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Racial Stereotypes Dehumanize |
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by Ra Ravishankar
Email: ra_ravishankar (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!) |
19 Feb 2003
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On the witch-hunt of Muslim immigrants in post 9/11 U.S. |
Racial Stereotypes Dehumanize
Racial Stereotypes Dehumanize!
Several commentators have noted the analogy between the WTC attacks and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. The analogy, unfortunately, doesn't end with
these barbarities. The then U.S President Franklin Roosevelt retaliated
by interning about 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry. And the current
incumbent seems to have given the nod for a witch-hunt of Muslims.
In a report released last August, Human Rights Watch (HRW) found the U.S.
government to have detained more than 1,200 (no one knows the exact
number for the government refuses to release the full list of detainees)
non-citizens for several months without charges (and in some cases, under
solitary confinement), denied access to counsel, subjected them to
coercive interrogations, and overridden judicial orders to release them on
bond during immigration proceedings. The vast majority of the detainees
are Muslims of Middle Eastern, South Asian or North African descent.
Criticizing that "the U.S. government has failed to uphold the very
values that President Bush declared were under attack on September 11",
Jamie Fellner, director of HRW's U.S. Program, faulted the Government for
having "ignored basic restraints on a government's power to detain that
are the hallmark of free and democratic nations." As of July 2002, these
detentions and the subsequent investigations had not yielded "any criminal
indictments for crimes connected to terrorist activity" [Human Rights Abuses of
Post-September 11 Detainees]. The detainees, however, continue to be
treated like terrorists, with no idea of the fate that awaits them. The
Japanese interns were released at the end of the war. The War on Terror "may
last our lifetime", says Vice President Dick Cheney. The natural question that
arises then is, are the innocent detainees doomed to a lifetime of
imprisonment?
As if this wasn't enough, the INS has now started a Special Registration
(read Detainment) process whereby men 16 years of age or older from
Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia,
Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, Oman,
Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab
Emirates and Yemen are to re-register with the INS. These 'suspects' are
digitally photographed and fingerprinted, and asked if they have links to
any terrorist organization! During the first phase of the special
'registration' process, hundreds were detained in Los Angeles. The
American Civil Liberties Union reports that most of these new detainees
were waiting for approval of their green card applications, while the
rest had minor visa problems caused by the INS's inefficacy. As an
instance of the INS's bungling, the San Diego Union Tribune reported on
July 27, 2002 that the INS had recently failed to process and then dumped
more than 200,000 change of address forms thereby putting these more than
200,000 people at risk of wrongful arrest and deportation (for failing to
report a change of address). And needless to say, more countries could be
included in the list of suspects. As if to rub salt into the wounds,
Representative Howard Coble, also the chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee
on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security recently remarked that, "some
Japanese-Americans probably were intent on doing harm to us [in 1942] just as some of these Arab-Americans are probably intent on doing harm to
us." The end to racial profiling is nowhere in sight, and this is what
makes local efforts like the Mutual Aid Pact, initiated by AWARE, all the more
soothing. Organizing works, as the Ahmed Bensouda case shows. Furthermore,
the huge demonstrations following the INS detentions in LA seemed to have saved
several others from meeting with the same fate. The necessity of organizing
being obvious, several organizations have come together to form the
Blue Triangle Network
. Since last year, February 20th is being observed as National
Day of Solidarity with Muslim, Arab and South Asian Immigrants. Here
again, the day has been chosen to emphasize the analogy between the Japanese
internment and the current profiling of Muslims, for February 19, 1942, was
when Roosevelt passed the infamous Executive Order 9066 authorizing the roundup
and imprisonment of people of Japanese origin living along the U.S. west coast.
A plaque at Manzanar, the first of ten concentration camps that held the
interned Japanese, reads: "May the injustices and humiliation suffered
here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never
emerge again." Are the powers that be listening?
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