When ‘orange’ is ‘black’:
US Muslims brace for backlash
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ACLU: Documents show Ashcroft is
bypassing courts with new spy powers
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US – a nation outraged at war
Insurrection in San Francisco
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Recent victory for Haitian refugees
thwarted by Dept. of Homeland Security
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NATION BRIEFS
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When ‘orange’ is ‘black’:
US Muslims brace for backlash

By Emad Mekay

Washington, DC, Mar. 19 (IPS)— It is another “orange” day here in Washington. But for 25-year-old Walid Khidr, an Arab-American born and raised in California, it is the first of many “black” days to come.

Khidr, who now lives in northern Virginia, is one of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Arab descent, along with many Muslim and Arab visitors in the United States, who have, since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on this country, grown accustomed to automatically interpreting the color codes used by the Homeland Security Department to assign levels of terrorism alerts, as coded calls of discrimination against them.

The level was raised to orange — second highest — immediately after President George W. Bush issued an ultimatum Monday to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave his country or face an attack.

With the US invasion a reality now, many here fear that the war climate could create a backlash against them — a feeling that is sending even more jitters through communities still on edge from the fallout of Sept. 11.

Immediately after Bush ended last weekend’s summit with his allies in the Azores and announced that diplomacy was over in the Iraq crisis, leading Arab groups began sending out messages urging Arabs and Muslims to use the US emergency telephone number — 911 — when and if threatened.

The Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said it issued the Mar. 17 advisory “in light of the historic pattern of hate crimes, abuse and discrimination faced by the Arab-American and Muslim communities during the 1991 Gulf War and in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

Another Islamic civil rights and advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said it would distribute a nine-page emergency kit to advise readers what to do if they are victims of abuse and hate crimes. “Hand it out to friends, mosques and libraries,” said CAIR’s statement.

But while one would expect the booklet to contain sections on physical protection and paragraphs that sound more like civil defense manuals, it also contains a segment on “how to deal with the FBI” — an indication that many Muslim Americans feel discriminated against by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a body that is supposed to protect them.

The seven million Muslims in the United States, according to CAIR, have been dealing with suspicions and racial profiling from the US Justice Department, the FBI and, now, the new department of Homeland Security.

Little wonder that Arab-Americans, says Ibrahim Hooper, communications director with CAIR, are “very apprehensive.”

“You have the war on top of all this anti-Muslim rhetoric and the hysteria around that,” he said.

In February, Attorney General John Ashcroft raised the national terror alert from yellow to orange to coincide with the annual Muslim pilgrimage, or Hajj, an act that many people saw as an attempt to link the important religious event with terrorism.

The “unnecessary linkage” served to promote the “growing perception in the Muslim world that the war on terrorism is in reality an attack on Islam,” said CAIR Director Nihad Awad.

The administration has also linked other Islamic religious observances to terrorism, issuing similar government alerts during the month-long Ramadan fast, for instance.

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice issued a directive to have FBI field officers develop “demographic profiles” of their regions, including the number of local mosques, and set specific goals for the numbers of investigations and wiretaps in each area.

“This policy makes about as much sense as counting Catholic churches in America in order to initiate an investigation of the Mafia, or as claiming the number of African Methodist Episcopal churches in a given area is indicative of the level of criminal activity,” said Awad.

Earlier this month, Muslim students at a California university were threatened in expletive-laden graffiti scribbled at locations around the campus that said: “Muslims will be shot on San Jose State University campus on Mar. 10, 2003.” No attacks have been reported since then.

The rising tensions come in the midst of an immigration “re-registration” program under which hundreds of Muslim, Arab and Asian men have been detained, some deported and many fingerprinted and photographed.

Muslim community leaders and immigration rights activists charge that the program is based on religious and ethnic profiling, a “law enforcement tactic that is being heavily promoted by right-wing pundits.”

In January, a right-wing, pro-Israel commentator and frequent guest on talk shows here suggested that all Muslims in the country be placed under surveillance.

“Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces,” Daniel Pipes wrote in the Jerusalem Post.

“Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues and temples,” he added.

With the country already on orange alert, Muslims fear that such sweeping calls could find even more fertile ground in a country fighting a war.

Khidr admits that he has not faced discrimination or physical abuse but says that he has heard many stories of other Arab-Americans who were either fired from their jobs or verbally insulted because of stereotyping. He says he has also been rattled by “hate-talk” on TV networks and in other media.

“This could be a double whammy for us,” said Khidr. “We have to deal with terrorism; you know, we may get hit too. And we also have to deal with this non-stop suspicion ... Things don’t look good for us here.”

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ACLU: Documents show Ashcroft is
bypassing courts with new spy powers

New York, New York, Mar. 24— Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union suggest that the Attorney General is aggressively wielding a disturbing power that — without the approval of a judge — allows the government to force banks, Internet service providers, telephone companies, and credit agencies to turn over their customers’ records.

