At Harambec, we join our voices to demand justice for Nooran, 15 years old — taken from his family, his friends, his community — stolen from the promise of a life by an intolerable violence that our society continues, nevertheless, to tolerate.
Nooran’s murder echoes too painfully with too many stories — stories of children, minors, and teens who are harassed from a young age. Stories of youth whose daily lives are marked by repeated “encounters” with “law enforcement,” encounters that too often mark the beginning of lost innocence. Stories of young people treated like adults, like second-class citizens, like targets.
All summer, we shared photos, videos, stories, and reels with you — snapshots of joy with youth from every corner of Montréal: our smiles, our laughter, our dances, our volleyball tournaments, our games of musical chairs.
But we keep the heavier, more personal moments to ourselves — the ones where we tried to be there for them, even when we ourselves were overwhelmed by the violence unleashed on our children. Moments where we recognized in their experiences what we have lived through ourselves: constant surveillance and dehumanization. Because too often — and we know this — the simple act of racialized children gathering is enough to trigger a system of control.
Nooran’s death is the most horrific expression of that system. The worst possible outcome in a world where the worst is programmed against our youth — then justified, then excused.
Already, the media machine is spinning his death to disembody the killer. They say a teen was “shot and killed,” as if the bullet floated through the air on its own. They say a police officer has been “placed under protection,” as if the most urgent empathy should go to the one who pulled the trigger. Meanwhile, parents are grieving their child. Classmates are trying to make sense of the void. An entire community is shattered by a death as absurd as it is unjustifiable.
Because it makes no sense. None.
That a child be gunned down by a uniformed adult makes no sense. And it should never make sense.
It can only seem to make sense within the horror of a system built on violence against our bodies, our lives, our children.
At Harambec, we demand justice for Nooran.
And by justice, we mean nothing less than this:
– the defunding of the police
– the reallocation of those funds into services that support, care for, and uplift communities — especially those most affected by state violence.
There can be no justice while the intolerable continues.
We extend our deepest condolences to the Rezayi family.
A vigil will be held on Saturday, September 27th, starting at 2PM
at the corner of Monaco and Joseph-Daigneault streets, in Saint-Hubert.
