JUSTICE FOR JOHN GRAHAM!
(The
following article is from
the January 1-15,
2008
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
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Special
Resolution, Central Committee,
Communist Party of Canada, Dec. 8-9, 2007
This meeting of
the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of Canada condemns the Dec. 6 extradition of
Aboriginal activist John Graham to the United States as an appalling
violation of his civil liberties and legal rights, and an unacceptable
attack on the sovereignty of Canada and of Aboriginal peoples.
For the past
four years, John Graham and his family and supporters have courageously
resisted the FBI demand that he be sent to the United States to stand
trial for the brutal 1975 murder of American Indian Movement member
Anna Mae Aquash. It has become increasingly obvious that the charges
against John Graham are based on utterly tainted evidence, and that the
FBI is engaged in a sleazy attempt to refute longstanding and
well-founded accusations that by "snitch-jacketing" Anna Mae (spreading
false rumours that she was a police agent), the Bureau itself is deeply
implicated in her tragic death.
As many legal
experts and defenders of civil liberties have warned, changes to
Canada's extradition laws adopted by Parliament in 1999 virtually
eliminated any power by Canadian judges to reject an extradition
request from the US. In effect, Canadian courts can no longer exercise
this country's sovereign right to require that a minimal level of
genuine evidence of guilt be presented to grant approval for such an
extradition request. US prosecutors were unable to present any credible
evidence linking John Graham to the murder, yet the courts in British
Columbia approved the extradition request, and then rejected Graham's
appeal earlier this year.
Since then,
the John Graham Defense Committee and other groups have worked
constantly to urge federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to block the
extradition, and a final appeal was forwarded to the Supreme Court of
Canada. Tragically, that appeal was denied on Dec. 6, and within
minutes, without even a chance to speak with his family, John Graham
was being transported from his prison cell to the U.S. border. Through
their deliberate inaction, Nicholson and his colleagues in the Harper
Tory government have become accomplices in the decades-long murderous
campaign by the US state and the FBI to wipe out the American Indian
Movement, just as the Liberal government of the time refused to lift a
finger to block the 1976 extradition of AIM leader Leonard Peltier from
Canada.
Now that this
shameful extradition has been carried out, the campaign for justice for
John Graham has entered a new stage. The Communist Party of Canada
demands a fair trial for John Graham, something which has been denied
to Leonard Peltier, who has now been wrongly imprisoned for over thirty
years. We will join with others to help expose the racist US police
frame-up against John Graham. We urge all those in the labour and
democratic movements who support the Aboriginal peoples' struggles for
justice, and who oppose the destruction of Canadian and Aboriginal
sovereignty, to join this fight to win the freedom of John Graham and
Leonard Peltier.
Found at:
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint09/JUSTICE_FOR_JOHN_GRAHAM!.html