“Without judicial oversight, there is simply no assurance that the Attorney General is using this authority in keeping with democratic principles and constitutional rights,” said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program.

Information about the government’s surveillance powers was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed jointly with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and the Freedom to Read Foundation.

According to documents obtained through the FOIA lawsuit, the government employs “National Security Letters” — signed by Attorney General Ashcroft or a delegate and with no judicial approval — to “compel the production of a substantial amount of relevant information.” The government can use this power to obtain records about people living in the United States, including American citizens, without probable cause that the person has committed any crime. Entities that are forced to turn over records are prohibited from disclosing to their customers — or to anyone else — that the FBI has demanded the records. 

The ACLU has always been critical of the letters because they do not require judicial review. However, said Jaffer, under the USA PATRIOT Act, “the letters have become a far more invasive and nefarious tool.” Before the Patriot Act, Jaffer explained, National Security Letters could be issued only against people who were reasonably suspected of espionage. The PATRIOT Act allows the Attorney General to issue National Security Letters even against people who are not suspected of criminal activity or of acting on behalf of a foreign power. 

The government has refused to say how extensively it is using its authority to issue the letters. But Jaffer said that the length of the blacked-out lists of National Security Letters suggests that the government is using this power more extensively than other surveillance powers under the PATRIOT Act that require court approval.

Other recently obtained documents confirm that:

u The FBI is conducting wiretaps and secret searches in criminal investigations without complying with the usual probable cause requirements;  

u The government has begun to use an extraordinarily broad surveillance provision that could be used to force libraries and bookstores to report on their patrons’ and customers’ reading habits;  

u The FBI is aggressively using pen registers and trap-and-trace devices that allow them to track phone calls and emails;  

u The government plans to use its new surveillance powers not only against suspected terrorists but also against ordinary Americans and permanent residents.

The ACLU explained that it has challenged the government’s refusal to release a number of other relevant documents, which consist principally of aggregate statistical information indicating the extent to which the government has relied on new surveillance powers. On Friday, the ACLU asked a federal judge to order the government to release these documents, saying that the information is essential to the public’s ability to evaluate the new surveillance provisions and that its release would not compromise national security. 

In a related case concerning expanded government spy powers, the Supreme Court today rejected a request by the ACLU and Arab-American groups to review an extraordinary decision by a secret appeals court that broadly expanded the government’s powers to spy on US citizens.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

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US – a nation outraged at war
Insurrection in San Francisco

Compiled by Shawn Gaynor

Mar. 26 (AGR)— As the US war on Iraq began last week, huge anti-war protests, ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media, have erupted across the nation. Throughout the US, direct actions began nearly simultaneously with the start of war. The protests have been sustained thoughout the week, and have grown from pre-war calls for peace, to open defiance against the Bush administration.

A small sampling of the many anti-war actions across the nation follows.

San Francisco, CA has emerged as the clear epicenter of anti-war sentiment. Protests began Thursday, Mar. 20, as small groups of protesters blockaded major streets, leaving the downtown financial district “looking like a Sunday morning.” Clusters of protesters representing different groups rallied at 50 major intersections though out the city. Several small companies closed their doors so employees could join the protests.

Many corporations had windows broken, and graffiti covered the downtown area. The Federal Building was shut down on and off over several days, and mainstream media buildings and reporters were targeted by protesters, who called their coverage biased. On several occasions, protesters used large dumpsters to push through lines of riot police. Thousands of marchers wore masks. Some accounts from police referred to the protests as the largest disruption of its kind in San Francisco. Others said that it rivaled the San Francisco General Strike of 1934.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), in charge of containing the demonstrations, said, “Today we saw a ratcheting-up from legal protest to absolute anarchy.”

Sergeant Rene Laprevotee of the SFPD said of the protest, “After 16 hours of fighting communists and anarchists, a Red Bull [energy drink] can help us go another 16 hours. We’re here as long as they are.”

By Friday, groups of people and even individuals were being constantly harassed, attacked, rounded-up and arrested. Even people standing around on the sidewalks or legally bicycling down the street were subject to intimidation, beating, and jail. Hundreds of black bloc protesters marched through the city. Police trapped the march at both ends of a street and entered the crowd, beating and arresting people as they swept though, dispersing the protesters.

2,200 arrests were reported in the first two days of protest in San Francisco alone.

On Saturday, over 75,000 took to the streets in San Francisco. Hundreds blockaded the Transamerica Pyramid building in protest of the influential Carlyle policy group. The most serious incident took place at 2:50 in the afternoon, when protesters blocking the entrance to an underground parking garage at the west side of the Federal Building were rammed by an exiting federal park ranger in a truck. The protesters, who had formed a human chain, were briefly stopping vehicles before letting them pass. When the driver of the truck encountered the group, he did not stop, but instead gunned the engine, striking Nadya Williams, who was sitting on the ground cross-legged. Williams was pulled out from under the truck’s front left wheel by fellow protester John Mason.

