Quote of the week:

"I'm counting on your support to make this event a great success." - Mayor Tremblay, in a letter to borough mayors, asking them to buy block tickets to this summer's World Aquatics Championships, quoted in Tuesday's La Presse. Sales have so far been sluggish.

Illegals among us

There may be up to 400,000 illegal immigrants in Canada, according to a House of Commons committee investigating the issue. While interesting, however, that number is at best a vague approximation, says one Montreal expert, based on very little real data, and is probably misleading.

"My experience has shown me that illegal immigrants can live better in the United States than in Canada, because our social system is more tightly controlled through things like Medicare," says Stephan Reichhold, executive director of the Quebec Coalition for Refugee and Immigration Organizations. He believes that illegals don't stay that long in Canada, and those that do, especially in Montreal, are usually immigrants without official status whose refugee claims have been turned down but who come from countries which Canada will not deport them to, such as Afghanistan, Rwanda or Haiti. Others may be Europeans who haven't renewed their visas. And at any rate, the numbers are, relatively speaking, almost negligible.

"Compared to Europe or the States, which has something like eight million illegal immigrants, it's not that serious," Reichhold says. "We certainly aren't confronted with the problem in our day-to-day lives." » Patrick Lejtenyi

Torture the Canadian way

As Canadians, most of us like to think of ourselves as a decent bunch. Unfortunately, we've developed a nasty habit of imprisoning people without charge and, on occasion, sending them off to be tortured in foreign jails.

On Wednesday, June 8, the Coalition for Justice for Adil Charkaoui will be camping out in front of Prime Minister Paul Martin's Old Montreal office (400 Place d'Youville) for "24 Hours Against Torture," part of a six-city "pan-Canadian" day against torture, featuring music, films and testimonials from torture victims from a number of countries.

"What is Canada doing even considering sending people to be tortured?" asks Coalition member Mary Foster. "Our demands are really basic: liberate these people immediately. If you have a case against them, charge them in criminal law."

Although Charkaoui himself has been released under strict conditions, there remain four individuals being held on security certificates in Canada, including Hassan Almrei, who's been in solitary confinement for three years.

"24 Hours Against Torture" begins Wednesday, June 8, at 8 a.m. For info call 859-9023 or visit www.adilinfo.org/torture.htm. » Chris Hazou

Loan wars continued

Exam time is here and the strikes are over, but some students believe that lingering ill will is behind the province's latest tightening of loan purse strings.

According to Jérôme Charaoui, the information secretary of provincial student organization ASSÉ, the province is withholding June's monthly loan payment to students at the CEGEPs that were on strike the longest, like Vieux Montréal and St-Laurent. Because of the length of the strikes, some classes that should have finished in May were carried over into June. The loan payments were not.

"We think the government is trying to punish the students who were on strike," says Charaoui. "As a result, students who are writing exams won't get their money. Some may be kicked out of their apartments, won't be able to buy food or may have to move back in with their parents."

To protest the move, students will be occupying Berri Square on the morning of Thursday, June 2, as of 10 a.m. "If the government will deny us places to live, we'll take the places we'll need," says Charaoui. » Patrick Lejtenyi

Down by sharia law

Wording in a provincial law hurriedly adopted last week banning Muslim religious law, sharia, in Quebec has our leading local imam pondering a road trip to visit other provinces.

"At the bottom of the law it says that this motion should be sent to all Canadian parliaments, that the National Assembly opposes the introduction of Islamic courts and tribunals [across] Canada," says Salam Elmenyawi of the Muslim Council of Montreal. "They're interfering with affairs in other provinces. I may take a trip to each and every assembly to tell them we believe they should reject this."

Elmenyawi is irate because he says that Muslims never asked for sharia law in Quebec, no hearings were held to discuss it and that the ban took merely 30 minutes to pass. The brief discussion featured Liberal MNA Fatima Houda-Pepin referring to a shadowy meeting of imams in Washington, D.C., of which Elmenyawi demands proof.

"They're promoting stereotypes that religious Muslims want to damage this society and conspire against it. It's outrageous." » Kristian Gravenor

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

12 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
May 31–June 7, 1990

On the cover: A close-up of a leather jacket on a model of no discernable gender, for the Mirror's Lesbian and Gay Supplement. Articles include a profile on dyke video art organization Groupe Intervention Vidéo, the recent opening of the Centre communautaire des gaies et lesbiennes de Montréal, and guides to safe sex for lesbians, vogue-ing and etiquette ("How to be a good bad dyke"). "In," according to the latter, are "sisters, girls, chicks," "porno," "fuck music," "raw meat" and "ripping her clothes off." "Out," according to same, are "womyn, wimmin," "erotica," "folk music," "macrobiotic" and "massages."

• The feds are ignoring gay men with AIDS, according to experts. "All you have to do is look at the history of AIDS in the United States and you will see funds only started coming when kids and women started getting it," says a local doctor. "Believe me, we're not very far from the States."

• Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet is "the most focused, angry and proud dispatch yet," writes Andrew Jones.

Angel >> New Hope Senior Centre This NDG-based community centre for seniors was all set to hold an auction and clothing sale this weekend to raise much-needed dough, when, on Monday, they found $5,000-worth of merchandise stolen. The money would have gone to fund a new outreach program for isolated and homebound seniors called Weaving Our Neighbourhood. Essentially, volunteers would carry out small but essential chores for their elderly neighbours. The theft is a big blow, organizers say, but the auction and sale will still go ahead on Friday, June 3, from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday, June 4, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (sale only) at 6225 Godfrey Ave. Call 484-0425 for more info.
Insect >> Aggressive U.S. paranoia The Bush White House keeps getting weirder in its attempts to fight terror. With all flights landing in the U.S. already forced to divulge passenger information, the U.S. is now proposing that any flight passing through, but not landing in, the country hand over a list of the passengers' names, citizenship, birthdays and even perhaps addresses and credit card information. This affects Canadians, as many domestic east-west flights briefly pass over, at tens of thousands of feet above, states like Minnesota and North Dakota. Canadian officials have said they will discuss the issue with their American counterparts.