Four Muslim arts leaders from Bangladesh, Islamabad and Bombay have been denied entry visas to Canada for a UNESCO-sponsored youth symposium, raising concerns as to whether Canada is following the U.S. lead in closing the borders on culture. Breaking New Ground, a five-day symposium to be held in Vancouver next week, will mark the launch of the International EARTH Project, a four-year global-arts initiative that will animate issues of environmental sustainability and social justice through the eyes of the world's youth. Stephen Lewis and Severn Suzuki are two of the more high-profile international activists who will attend the event, which begins on April 28. They will be joining 200 youth delegates and dozens of community-based artists from theatre, dance, puppetry and visual-arts companies from all over the globe. The workshops, panels and discussions initiated next week are the first in a series that will lead to an international performance festival and Earth Fair in 2006. "It's ironic that these men are being kept from participating in a global project designed to address issues of civil society and justice," says Judith Marcuse, artistic director of DanceArts Vancouver Society, the interdisciplinary arts company that is presenting next week's symposium along with Simon Fraser University. Marcuse says it seems strange that of the hundreds of delegates who applied for visas, only the four Muslim men, plus one professor of literature from Nairobi, were turned down. The denied applicants are: Syed Mizanur Rahman, managing director of the Bangladesh theatre group Tree Foundation; Shoaib Iqbal and Raiz ul Hussan, directors of the Islamabad theatre company Punjab Lok Rahs; Altaf Shaikh, founder of Saathi, a Bombay-based visual-arts group that works with street youth; and Kimingichi Wabende, a non-Muslim university professor of literature at the University of Nairobi. Marcuse was told that three of the men were refused entrance based on the belief that they would not go home again. The other two were not granted interviews by the Canadian consulate or high commission in their home countries. She says the Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration will not tell her anything more. Since the war on terrorism began in the wake of Sept. 11, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has made it difficult and often impossible for foreign artists of all sorts, but especially those from Muslim countries and Cuba, to obtain visas for scheduled performances. In February, the 76-year-old Cuban guitarist Ibrahim Ferrer was refused entry for the Grammy Awards, where he was supposed to receive an award. The Peking Opera, South African singer Vusi Mahlasela, Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia, Iranian filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, and British author Ian McEwan are just a few of those who have been denied, delayed or detained at the border. Up until now, these tightened security measures had not been felt to the same extent in Canada. The only performances that have had to be cancelled here are those that were already cancelled in the U.S. Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg-Centre and the NDP critic for Citizenship and Immigration, says those curtains might soon start lowering now that Canada appears to be harmonizing its immigration policies with the U.S. "It's a worrisome trend we've identified in a number of cases now. We don't have any empirical evidence, it's anecdotal, but we have seen this type of problem with people being delayed or refused entry for weddings and innocent cultural celebrations. There seems to be a certain type of racial profiling going on."
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