Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. The statement was delivered by Sue Udry, of Defending Dissent Foundation at a March 8 press conference, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. The purpose of the press conference was urge support two women political prisoners, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and attorney Lynne Stewart.

Hello my name is Sue Udry with Defending Dissent Foundation and I am speaking in solidarity with Aafia Siddiqui on behalf of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. For those opposed to FBI raids and political repression in the U.S., Aafia Siddiqui’s incredible story makes a lot of sense. We know firsthand that the U.S. government will send heavily armed agents to invade people’s homes, wave automatic weapons in the faces of loved ones and children and take away notebooks, phones, computers, address lists of activists or anything they want. Political freedom in the U.S. is being repressed, from the anti-war 23 who formed the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, to the Occupy Wall Street movement, to the nearly 200 Arab-American and Muslim political prisoners held in solitary confinement and other punishment units that violate basic human rights.

We know the U.S. government is bullying and abusing anti-war activists in this country, so it makes perfect sense that in Pakistan or other countries where the U.S. is at war, that U.S. intelligence agents and the FBI would illegally spy on, kidnap, torture and murder people. We saw it in the U.S. war in Iraq, we see it in the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and we see it carried out by soldiers and death squads under U.S. advisors in places like Colombia and the Philippines. In this context Aafia Siddiqui’s story makes perfect sense. For us, Aafia Siddiqui is the symbol of solidarity on International Women’s Day!

We ask you to support Aafia Siddiqui and to show solidarity with the 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists raided by the FBI and subpoenaed to a grand jury in Chicago in 2010. They refused to go to the grand jury, but two and a half years later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas continues to claim to be investigating them. Jonas, who imprisoned the Holy Land Five, is refusing to return the belongings of Palestinian-American leader Hatem Abudayyeh in Chicago. We ask you to join us in opposing political repression here at home and wars and oppression overseas. We can forge a new and better society here at home by ending the wars and oppression overseas.

#WashingtonDC #InJusticeSystem #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #InternationalWomensDay #PoliticalPrisoners #CommitteeToStopFBIRepression #LynneStewart #DrAafiaSiddiqui #DefendingDissentFoundation