Condemn the Police Attack Against the OCAP Demonstrators!

Oppose State Violence Against the People!

Statement of the Manitoba Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

June 29, 2000

On June 15, a demonstration organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) to draw attention to the plight of the homeless was brutally assaulted by the Toronto police at Queen's Park. The demonstrators were pepper-sprayed and clubbed by the riot squad and mounted police charged their horses into the midst of the demonstration. The Manitoba Regional Committee of CPC(M-L) joins with Canadians all across the country in condemning this unprovoked attack against the OCAP demonstrators.

During the past several years, especially since the APEC demonstrations in Vancouver in 1997, police violence against demonstrators has become almost commonplace. Police have violently attacked demonstrators in Montreal on several occasions. Last year Winnipeg police clubbed and pepper-sprayed Native protesters at the Legislative Buildings and a demonstration of the homeless in Toronto was attacked by the OPP. More recently, the anti-OAS demonstrators in Windsor were pepper-sprayed and clubbed by police and the OCAP (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty) demonstration at Queen's Park in Toronto was brutally attacked by the riot squad and mounted police.

Although this kind of naked police violence against demonstrations has not been common for several years, it is by no means a new development on the Canadian political scene. The Canadian state was established on the basis of the violent suppression of the Aboriginal peoples and the people of Quebec. The movements for democratic government in Upper and Lower Canada in the 1830s were crushed through force of arms, as was the struggle of the Metis people for land and representative government in 1870 and 1885. During the 20^th century the struggles of the workers to organize were brutally attacked by various police forces and the army. In some cases, such as the Winnipeg General Strike, the On-To-Ottawa Trek and the Estevan miners' strike, police fired on the workers and killed several. Following the Second World War, the army and police were called on countless times to suppress the economic struggles of workers from one end of the country to the other.

In the 1930s the Canadian state attempted to assassinate the leader of the Communist Party of Canada, Tim Buck, in his prison cell. During the MacDonald Commission hearings into the wrong-doings of the RCMP, it was revealed that the RCMP Intelligence Service attempted to assassinate Hardial Bains, the leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in the early 1970s. It has also been reported that during the 1950s the Canadian state had plans to round up and murder numerous communists.

The 1960s and 1970s were full of examples of violent police attacks against demonstrations against the American war in Indo-China and for social justice in Canada. Between 1969 and 1975 over 2,500 police beatings and arrests of members and supporters of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) took place, most for the "crime" of distributing revolutionary literature. In 1974 the Native People's Caravan was brutally assaulted by the RCMP on Parliament Hill.

During the 1980s and most of the 1990s these kinds of violent police assaults against demonstrations subsided to a large extent, although there were many examples of police violence against workers' picket lines during this period, including the pepper-spraying of the Boeing workers in 1997 and attacks against the postal workers during their strike of 1995. The police and army also used violence against the struggles of the Native peoples at Oka, Stoney Creek, and Gustafson Lake during the 1990s. In addition, native people, the poor and the youth face violence at the hands of the police on a daily basis.

From this brief history, it can be seen that police violence against demonstrations has been the rule, rather than the exception. Every movement in opposition to the interests of the ruling elite has been met with a violent reaction of one kind or another by the Canadian state. The relative reduction of such state violence during the 1980s and 1990s can be attributed to the rising sentiment amongst the Canadian people that such state violence is unacceptable, coupled with a decline in the level of the oppositional movements.

The examples since the APEC incidents in 1997 show that the Canadian state is determined to crush any opposition to the ruling elite before it can get off the ground. There is a systematic effort to create an atmosphere where such police violence is considered, not only acceptable, but to be expected. There has also been a deliberate shift in the justification for such police violence, from being a necessary response to end the "violence" of the demonstrators to the current description as a necessary measure to prevent "violence" by protesters. Civil rights lawyers have pointed out that such activities by the police are actually violations of the Criminal Code.

These recent examples of police violence and other instances of the police declaring themselves to be above the law are a sign of what the Canadian ruling elite has in store for any Canadians who resist their rule.

The Manitoba Branch of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on the workers, women, youth and all progressive and democratic people to organize to defend their democratic rights and to question the very legitimacy of a state which perpetrates such violence against its own people.

Down With State Violence Against the People!

An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!