Quote of the week

“For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza.”—Kabul zoo director Aziz Gul Saqib, in Wednesday’s Globe and Mail. Afghanistan’s only known pig has been isolated since Sunday.

Learn your stripes

As if having their homeland turned into a war zone by the Sri Lankan army wasn’t enough, the Tamil diaspora has spent the past weeks seeing their cause misrepresented in Western media.

“Suddenly people are hearing about Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers, but this is a conflict with a long past,” says Dolores Chew of the Tamil Action Committee (TAC). “It’s very clear that what’s going on is a humanitarian disaster. The problem is that it’s not resulting in real action or concern by Western governments.”

Chew finds the Harper government’s silence particularly disturbing.

“Many Canadians don’t remember that, in the 1980s, there was a flood of Tamil refugees into Canada. In 1983, there was a pogrom against Tamils in Colombo, the capital city, and Canada was one of the countries to open its doors,” she says.

The TAC conference, entitled War, “Terrorism” and the Rights of Refugees, features Karen Parker, a U.S. attorney specializing in international and humanitarian law, and Amina Shirazee, a Toronto-based lawyer working on immigrants’ rights post-9/11. The event takes place at Concordia’s School of Community and Public Affairs (2149 Mackay) on Friday, May 8, 7 p.m.

MATT JONES

Walk for weed

If you had your bong well-filled and your marching shoes on last weekend, wandering around in a daze looking to join the annual Global Marijuana March and maybe noticing there wasn’t actually one going on here, don’t let your flow be too bummed, the event was just pushed back a week so as not to get lost in the hoopla of all the May Day celebrations that were going down.

This year’s Montreal Marijuana March assembles at Carré St-Louis at noon on Saturday, May 9, and will be hitting the streets of the Plateau at 2 p.m. only to return to the square at 4 p.m. for live music by the likes of Mononc’ Serge and Anonymus.

“This year’s march is as much a celebration as anything,” says Shantal Arroyo, spokesperson for Compassion Club Quebec. “Attitudes are really progressing. For example, we opened a Compassion Centre in Quebec City last fall and had absolutely no problems with the authorities. The public were totally behind us too. Believe me, it was a radical change from when we opened our first centre in Montreal 10 years ago.”

For more info, call (514) 849-4200 or go to montrealmarijuanamarch.ca.

Chris Barry

Protestor to martyr

The organizers of a weekly demonstration in support of Palestinian rights honour the late activist Bassem Ibrahim Abou Rahme with a special vigil this Friday, May 8, at noon, in front of the Indigo bookstore downtown (corner Ste-Catherine and McGill College).

Rahme died last month after being shot in the chest with a tear-gas canister by Israeli soldiers during a protest against the apartheid wall/security barrier being built on land belonging to the village of Bil’in in the West Bank. Bil’in has become a focal point for Palestinian non-violent resistance in recent years.

“We’re commemorating his death and showing solidarity with the continuing struggle of the Palestinians of Bil’in,” says Claire Hurtig of Tadamon!, a Montreal-based collective that works on social justice issues in the Middle East.

Indigo is being targeted for the strong support given to so-called “lone” Israeli soldiers (foreign-born volunteers) by majority shareholders Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz through their HESEG Foundation.

Last July, villagers from Bil’in filed suit against two Montreal-registered companies in Quebec Superior Court for their alleged involvement in the construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. A ruling on whether the court has jurisdiction in the case is expected next month. For more info, visit tadamon.ca.

Christopher Hazou

Centre-Sud
represent

Centre-Sud ghetto queens, Village queers, street kids and normals too are asked to weigh in on the future of their hood at a public forum this weekend.

“La qualité  de vie de mon quartier, j’y tiens, j’y contribue!” was initiated by several community organizations.

“What we wanted was to not only come up with a common vision of the future of the neighbourhood, but also to include the citizens of Centre-Sud,” says one of the forum’s organizers, Marie-Ève Hébert, a coordinator at  Développement communautaire Centre-Sud.

The morning session will feature workshops on sustainable development, raising kids in the hood, housing, transportation and employment issues as well as how to foster community belonging. Following a free lunch, people can voice their opinions via a citizens’ plenary.

Though no development plans spurred this event, Hébert says it’s better to be in consultation with the residents before plans are proposed. “The main purpose of the forum is to offer a chance for citizens to express themselves. They are rarely given this opportunity,” she adds.

The event takes place at 1665 Lafontaine (corner Papineau) on Saturday, May 9, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. More info is available at cdccentresud.org.

LINA HARPER

Rear-view mirror

19 YEARS AGO - MAY 3–10, 1990

On the cover:Now-legendary psychobilly punks the Cramps, promoting their fourth album, Stay Sick! Guitarist Poison Ivy opines that they’re not a cult band that makes obscure music. “The only cult that it could belong to is maybe rebels and misfits. And man, there’s a lot of them, and I don’t think they’ve all heard us yet.”
•After Tories gut the national rail system, Bombardier takes interest in VIA’s proposed high-speed, Montreal–Toronto train, provided a quarter of the $5.3-billion bill is footed by taxpayers.
•An interview with “Canada’s most successful male model” Bernard Baski—known for his hook nose and gangster styles—leads the Mirror’s Subway fashion magazine. Baski’s Parisian agent once told him, “‘If you get a nose job, you’re out of this agency.’ I’m lucky there’s only one Baski.”
•Summer events planned for the two-year-old Galerie des Foufounes, once part of Foufounes Electriques: monthly “live” auctions of on-site painting and sculpture, a show by Toronto’s Purple Institution, a photography exhibit, a mail-art show and a graffiti symposium.

Angel >> Rescuing Abdelrazik Following the failure of several activists’ initiatives to bring Sudanese-Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik home to Montreal from Sudan, Abdelrazik is being asked to appear before an “all-party” Parliamentary committee. The reportedly unprecedented manoeuvre is a way to force the hand of the Conservatives, who’ve been unsympathetic to Abdelrazik’s plight. He was detained in 2003, and despite being cleared of al-Qaeda connections by Sudanese and Canadian authorities, he’s on a U.S. no-fly list and Canada won’t renew his passport. In light of this week’s revelation that “mysterious Canadian authorities” learned of his detention before Foreign Affairs and Abdelrazik’s family, and secretly interrogated him in Sudan, the feds have a lot to make up for. This is a start.

Insect >>Brain drain Université de Montréal’s Rafick-Pierre Sékaly, considered one of the world’s top immunologists, renowned for his groundbreaking HIV research, announced this week that he’s moving to Florida with a 25-strong team, but it’s more than a money-grab and a want for warmer climes. Sékaly fears for his team’s future in light of a recent blow to federal science funding—in Canada’s stimulus package, $148-million was cut from university-based research, whereas the U.S. stimulus package included $10-billion for medical research. Sékaly hopes his move will force Harper & Co to rethink its backwards policies.