Across the cities and towns of Canada, tens of thousands of workers, youth and women have been coming onto the streets, to protest state repression.
Across the cities and towns of Canada, tens of thousands of workers, youth and women have been coming onto the streets, to protest state repression.
Trade Unions, civil rights and community and religious groups, organisations of students, youth and women have been participating in demonstrations to condemn the savage police attack on protestors at the June 26-27, 2010 G 20 Summit in Toronto.
It may be recalled that over 30,000 working people participated in the protests against G20 and its agenda on June 26, 2010 in Toronto. This was perhaps one of the largest ever protests witnessed in Canada in decades. Workers, women and youth came from far corners of Canada to express their opposition to the G-20's agenda of shifting the burden of the crisis on to the backs of the working people.
In a most calculated and premeditated manner, the Canadian state met the protestors with massive force, using tear gas for the first time in Canada. Thousands of heavily armed police attacked the protest demonstration, in which no one, including old women and journalists, was spared. Toronto was turned into a fortified war zone, to terrorise the people. According to Toronto Police and the Movement Defence Committee (MDC), 1,105 people were arrested in relation to protests against the G8/G20 Summits in Toronto. A large number of these were not arrested at any protest but taken into custody from their homes and camps.
Canadian communists have pointed out that the issue is the premeditated use of fascist violence against the people to suppress their political opposition to the reactionary agendas of these imperialist summits. The violence used against the people during the summit is part and parcel of the fascization of the state. The G8/20 summits themselves, with their declarations to further shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the workers and the oppressed peoples and to carry on provocations against the peoples of various countries like Iran and Korea under false pretexts, are indicative of a system where naked power wields aggression and violence as the means to further the narrow interests of the rich and the imperialists.
The immediate concern of the Canadian people is that the governments and their police forces not be allowed to get away with their display of fascist violence against those protesting the G8/20 summits. Demonstrations are being held across Canada to demand an independent public inquiry into the police violence, the resignation of the Chief of the Toronto police, the release of all those arrested and that all charges against them are dropped. The broader aim of these actions is to push forward the struggle against the anti-social, annexationist and warmongering offensive of the Canadian government. The Canadian working class is demanding that all those arrested and subjected to abuse and humiliation must be compensated.