed me up the hill. I won’t forget that day.'

Part 1: You Can See Me from the Moon

Toward the end of the trucker protest in Ottawa, shortly past nine one evening, FoxNews stuck a microphone in Csaba Vizi’s truck window. A temporary tattoo in the shape of a large, red maple leaf covered much of the right side of his face. “What’s your plan?” he’s asked on live TV. “Everyone’s saying you’re leaving. When are you heading out of town?”

He replies by mentioning the month of August. Then he says he intends to go “around the corner to get my favourite pizza and I’m gonna come right f**king back.” That video clip circulated widely on social media, with people calling him a ‘badass Canadian trucker.’

The Emergencies Act had been declared Monday evening, and things were becoming tense. When Csaba woke Thursday morning, there was a lot of activity near Eric, across the street. The trailer he’d pulled to Ottawa prominently displayed the logo of the company for which he worked. Soon the East German immigrant was at Csaba’s door, “My boss called. He said If I’m not coming home now, 55 other drivers who are employed at the company, they gonna be out of a job. Because the government is gonna close the company. I gotta go.”

That’s not how things are supposed to work. But the province of Ontario did suspend the business license of Jonker Trucking for a week.

Csaba had persuaded his wife and daughters to join him in Ottawa. He missed them terribly, and had assured them it was safe. “It's a huge party, you gotta see what's happening here,” he told them. They checked into a hotel not knowing that, by the time they arrived that Thursday, the party was on the cusp of being violently shut down.

While Csaba was walking his family back to the hotel late that evening, his friend in the yellow truck pulled out. Csaba’s red Volvo was now the last man standing on that part of the street. He remembers he’d barely arrived at the hotel when he got a call telling him the police were looking for him. If he didn’t move his truck closer to Parliament, the caller said, it would be towed and he’d be arrested.

By the time he made it back to his rig, hundreds had surrounded it. “Some people they went live on different [social media] platforms, asking for help. Come and help Csaba. When I get over there I saw a whole bunch of people blocking the whole street.” They’d interlocked arms, he says. “A lot of cops, also. I saw people protecting my truck, basically with their own body. So I sneak between the people, I get into my truck, I start my engine.” Soon, he says,  

They was singing O Canada. They was yelling ‘Freedom!’ It was impossible to describe. So I’m in my driver’s seat, I put my lights on. Suddenly all those people they just open up, like a road, for me to start driving.

I start moving slowly, people are filming. The police officers over there, they didn’t know what to do. The street behind me was blocked by people - they blocked the intersection so no more police could come inside. I will say it was like four, five hundred people easily over there.

That little hill was all covered in snow and ice, so I get stuck. I couldn’t move. And I just saw people in my mirror. They are running to my truck, everybody, and they pushed me up the hill. I won’t forget that day. Probably that was the most beautiful day for me.

(The video below shows people pushing Csaba’s truck, but the video is incorrectly labelled. This footage was shot in downtown Ottawa on February 17, two days prior to his arrest. In another video here, Csaba leaves the impound lot.)

The next morning, after a friend told him a truck near the stage had pulled out, Csaba backed into the empty spot. Twenty-four hours later, on Saturday morning, when the police began making arrests directly in front of Parliament, the atmosphere had changed dramatically. Supporters weren’t making it through with coffee. “I saw fear in people,” he remembers, but also courage.

In the face of “scary cops with batons, guns, horses” he says a normal reaction is to retreat to safety. “But these people, they was so brave, man. They was running towards the police, trying to hold them back with bare hands, you know. Trying to hug them, trying to shake their hands. Telling them, ‘Hey, we love you,’ even as they was beaten up and shot with tear gas, rubber bullets. I saw that with my own eyes.”

From his vantage point up high, Csaba is adamant multiple individuals were bleeding. Some of the injured “came between my truck and the truck right next to me. I remember an old lady. She was bleeding from her forehead and she was almost losing the balance when she walked between me and the other truck. Yeah, that was disturbing.”

Given the frigid temperature, he says, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize the rubber bullet is not rubber no more. It’s become a hard plastic something. And they shot some people in the face with that.” While these “horrific scenes” unfolded before him, he says, “I was sitting in my truck, revving my engine, blowing my horn like it was some kind of weapon. My only weapon. Suddenly the music stopped. I saw people running, disassembling the stage.”

As the police moved closer, Csaba decided to exit his truck. Getting down on his knees in the snow, he put his hands behind his head, “accepting the fact l'm gonna be arrested and beaten up. When these police they beat old ladies, I knew I'm gonna get a beating, being a trucker.”

By then, he says, he’d achieved a measure of serenity, “You know, I have to find a peace to be able to go down without moving a muscle. Let them beat me for as long as they feel like. As a man, you know, it's not an easy thing. But I was able to find the peace.”

A line of cops was pushing forward, shouting at people to back up. “Probably even in that last minute, I was able to stand up and run away,” Csaba says. “But I wanna be able to look at myself in the mirror. So I just refuse to run. They grabbed me, they pulled me between them. I was on my belly,” on the ground. “They jump on me. Trying to think back how I felt in that very moment, all I remember is I was laughing. I feel some kinda relief, you know?”

He says he “didn’t put up any fight. I didn’t say nothing. I remember my face was in the snow.” In the extreme cold, he felt a burning sensation. “Every time I tried to breathe, less and less air I was able to get into my lungs.”

Video footage clearly shows the officer on Csaba’s right kneeing him in the side four times while he’s on the ground, as the officer on the left simultaneously assaults him, and a third officer holds him down (begin watching at the 20-second mark on this video). Someone who uploaded this footage online said it looked like “a remake of the Rodney King video” which sparked a national conversation about police brutality in America in 1991. “Something is seriously wrong in Canada,” they added.

After he was handcuffed and on his feet again, Csaba was escorted to a paddy wagon by one of the officers he believes assaulted him. “If you saw that video of my arrest,” he says, the cop who kneed him repeatedly,

was the one walking me down on the street. And at some point I get close to an older lady with her hands behind her back and she was crying. I told her, ‘Don’t cry, sister. Everything is gonna be alright.’

And this officer asked me, ‘Is that your sister?’

I said, ‘Yes, she’s my sister.’ I said, ‘Just like you are my brother.’ And after that our conversation stopped. Because I did ask him for his first name. I said, ‘I want to remember for the rest of my life. What’s your name?’ And he stopped answering me. I’m pretty sure I moved something in him when I called him my brother.

Or maybe not. Maybe he’s gonna think about it later.

next installment: Police Beat Me Up Pretty Bad