Free Shazad Ashraf!
Partisan Defense Committee | 24.01.2002 19:00
The PDC protests the five-year jail sentence handed out to Shazad Ashraf. Shazad was the first of over a hundred young Asians to be tried for protesting in Bradford last summer against repeated fascist provocations and an ongoing campaign of racist state harassment. The judge presiding over this witch hunt has promised that anyone refusing to plead guilty to riot, will receive the maximum 10 year sentence if convicted. We demand that Shazad Ashraf be freed immediately and that all charges against Asian youth and anti-racist protesters arrested alongside him are dropped!
PARTISAN DEFENCE COMMITTEE
BCM Box 4986
Phone 020 7281 5504
London WC1N 3XX
Fax 020 7281 5667
Home Secretary David Blunkett
Home Office
Queen Anne¡¦s Gate
London
SW1H 9AT
19 January 2002
To the Home Secretary:
The PDC protests the five-year jail sentence handed out to Shazad Ashraf. Shazad was the first of over a hundred young Asians to be tried for protesting in Bradford last summer against repeated fascist provocations and an ongoing campaign of racist state harassment. The judge presiding over this witch hunt has promised that anyone refusing to plead guilty to riot, will receive the maximum 10 year sentence if convicted. We demand that Shazad Ashraf be freed immediately and that all charges against Asian youth and anti-racist protesters arrested alongside him are dropped!
The protests on the weekend of July 7-8 last year were set off when a group of racists physically and verbally attacked an Asian man in Bradford¡¦s city centre. Police responded by arresting three Asians protesting the assault and then driving youth and anti-racists who had gathered to stop a National Front rally out of the city centre and into the mainly Asian district of Manningham. Under virtual police siege, the Asian community was subjected to hours of police charges and baton attacks. The bloodied face of Shahid Malik (knocked unconscious by police) who is a member of Labour¡¦s National Executive Committee was testament to the treatment meted out to any Asian youth out in the streets of their own neighbourhood that weekend.
It is this Labour government¡¦s relentless anti-immigrant, anti-asylum campaigns that have deliberately fanned the flames of racism and given the green light to the fascist vermin. Since September 11 the government has used the indefensible attack on the World Trade Center to increase their racist crusade at home, particularly against young Muslims, as well as to step up their generalised onslaught on civil liberties. Down with the draconian Terrorism legislation! For full citizenship rights for all immigrants!
Melanie Matthews
For the Partisan Defence Committee
BCM Box 4986
Phone 020 7281 5504
London WC1N 3XX
Fax 020 7281 5667
Home Secretary David Blunkett
Home Office
Queen Anne¡¦s Gate
London
SW1H 9AT
19 January 2002
To the Home Secretary:
The PDC protests the five-year jail sentence handed out to Shazad Ashraf. Shazad was the first of over a hundred young Asians to be tried for protesting in Bradford last summer against repeated fascist provocations and an ongoing campaign of racist state harassment. The judge presiding over this witch hunt has promised that anyone refusing to plead guilty to riot, will receive the maximum 10 year sentence if convicted. We demand that Shazad Ashraf be freed immediately and that all charges against Asian youth and anti-racist protesters arrested alongside him are dropped!
The protests on the weekend of July 7-8 last year were set off when a group of racists physically and verbally attacked an Asian man in Bradford¡¦s city centre. Police responded by arresting three Asians protesting the assault and then driving youth and anti-racists who had gathered to stop a National Front rally out of the city centre and into the mainly Asian district of Manningham. Under virtual police siege, the Asian community was subjected to hours of police charges and baton attacks. The bloodied face of Shahid Malik (knocked unconscious by police) who is a member of Labour¡¦s National Executive Committee was testament to the treatment meted out to any Asian youth out in the streets of their own neighbourhood that weekend.
It is this Labour government¡¦s relentless anti-immigrant, anti-asylum campaigns that have deliberately fanned the flames of racism and given the green light to the fascist vermin. Since September 11 the government has used the indefensible attack on the World Trade Center to increase their racist crusade at home, particularly against young Muslims, as well as to step up their generalised onslaught on civil liberties. Down with the draconian Terrorism legislation! For full citizenship rights for all immigrants!
Melanie Matthews
For the Partisan Defence Committee
Partisan Defense Committee
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