BY JOHN MUNORU
TORONTO - More than 300 demonstrators marched from Toronto's Chinatown to the Metropolitan police headquarters March 1 to protest the killing of a Chinese immigrant, Edmond Yu, by the city cops. The protest was organized by the Toronto Coalition Against Racism, Black Action Defence Committee, and Chinese residents. Several participants sported trade union jackets.

Chanting "Justice for Edmond Yu!" the protesters, many of whom were young, condemned the latest of many police killings. Police shot Edmond Wong Yu dead in a Toronto Transit Commission bus on February 20.

Before the march, protesters held a rally at the corner of a Chinatown street where Yu, who was homeless, used to hang around. Many shops and restaurant workers and operators lined the street to listen to speakers denounce police violence. Speaking in Chinese and English, several Chinese anti-racism activists, including a city councilor, demanded answers for the murder.

A few days after the killing, more than 250 members of the Chinese community had attended a meeting organized to seek justice for Yu. "This shooting raises disturbing questions; the concerns in our community are legitimate," Dr. Joseph Wong, a community activist, said at the meeting. Wong said Yu had three handicaps: he was a member of a visible minority, he was poor and had a mental disorder. "All three have been reasons for discrimination in this country for many, many years."

Witnesses outraged
Several passengers in a street car beside the Toronto city bus witnessed Edmond Yu's murder. In an interview later with the Toronto Star, one of the witnesses, a 59- year-old retired librarian named Isabel Rose, said what happened was outrageous.

The woman said the bus was empty except for the officers who seemed to talk for about five minutes to Yu before retreating.

"When I looked at him to see why this happened, he [Yu] had in his hand a small-sized hammer." She said the man held it in his right hand and "as I watched, he flicked his wrist only. As he was doing that, the policemen were still sitting back. And then, suddenly, these shots." The witness said later said she had heard so many stories about the police shootings. "A person always wonders what went on, well I saw what went on."

Metropolitan Toronto police chief David Boothby later issued a statement backing his officers. The cops involved have refused to talk about it. They merely said that they confronted Yu after the bus driver reported that the man had assaulted a woman on a nearby sidewalk before boarding the bus.

Dudley Laws, a longtime fighter against police brutality and a spokesperson for the Black Action Defence Committee, led the gathering in chanting "Charge the police with murder!" He condemned Boothby and the Ontario government for backing the police in this killing and others that have taken place in Toronto. Over the years, the Toronto police have sought to silence Laws by filing various frame-up charges against him.

Protesters demand justice
Family members of other victims of police killings addressed the rally. "These policemen have left so many of us sad, so many of us mourning," said Marjorie Williams, the mother of Wayne Williams, a black schizophrenic youth shot by police last June.

Shaheen Kamadia, a Tanzanian of Asian origin and the mother of 16-year-old Faraz Suleman, killed by a cop last June, also spoke. She explained how she had sought police help to prevent her son from being drawn into petty crime.

"Instead they came back with a dead body. I expected them to serve and protect me," she said. Kamadia added that the fight for her son's justice had succeeded in having manslaughter charges brought against his killer. She appealed for supporters to turn up at the courts and show support by wearing a "Justice for Suleman" badge, noting that police are wearing badges in support of the killer cop, Robert Wiche.

Wiche appeared in court on March 6 and pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges. About 40 supporters of Faraz wearing "Justice for Suleman" badges were in court. More than 100 cops turned up at the court wearing buttons with "We support #87" -the cop's badge number.

Two days before his court appearance, Wiche, who was an acting detective at the time of the shooting, received his promotion, which had been deferred after the killing. The regional police chief, Bryan Cousineau, was quoted as saying, "As far as I am concerned, Robert Wiche ... will be compensated accordingly."

Police officers have shot 13 people in the Greater Toronto Area since 1990, most of the Black and some who were mentally ill. Not a single cop has ever been convicted of these murders.

John Munoru is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1295 in Toronto.  
 
 
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