Found at: http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint04/14__Figueroa_blasts_Montebello_cover-up.html

Figueroa blasts Montebello cover-up

  (The following article is from the September 16-30, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Communist Party leader Miguel Figueroa has denounced the "cover up" of police infiltration of the anti-Summit protests in Montebello. He is demanding a full and independent public inquiry, and the criminal prosecution of all those responsible for this "dangerous, anti-democratic action."

     For several days after the August 21 events at Montebello, the Quebec Provincial Police refused to admit their use of agents provocateurs to foment violence and provide a pretext for police to attack and break up the protests. Yet even after the QPP recanted and admitted their use of provocateurs, federal Public Security Minister Stockwell Day continued to downplay the incident and brush off demands for a public inquiry.

     "This was not just a localized assault on the labour and social activists protesting in Montebello," Figueroa said. "It was a crude attempt to discredit the entire opposition movement against the Security and Prosperity Partnership pact promoted by the big business and their pro-corporate governments in Canada, the USA and Mexico, and to manipulate public opinion to accept this sell-out agreement. There is absolutely no way that this dangerous provocation could have been undertaken without the prior knowledge and approval of the RCMP, CSIS and the Prime Minister's Office itself."

     Right-wing governments have repeated used agents provocateurs to subvert people's resistance to the neoliberal and so-called "globalization" agenda of the transnational corporations and banks, and the governments and states they control. Strong evidence of such tactics surfaced in the APEC protests in Vancouver, at the Seattle mobilizations against the WTO, and in Genoa where the Italian police were caught red-handed.

     "Canada is not a fascist police-state, and the Canadian people cannot allow such grave violations to be perpetrated without a full investigation and punishment of those found responsible," Figueroa said. "At stake are not only the right to peaceful dissent and protest, but also the very future of sovereignty and democracy in Canada itself."