Protest Roundup of Montreal Leftists!

The following statement was issued on August 28 by the Partisan Defense Committee, the class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste.

The Partisan Defense Committee denounces the arrests of eight leftists this summer by the “anti-gang” unit of the Montreal police. On June 29, Patrice Legendre, a supporter of the Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire (PCR), and three other militants were arrested in an operation involving some 30 cops. Over the next few weeks, four more activists—members and leaders of the Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ), a 40,000-strong student union—were also picked up. The ASSÉ activists face between four and nine charges each in connection with protests against tuition fee increases last March, when students occupied the offices of the Quebec finance minister and the Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities.

These arrests, part of a broader campaign of disruption and provocation, are the result of the dirty deeds of a police “anti-gang” squad called GAMMA (Guet des Activités et des Mouvements Marginaux et Anarchistes—Surveillance of Activities of Marginal and Anarchist Movements). The creation of this agency in January, along with the eight arrests, marks an intensification of a long-running war on the left by the Montreal cops.

The pretext for the first round of arrests was an altercation at this year’s May Day demonstration organized by Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC). The Montreal cops routinely stage provocations against May Day protesters; this year they tried to arrest a photographer associated with Partisan, the PCR’s newspaper. As the PCR reports, “dozens of protesters responded by confronting the police, telling them to release the activist.” The cops backed off. Now police have thrown numerous serious charges against demonstrators including “assault with a weapon” and “assaulting a police officer.”

Ominously, it appears that the cops are also trying to implicate PCR supporters in an incident that occurred in Trois-Rivières a year ago in which the doors of a Canadian Forces recruitment centre were shattered by an explosive device. The PCR notes that the day after the June 29 arrests the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) installed itself in Trois-Rivières, flashing photos of the four arrested leftists. INSET, a joint “anti-terror” agency of the RCMP, CSIS, Canadian Border Services and provincial and municipal police forces in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, has harassed numerous Quebec activists, including PCR supporters.

The Montreal crackdown is part of a broader ruling-class offensive against leftists which includes the mass arrests and brutalization of G20 protesters in Toronto in 2010. Many anti-G20 activists and organizers still face trumped-up charges. This is all aimed at intimidating those who oppose the violence, poverty and war that are endemic to the system of capitalist exploitation. This system, in which a tiny minority exploits the labour of the many, cannot be maintained except by force, and that is the core purpose of the capitalist state, with its repressive laws and its cops, courts and jails.

We have many political differences with the Maoist PCR and with the political views of the ASSÉ student leaders. But in the face of this state repression, our watchword is: “An injury to one is an injury to all!” It is in the interest of the entire labour movement to defend these activists and demand an end to the witchhunt. As we have always insisted, the ultimate target of such political repression, supplemented by the bogus “war on terror,” is the multiracial working class and its struggles. The working class alone has the potential social power and material interest to be the gravediggers of the capitalist order. Drop all charges against the arrested leftists!