The following are excerpts of a statement read by Young Socialists National Committee member Mark Gilsdorf at the April 22 press conference protesting the illegal seizure and interrogation of Toronto YS Member Nojan Emad.

Members of the Young Socialists, together with fighting workers, farmers, and youth from cities across Canada and the United States vigorously protest the blatant attack on the civil liberties and basic democratic rights of Nojan Emad by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police....

Hoping to ride a wave of anti-Arab hysteria following the April 19 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the capitalist class, its government in Ottawa, and their armed thugs in the RCMP sought to push a little further in their efforts to curtail the rights working people have fought for and won....

Following the arrest of a suspect in the Oklahoma bombing, U.S. president Bill Clinton announced that "justice for the killers would be swift, certain, and severe" and that he would be seeking the death penalty in the case... This is the same president who during his first week in office dropped bombs on public hotels in Iraq. This is the same president who detained thousands of Haitians and Cubans in concentration camps at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and together with his attorney general, Janet Reno, incinerated the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. This is his meaning of swift and severe justice. This is the threat they seek to hold over the heads of anyone who dares to stand up, think for themselves and fight back.

It was Nojan's trip to Cuba, as a participant in the International Youth Brigade to Cuba, that interested the RCMP... One truth he found in Cuba was that the working class there did away with the practice of disappearances and political kidnappings in 1959 when they overthrew the U.S.- backed dictator Batista who used these tactics as standard operating procedure....

Another interesting fact is that three participants in the same brigade, upon returning to the United States, had their passports seized by the U.S. government. This attack against Emad was carried out for the same reasons, by a government that is afraid of workers and youth learning the truth about Cuba.

The RCMP and their masters in Ottawa have miscalculated this time. The Young Socialists pledges to take Nojan Emad's message of resistance to the picket lines of trade unionists, to the protests of students, and everywhere people are standing up.

We join with Emad's supporters in demanding the immediate arrest and prosecution of the thugs who carried out this attack, and an end to the harassment of Nojan Emad.  
 
 
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