My brother’s three months in solitary – In the end, his charges were stayed. ‘The authorities ruined my brother’s future, his reputation and abused him physically and psychologically – all for, according to them, absolutely no reason’
By Anonymous
A time comes when silence is betrayal. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s been nearly two years since the raid on our house, since the day they took my brother and another relative. Since that day, my family and I have lived in silence. It’s an emotional topic for me and talking about it means reliving that pain all over again. But I feel obliged to let Canadians know about our experience and what we continue to experience each and every single day.
It was June 2, 2006 – around 11 p.m. That night was a nightmare for me and my family. Earlier that day, a relative was arrested while coming home after grocery shopping. We sat at home, in shock, wondering what had just happened. None of us shed a tear, I guess out of sheer disbelief. It was getting late, and my other brother wasn’t home yet. He’d been out with his friends. So my mother and I went out looking for him. We were just around the corner of our house when a pack of cars stopped at the end of the street and the SWAT team came running towards our house pointing guns at us. As soon as we got inside, they broke in, all the while yelling at us, asking us all to come down to the front door.
One by one they called us out of the house to be searched. My dad was the first to go. He had been in such a shock that after he’d heard about our relative’s arrest, he’d gone back to his room and started working on his business files. And when he came down, he’d brought his papers and pen with him to the door. One of the officers glanced at the papers and pen in his hands and yelled at him: “DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS RIGHT NOW!” And with all those guns pointing at us I thought to myself, what were they expecting my father to do? Hit them with a pen? They pulled my dad by his collar and he tripped. I asked them to go easy on my father because he was already in a state of shock. Their reply made me feel sick to my stomach. They said: “We know that already, that’s what we have the ambulance for.”
Then they handcuffed him and took him for questioning, and we didn’t see him for the next couple of hours. They searched us all and then had us wait outside in the rain with babies in our arms. They waited for my brother to come home, and when he did they put him in a car and took him. We didn’t know where he was taken and what had happened to him. They finally told us that they had actually arrested him. We spent the night at our neighbours’. The next morning we received a call from my brother; he told us he was being held at a police station. I asked him how he was and he told me not to worry, but I could hear the quiver in his voice. I knew he was only trying to be strong so as not to hurt us.
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