Canadian Jewish organizations have joined in criticizing the Ku Klux Klan for injecting race hatred into a bitter land dispute between Mohawk Indians and residents of a suburb of Montreal.
The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Center on Racism and Prejudices held a joint news conference Sunday to condemn the local Klan chapter’s distribution of racist literature to residents of Chateauguay this past weekend.
The Canadian Jewish Congress has also entered the fray.
Montreal’s recently founded KKK group, which calls itself “Longitude 74,” distributed the material at police barricades on Highways 13 and 132 on Montreal’s south shore.
The Klansmen wore army fatigues with the KKK badge.
The roadblocks were set up by police several weeks ago in response to the Mohawks’ blockade of the Mercier Bridge, inconveniencing the people of Chateauguay.
The Mohawks have been blocking the roads for four months in support of objections by Canadian Indians in nearby Oka to the expansion of a golf course into a pine forest which they say is “ancestral land.”
The Klan is trying to aggravate tensions, which have remained high since a Quebec police corporal was killed July 11 storming a Mohawk roadblock.
In Chateauguay, Mohawks have been burned in effigy, and some individuals have been assaulted.
Stephen Scheinberg, president of the League for Human Rights, said his office had copies of Klan literature handed out to Chateauguay residents last week. An estimated 800 pamphlets were handed out.
“The Klan is trying to capitalize on the frustrations of Chateauguay residents, using their message of racial hatred,” he said Sunday night.
Goldie Hershon, chairman of the CJC Quebec Region, has written to the parties involved and to Quebec Indian Affairs Minister John Ciaccia. She also wrote to Mayor Jean-Bosco Bourcier of Chateauguay, expressing “abhorrence” over the burnings.
On July 25, a national CJC delegation met with representatives of the Mohawk Nation, led by Grand Chief Joe Norton at the Kahnawake Indian reservation, and the president of S.O.S. Racism, an anti-racist group from Montreal.
They heard allegations by the Mohawks of human rights violations against native Canadians.
The CJC repeated its appeal for high-level federal government intervention for a negotiated settlement.
“We believe it is the federal government’s constitutional and moral duty to show leadership in this matter,” said Les Scheininger, CJC national president.
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