“The bumper and the tire pushed me over, the bumper was against my head,’’ said Williams, who was bruised and shaken by the incident.

Williams flagged down a San Francisco police officer and reported the incident. “It’s not my jurisdiction,’’ said Lt. Choy of the SFPD. When informed of the incident, an officer at the US Park Police refused to comment. “We don’t have time for this,’’ said the officer. “We are busy.’’

At the east end of the Federal Building, where another group blocked one of the main side entrances, protesters were assaulted several times by officers. Jean Stewart sat in her wheelchair next to her friend, 75-year-old Robert Miller, also in a wheelchair. Protester Iryna Kwasng reported that, as she was chaining the wheelchairs together, one of the US Marshals guarding the entrance grabbed the chain and punched her in the face. Miller then took hold of the chain and engaged in a tug of war with officers while seated in his chair. He too was struck in the head, and suffered a minor wound. “I asked him for his name and his ID number but he refused to give it to me,’’ said Kwasng.

By evening the protesters had moved from the area, and restarted blockades of highway ramps.

On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters targeted the Carlyle Group again. Dozens of arrests were reported.

Police say they hope to dissipate the intensity of the protests through arrest-based attrition of protester numbers, but there have been reports of large numbers of people coming to San Francisco to support the protests there.

In New York City, where an anti-war rally last month drew over a half million, 200,000 people marched through downtown on Mar. 20. Police attacked protesters several times and made scores of arrests. Protesters blocked 5th Ave. on Wednesday in what activists there are calling a preview of a “No business as usual day” of autonomous direct actions on Thursday, Mar. 27.

In Washington, DC, bridge crossing and traffic disruptions occurred last Thursday. Dolls covered in fake blood were dropped in the middle of the road to dramatize Iraqi casualties as die-ins at intersections lead to arrests. One march went to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s house in Northwest Washington.

During the protest, Lydia Riley, 63 said “I am very ashamed to be an American right now.”

On Saturday 100,000 marched and rallied in DC. Protesters pushed through police lines into Lafayette Square, in front of the White House, which had been closed to groups of more then 25 since Sept. 11, 2001.

Major protests also took place in Los Angeles, CA Thursday as 50,000 braved a rain storm, chanting, “Bush is the terrorist! No to war!” The Westwood Federal Building was shut down as protesters and police locked in a standoff. Friday, protests continued as a massive demonstration shut down the heart of the Hollywood business district. Police made roughly 70 arrests. At the Oscars, anti-war celebrities wore duct tape to protest the war and the Office of Homeland Security.

Actor Will Smith was among several who withdrew from the event. Documentary film maker Michael Moore, who won an award for his film Bowling for Columbine, lambasted the president. “We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it is the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts. We are against this war, Mr. Bush, shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you...”

Many media outlets played up pro-war protests, often giving as much attention to a handful of flag waving Americans as to thousands of their fellow citizens.

In Philadelphia residents blockaded the entrances to the Federal Building and forced traffic out of the area. 107 arrests were made by police.

In Berkeley, CA 120 people were arrested after taking over the campus administration building.

In many cities, violent police repression left protesters assaulted and jailed without provocation.

In Austin, TX twenty people committed civil disobedience in the streets and were arrested as roughly two thousand anti-war demonstraters watched from the side walk. One protest sign read “‘Iraq’ is Arabic for ‘Poland.’” Reportedly without provocation, police assaulted protesters with pepper spray, and then began to chase and beat the crowd with batons as people fled. Though several TV crews were present, no footage appeared on the local news that night.

In Chicago, IL a march of several thousand shut down Lake Shore Drive on the city’s exclusive “Gold Coast.”

A Massachusetts rally of thousands blocked the entrance to the Westover Air Reserve base. Police made 53 arrests.

Throughout Michigan protesters took direct action. In Detroit on Thursday 500 people demonstrated in East Jefferson at a naval armory in a first-day response to the bombing of Iraq. In Ann Arbor, 19 were arrested at the Federal Building while protesting the war. In Traverse City, 18 people blockaded deploying army units; 8 were arrested and released on $150 bond. In Grand Rapids, more than 100 protesters blocked a road by placing yellow caution tape across poles and putting a car in the middle of the avenue, blocking traffic. 15 arrests where reported.

In Portland, Oregon, bus drivers reported that only about half the usual number of people were riding the bus to work on Thursday morning. Some residents stayed home to support a call for a work stoppage; others expected the city to be shut down. Police pepper sprayed peaceful gatherings, and many where brutally arrested for jaywalking. On Tuesday, a group of residents blocked the entrance to city hall. A peace encampment is ongoing 24 hours a day.

