First Published: People’s Canada Daily News Release, December 2, 1971
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Quebec City (PCDN) November 26 – Carlos Bouchereau, a Haitian student at Laval University, member of le Mouvement Etudiant Quebecois and supporter of the Parti Communiste du Quebec (Marxiste-Leniniste), was given one week to leave Canada by order of the fascist Canadian Immigration Department. The “Ordonnace d’expulsion” gave him until December 1st to leave pending which a deportation order would be issued. His “crimes” were 1. “participating in an illegal demonstration”, and 2. “becoming an inmate of a jail”. On November 29,1971, the McGill Daily carried the following article entitled “Government Deports Haitian Student.”
The federal government has served another deportation order on a politically active student in Quebec. This time the Immigration Department has begun proceedings against Carlos Bouchereau, a Laval University student born in Haiti.
The charges are the same as those brought against Subir Roy, a former McGill student, earlier this year. The grounds for the deportation are Bouchereau’s arrest and imprisonment for involvement in a Maoist demonstration this summer, and the fact that he is not a Canadian citizen.
On May 20, to mark the anniversary of Chairman Mao Tsetung’s call to the people of the world to “unite and defeat U.S. imperialism and all its running does,” he participated in a demonstration against American aggression in Indochina.
The demonstrators were ambushed by police while on their way to the American consulate and systematically beaten. They fought back with the poles they had used for their banners.
Bouchereau was arrested with the others and charged with having attempted to puncture the tires of police vehicles by placing nails in front of them. He was sentenced to two months imprisonment although the police were unable to prove the latter charge.
Bouchereau left Haiti at the age of six. He studied in France and then in the Congo when the closing of Kinshasa University followed by the killing of Marxists and other opponents of the military dictatorshfp there, interrupted his studies.
A year ago he visited Quebec while on his way to France to continue his education. Here he was impressed with “the friendship which the people of Quebec have for national minorities” and decided to enrol at Laval.
During his stay in Quebec he learnt of the long history of fights by the Quebec people, first against British colonial rule, and later resistance to U.S. corporate control.
He also learnt about discrimination against racial minorities in Quebec and Canada, encountering the same racism in the hands of powerful economic and political forces that other foreign students from Africa, Asia and Latin America have experienced. These experiences strengthened his convictions about the need to take action against this sort of oppression. He sees the need for a “militant unity between the people of Quebec and the national minorities” if liberation is to be achieved. With other militants, he has studied the writings of Mao Tsetung.
“My deportation is political” commented Bouchereau when interviewed. “The criminal charge is a camouflage since they are deporting me. If they were really honest, they’d try to charge me with sedition.”
Bouchereau compared the Quebec police to the Tonton Macoute of Haiti who are used by Duvalier to suppress all political opposition to his regime. But, “deportations like mine will not stop the struggle of the people of Quebec to free themselves from the domination of American imperialists and their lackeys. The Quebec struggle is part of an irresistible world-wide trend of revolution. ”
Bouchereau is convinced that the Blacks in North America will play an important role in the downfall of imperialism. “Chairman Mao says that the evil conditions of imperialism arose out of the exploitation of racial groups. It is these groups that will bring about its eventual destruction.
“It is not the people who are afraid of American imperialism, it is American imperialism that is afraid of the people.
“The people are angry. They are full of revolutionary energy. And as racism and political repression escalates, the reactionaries are trying to create ethnic civil wars.”
In Quebec especially, “The Quebecois have a long tradition of struggle against colonialism and imperialism and putting Mao Tsetung Thought into practice will raise the struggle to a new level.”