Guilty for Being an Activist

[furtherfield]

Guilty for Being an Activist

By Jaggi Singh, AlterNet
February 6, 2003

On February 4, 2003, in Montreal's municipal court, anti-capitalist activist
and postal worker, Manuel Almeida, 44, was found guilty of breaking his
condition of release on a previous charge. Manuel will be sentenced in
April. He is worried that the sentence might cost him his job, as well as
restrict his ability to visit his extended family in Angola, from which he
immigrated to Quebec more than two decades ago.


What is interesting about Manuel's case is that he hadn't participated in
any public demonstrations whatsoever. Manuel was charged with the offence
after he was rounded up in a downtown park on April 26, 2002, in a
preemptive mass arrest undertaken by Montreal's riot squad. Hundreds were
detained before the planned demonstration could even begin. The police
actions were roundly condemned by even very mainstream liberal civil rights
groups.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15116