Several hundred people took to the streets in San Jose, CA on Thursday. Protesters carried signs including “Stop Bush before he kills again,” and “Stop mad cowboy disease.”

In Madison, WI the State Republican Headquarters was vandalized, with over a dozen windows broken and anti-war graffiti. Police said they are investigating the incident.

At the Federal Courthouse in Baltimore, MD, 45 people were arrested while blockading the building.

In Seattle, WA over 3,500 people took to the streets when the bombing started. On Saturday a legal sidewalk march was assaulted by police. Protests have been ongoing.

In Raleigh, NC, presidential hopeful Senator John Edwards was holding a $2,000-a-person reception when more than 300 North Carolina peace activists descended on the NC Democratic Party headquarters Sunday, protesting what they called Edwards’ reckless embrace of President Bush’s war in Iraq. In Chapel Hill over 500 gathered on Friday to protest the war. Many more smaller protesters occurred throughout the state.

Scores of protests have been called around the nation for the coming week.

Sources: Associated Press, Austin Indymedia, Counterpunch, Indymedia, Michigan Indymedia, NYC Indymedia, North Carolina Indymedia, Portland Indymedia, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Indymedia, Seattle Indymedia, Washington Post

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Recent victory for Haitian refugees
thwarted by Dept. of Homeland Security

New York, New York, Mar. 21— A request yesterday by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to Attorney General John Ashcroft to block the release of Haitian asylum seekers detained since October 2002 for national security reasons is a dangerous exploitation of the very real national security dangers we face, according to a group of refugee rights organizations who strongly oppose the request. The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC), the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children contend that this unprecedented step marks the latest in a series of restrictive measures initiated by the Bush administration to prevent and deter the arrival of Haitian refugees in the United States, despite the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in that country.

“While Haitians have often been singled out for discriminatory treatment under our asylum laws and policies, this is the first time that national security has been used to justify such restrictions,” says Wendy Young, Director of Government Relations for the Women’s Commission. “It is outrageous that the administration is willing to manipulate our very serious national security challenges to justify restrictive actions taken against nationals of Haiti — a country that has never once been cited as posing a threat to the safety of the American people.”

DHS’s request comes on the heels of a significant recent victory for Haitian asylum seekers. The Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest immigration appellate body, upheld last week a grant of bond to an 18-year-old Haitian who had been imprisoned since his arrival as part of a boatload of 230 Haitians who landed in Key Biscayne, Florida, on Oct. 29, 2002. The young man has asked to be released to the custody of his family who are residents of South Florida. The Board found that US law requires an individualized determination of release, thus calling into question the legitimacy of the administration’s decision to detain virtually all the Haitians who arrived last year. The Board’s decision opened the door to the release of dozens of Haitians who had been granted bonds by the immigration courts, only to have the INS invoke national security concerns and its regulatory authority to stay those bonds until further review by the Board.

Invoking DHS’s new authority over immigration matters, however, Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchison again referred the decision to the Attorney General and requested that he stay the Board’s grant of bond. Under Secretary Hutchison also requested that the Attorney General stay any other bond determinations involving Haitians who arrived last fall. Thus, DHS has aggressively sought to restore the blanket detention policy initiated in response to the flow of Haitian refugees who have attempted to flee escalating violence in their homeland.

“As the United States seeks to protect the safety of the American people, it is inexplicable as to why we would be wasting our limited resources on the prolonged detention of Haitians. This is a shocking abuse of power that does little to serve our national interests,” says Cheryl Little, Executive Director of FIAC.

Prolonged detention is part of a series of extraordinary enforcement measures the Bush administration has launched since December 2001 to prevent Haitians from accessing the US asylum system. These steps include interdiction of Haitian boats on the high seas and within the territorial waters of the United States; summary return of interdicted Haitians with no screening of their asylum claims unless a person explicitly expresses a fear of return; resettlement to third countries as far away as Australia for those few Haitians granted refugee status; and application of expedited removal procedures and fast-tracked asylum determinations that result in most Haitians having to present their asylum cases without benefit of counsel. The Bush administration has justified these harsh measures as necessary to protect US national security.

Eleanor Acer, Asylum Director, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, noted, “It is time to restore our historical commitment to the protection of refugees. The United States has a long history of sheltering victims of religious, political, ethnic and other forms of persecution. Haitians typically turn to us when conditions in their country make it unsafe for them to remain at home. Offering them a safe haven represents the best of America that should not be sacrificed needlessly simply by invoking the phrase ‘national security.’”

FIAC, the Lawyers Committee, and the Women’s Commission are calling upon the Bush administration to restore the right of Haitians to seek asylum. They are united in the belief that US national security can be balanced against the US obligation to protect refugees without sacrificing the human rights of asylum seekers and subjecting them to the trauma of imprisonment.

Source: Lawyers Committee for Human Rights

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