MONTREAL — More than 1,000 people marched in a protest Sept. 27 in Longueuil, just south of Montreal, calling for “Justice for Nooran.” Nooran Rezayi, a 15-year-old boy whose family are Afghan immigrants, was shot and killed by a cop as he was playing with friends and schoolmates a week earlier.
Hundreds of people, including neighbors, his schoolmates and others, attended his funeral Sept. 25.
“The tragedy has left deep pain,” Sharif Rezay, Nooran’s father, told the crowd at the protest rally, standing behind a banner that read “End police violence — Justice for Nooran.”
“Thank you for your solidarity and your support, friends, neighbors, organizations and people I don’t know. We call on everyone to march with dignity,” he said. “The message is that no other family live what we have gone through.”
The march began at the spot where Nooran was shot down and ended at a sports field where he played soccer. It was organized by the Quebec Muslim Burial Association in collaboration with the family.
The cops claim they received a 911 call reporting a gang of armed youth were in the streets. Squad cars converged on Nooran and his friends. Witnesses say that when Nooran tried to show them that he only had books in his backpack, one of them shot him in the belly and then again in his throat as he fell to the ground. He died on the spot. The only weapon found by authorities was the gun used by the cop.
Young people in the community told the media they face continual harassment by the police.
Signs included, “No to the police investigating the police” and “Enough blood of our children has been spilled.”
“The police executed a young person. Who will protect us from the police?” machine operator Nixon Benoit, originally from Haiti, told the Militant.
Whether the authorities can conduct a fair investigation is a big discussion. They’ve refused to divulge the name of the cop who fired the shots. He is on leave while the BEI — Bureau of Independent Investigations — has been assigned to investigate. The BEI is a police agency that reports to Quebec’s Minister of Public Safety. Some 50% of its investigators are former cops.
“The police think that they are untouchable. The BEI works for the police,” Nooruddin Hakimi, who delivers aircraft parts, told the Militant.
The Montreal police department has initiated its own inquiry.
Earlier in the week the head of the BEI held an unusual press conference criticizing the family and any others who set out to conduct their own independent investigations. In its nine-year history, only two incidents of the 450 the police agency has investigated have led to charges being levied against cops. Of the 52 investigations into cases where police fatally shot someone, none resulted in charges.
Supporters of Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal, and Philippe Tessier, the CL candidate for mayor of Saint Leonard, a borough of Montreal, distributed a flyer headlined, “Arrest and charge the cop who shot and killed Nooran Rezayi!”
Hundreds of cop killings
Nooran is the fourth person killed by Quebec cops this year. Over the past 25 years 827 people have died from police violence across Canada. Only 14 cops have been charged, either with murder or manslaughter, over that span, and only one convicted. A disproportionate number of the victims were black or Indigenous.
“Under capitalism, the function of the cops isn’t to fight crime. It’s to ‘serve and protect’ the private property and political rule of the capitalist bosses and bankers,” LeRougetel told the Militant Sept. 28. “When working people build a party of our own and fight to take political power out of the hands of the ruling rich, we can open the way to building a society based on human solidarity, not capitalist exploitation and brutality.”
Toward the end of the protest a small group of ultraleft provocateurs tried and failed to disrupt it, refusing to leave when organizers asked everyone to go home. They wore masks and chased journalists from Rebel News, a conservative website, from the protest, yelling “fascists out.”
They also tried to harass Communist League campaigners at a table displaying socialist literature. They insisted the table be shut down because of the League’s support of Israel’s fight to defend itself against Tehran-backed Hamas and others whose goal is a new Holocaust against Jews.
Joe Young contributed to this article.