Muslim Canadian Congress demands unconditional apology from RCMP
Racist depiction of Pakistanis as 'Sunni Extremists' is Shameful

TORONTO, August 27, 2003 - The Muslim Canadian Congress has strongly protested the depiction of Pakistanis as 'Sunni Muslim Extremists' by RCMP and other law enforcement agencies. The organization has asked the RCMP to unconditionally apologize for this act of racial profiling. The group also condemned the arrest of 19 innocent men on August 14 and demanded the immediate release of these detained men.

MCC, which is a grass roots Muslim organization based in Toronto, was reacting to the assertion by the agencies that the men were terror suspects simply because they were born in the Pakistani province of Punjab.

Jehad Aliweiwi, a founding member of the MCC said, "the allegations against these young men are so flimsy, they befit a cheap post 9/11 paperback thriller, not worthy of publication even backwater Texas." He said that the three van loads of so called evidence reminded him of the truckloads of evidence Colin Powell presented to the UN Security Council and therefore must be taken with a pinch of salt.

Arif Raza, a lawyer and community activist organizing part of the defence team for the Toronto 19 said, the RCMP actions are outrageously racist. "They most likely would not have been arrested and detained, if it was not for the pre-conceived racist notion prevalent among law enforcement agencies that people from Pakistan, the Arab world and other Muslims are violent, and prone to religious extremism."

Reacting to the statement by Terry McKay, the lawyer representing the minister of immigration, who said, "I guess the easiest way of putting it is there is a suggestion they might in fact be perhaps a sleeper cell for Al Qaeda," Arif Raza said the lawyer's statement indicates the government evidence is at most speculation and a product of fertile imagination.

Amina Sherazee, another member of the Muslim Canadian Congress and civil rights lawyer decried the climate of racial profiling and the import of US styled hysteria about terrorism. She said, "Such hysteria and false propaganda led to an immoral war in Iraq, the death of tens of thousands over there, and the illegal arrest, detention and deportation of thousands of innocent human beings under the NSEERS pogrom." The American mistakes should not be duplicated in Canada, she added.

Tarek Fatah, founder of the MCC said, "If our constitutional rights under the Charter are to survive, then the rule of law must prevail and the 19 accorded due process." He said our forefathers fought and died for these rights around the world. "Men in uniform can destroy these significant and fundamental achievements, if they are left unsupervised by the Courts and unregulated by democratically elected civilian institutions," Tarek Fatah added.