6-24-06, 8:56 am
In the wake of the arrests of seventeen alleged terrorists in the Toronto area, Prime Minister Harper and other leading right-wing politicians have joined with much of the corporate media in painting the suspects as guilty before being tried. But a growing number of voices across Canada are sharply critical of this attempt to create a lynch-mob atmosphere. Despite days of lurid headlines about beheadings and sieges, millions of Canadians remain sceptical that these allegations justify the drive to eliminate crucial civil liberties and democratic rights.
Such scepticism is well grounded in history and reality.
The RCMP and other 'security' forces have a long record of exaggerations, lies and law-breaking as part of efforts by the ruling class to isolate opposition voices and to scapegoat immigrant communities. For example, false accusations against leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and the Communist Party of Canada during the early 1930s were used by the capitalist state in its attempt to weaken the upsurge of radical working class movements. In recent decades, security forces have often used agents and provocateurs to promote violent tactics as a strategy to crack down on opposition groups. During the 1980s a police infiltrator in Quebec's labour movement advocated bombing tactics, and the anti-globalization movements have been the target of police agents and spies.
Even more recently was 'Project Thread,' in which some two dozen Muslim men were arrested in Toronto as members of a so-called 'Al-Qaeda sleeper cell.' The accusations proved false, and none of these men were ever formally charged, yet most were deported from Canada.
There are many signs that the current case bears similarities to such past abuses by security forces. The latest accusations claim that police actions stopped a well-organized terrorist group with the capacity to strike at the heart of the Canadian state. But from the moment the arrests were made, evidence has mounted that the there was never any coherent plan or strategy for such attacks. In fact, the security forces may well have encouraged angry outbursts by some of the young men who were arrested, with the aim of building a legal case against them. The role of the police in providing the three tonnes of nitrate which became the immediate justification for the arrests smells of entrapment, to say the least. Most recently, it has been revealed that the so-called 'terrorist group' was badly divided over the use of violence, raising even more questions about the sordid role of the police.
Given this history and the facts that are known at this point, there is strong reason to suspect that the RCMP and CSIS were engaged in a deliberate attempt to create an excuse for a new 'anti-terror' crackdown in Canada. The timing of this operation - justa few months after the election of a minority government seeking closer links to U.S. imperialism, but facing strong domestic opposition to the Canadian military role in the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan - adds to such suspicions.
Certainly the arrests had some immediate welcome repercussions for the Harper government. The attacks against Muslim mosques in Toronto and Winnipeg can only fuel the atmosphere of racist hysteria which the state needs to promote new attacks on civil, legal and democratic rights. Similarly, the 'discovery' of a so-called 'home-grown terrorist threat' has given the government an excuse to attack opponents of the Afghan occupation as 'unpatriotic.' Unfortunately, even some opposition MPs who had been critical of the Afghan war quickly caved in to these pressures, praising the RCMP and CSIS for the arrests and strengthening the hand of the Harper Tories.
From the beginning of the so-called 'war on terror' launched by the Bush regime in September 2001, the Communist Party of Canada has opposed all efforts to generate racist and anti-Muslim campaigns to undermine civil, legal and democratic rights. On this occasion, the CPC demands that all those arrested must be presumed innocent pending the outcome of a fair and open trial. The state must not be allowed to use tainted or fabricated 'evidence' behind the scenes to seek convictions, as they have tried to do with the deplorable processes of secret trials and security certificates.
The CPC joins with others in condemning the mainstream media's attempt to demonize and scapegoat the Muslim community around these arrests. We ask the following: if the corporate media was truly concerned with exposing terrorism, why not level such accusations against the U.S. government, which bears full responsibility for over 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the illegal occupation of that country began in March 2003? Why not condemn the U.S. military as a terrorist organization for conducting the massacres at Haditha and the well-known torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, and for organizing the secret 'rendition' flights used to transport victims to torture and death in several countries?
We ask another question: why did the state not move quickly to protect buildings used by the Muslim community in the wake of the arrests in Toronto? Instead, Stockwell Day, the ultra-right 'Minister of Public Safety,' openly suggested that those arrested are guilty, before any trial. Mr. Day should certainly be removed from his cabinet position for fanning the flames of hatred rather than acting to ensure public safety.
Most important at this difficult time, we urge all Canadians who support peace and global justice to step up our common efforts to end the illegal wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to help achieve genuine freedom and statehood for the Palestinian people. Instead of seeking the illusion of 'safety' within a police-state North America, Canadians must expand our struggles for a world free of imperialist war, military occupation, endless arms races, economic injustice and other sources of violence. This is the only way forward to a future in which peoples and nations can work together to preserve our planet and to achieve justice and security for all.
From People's Voice
