Government will be sued by the Civil Rights Coalition for ?a range of arbitrary, abusive, irrational and conflicting actions? against 80 Devonshire residents who were subjected to a ?bewildering array of bureaucratic misstatements, threats, and lies ? perpetrated both by elected and non-elected officials?.

Corin Smith ? Secretary to the Civil Rights Coalition of Bermuda (CRCB) formed this Spring by Government critic Raymond Russell ? represented 80 furious Mary Victoria Road and Alexandra Road residents at a special hearing before the Development Applications Board (DAB) yesterday.n The Coalition said it would sue Government regardless of whether the DAB refused a planning application by the Bermuda Housing Corporation (BHC) to build 20 new homes in the Prospect neighbourhood was approved.

?The Coalition represents a cross-section of civil rights concerns in areas ranging from immigration and land law to internal security to criminal justice,? it said. ?Since August 16, 2005, in response to the increasing range of alleged abuses of the statutory powers of the Bermuda Government, the CRCB has undertaken to launch a joint action lawsuit that will formally document these allegations and subject them to judicial scrutiny.

?The CRCB has been asked by the Prospect housing association to include the grievances associated with this planning application in this joint action.

?In the course of our review of the relevant documentation, we have identified a range of arbitrary, abusive, irrational and conflicting actions taken on behalf of the Bermuda Government.

?In order to guarantee that a higher standard of care is associated with these proceedings, the CRCB has reached the conclusion that it is advisable to subject this Planning Application ? no matter what the result ? to the legal scrutiny that will be afforded by the joint action lawsuit? it said.

It said the application violated the civil and human rights of Prospect residents and BHC was affecting low income families the hardest and has helped the spread of gangs in Bermuda.

It said the Mary Victoria Road planning housing project was part of an historic pattern of prejudicial, demeaning and disruptive treatment of low income populations by or on behalf of the Bermuda Government.

?Nowhere is this treatment more apparent than in the refusal of the BHC ? over an inauspicious thirty year history ? to produce a realistic strategy to accommodate the affordable housing needs of a significant demographic group representing some 30 percent of the total population,? it said.

?Instead, the BHC has allowed affordable housing to become a perpetual wedge issue dividing low income neighbourhoods, families and social groups on the basis of spatial instability.

?These poorly constructed policies have no doubt inflamed present day social patterns of territorial aggression associated with gangs, social violence and criminality in low income areas.

?The BHC now claims to have a belated obligation to mitigate the ?housing stress? on the Island. But the evidence of their immediate application demonstrates that the BHC is actually causing the ?stress? through its increasingly arbitrary treatment of the legitimate needs and expectations of low-income groups.

?During the conduct of this application itself, a broad cross-section of residents at Prospect have been exposed to a bewildering array of bureaucratic misstatements, threats, and lies ? perpetrated both by elected and non-elected officials.