Demand for public inquiry on police brutality renewed

The fair amount of police brutality that has been reported during last spring’s numerous protests against tuition hikes still make the news today.

Groups, such as Amnesty International and the Ligue des droits et libertés, denounce the violent treatments that some students faced at the time.

According to The Gazette, as many as fifty-one groups have renewed their demand for a public inquiry on the matter.

Those acts of violence include being beaten, pepper sprayed, charged by police officers on horseback and attained by plastic bullets, says the article.

The directives given by the previous Charest government to the officers during the period of the strike are not clear, and groups also want to shed light on that.

As many as 16,000 names have so far been gathered on two petitions in support of the cause.

Newly elected Premier Pauline Marois cancelled Charest’s proposed tuition hike soon after her election last September.

Éliane Laberge, president of the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec and Martine Desjardins, president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec both hope for a public inquiry.

They defend the right to demonstrate freely and without fear, which the most controversial sections of Law 12 where taking away.

At the same time as she cancelled the tuition hikes, Marois had also repealed those sections of Law 12, she who proudly wore the red square during last spring’s demonstrations.