The following is an editorial that appeared in The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut. It is reproduced here with permission.
"For the first time since the days of the pharaohs, the Egyptian people will choose their ruler," reckons Mohammed Ulwan, the assistant head of the Egyptian opposition Al-Wafd party. Ulwan, using colorful and perhaps exaggerated language, was referring to proposed changes in the Egyptian Constitution, discussed in Parliament on Saturday, which would allow multi-candidate presidential elections.
Until a few days ago, President Hosni Mubarak was opposed to such a move. It was a surprise, then, when the veteran 76-year-old president - on a de facto throne for 23 years now and widely expected to run for a fifth six-year term later this year - did a volte-face on the matter. He has, of course, been encouraged along the way by the United States, which has been pushing hard for democratic reforms throughout the region, and by a political opposition that has recently grown bolder. In explaining this sudden reversal, one Egyptian analyst has suggested Mubarak, in the face of building pressure, "decided it is more dignified and practical to go on the initiative."
Whatever the motivations of the Egyptian president may be, the fact remains that, in the Arab context, this is a landmark development, albeit a long-overdue one. The eggshell of the status quo has been pierced - and it has indeed been a very tough eggshell to crack. Herein lies the caveat to optimism: No details are known about the proposed constitutional amendments, and they are unlikely to be known for months.
However, well-founded speculation has it that restrictions on who can run as a presidential candidate are likely to apply, and this raises the specter that Mubarak's "dignified and practical initiative" could end up being little more than a disguise to further state control. What is being presented in the interests of political reform could, in fact, be revealed as a monster if it is naught but democratic window dressing while the existing seat of political power remains effectively unchallenged.
Thus it is important at this crucial juncture for the opposition to participate in the reform process, and not just protest. There is no excuse for not doing so, and they must make their efforts public. Ayman Nour, the jailed leader of the opposition Ghad party, broke off his hunger strike on Saturday at the news of Mubarak's announcement. While obvious displays of commitment are valuable, the collective opposition must engage the evolving Egyptian political process with constructive contributions that will see the promise of change fulfilled.
At the end of the day, it is both wise and encouraging to realize the reform process that appears to have begun in Egypt - although only the first step in the proverbial 1,000-mile marathon - can only be brought to fruition by Egyptians. As with January's elections in Iraq, it is Egyptians braving the odds who will make their political system more pluralistic and open.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
LET’S ‘C’
By William Fisher
Let’s C.
C is for Cat? Car? Connecticut?
No. Not even close.
Culture?
You’re getting warmer. Hint: You wear it.
Aha, the dreaded ‘C-word’: CONDOM!
The mere utterance is likely to lead to another battle in the culture wars.
But there: I’ve said it.
Which is more than the Bush Administration is prepared to do.
That’s what I discovered while surfing another bunch of C’s – the CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I was Googling for some pre-travel health advice, and stumbled across something called “The Yellow Book”, which the CDC website tells me contains information for international travelers. It says its “Travelers' Health” section “is one of the CDC's most-visited websites…considered by many to be the gold standard on travel information”. I learn it has been “expanded to offer new information on scuba diving safety, high altitude travel, travelers with special needs, and traveling with children.”
So I click and navigate to the site, where I am diverted by the words “Sexually Transmitted Diseases”. There, “Travelers Health” offers the following advice to people infected with HIV:
“The importance of safe sex practices should be emphasized to the HIV-infected traveler to prevent other sexually transmitted diseases, avoid transmission of HIV to others, and prevent acquisition of different HIV strains that may limit therapeutic options (e.g., non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors are not active against HIV-2). Bringing a personal supply of condoms may be advisable, as the quality and availability of condoms can be unreliable in parts of the developing world (italics ours).”
But then I realize I’m reading the 2001-2002 edition, and learn that “The Yellow Book” is updated every two years.
So in “search within results” I type “2003-2004”.
Now, I’m in the most up-to-date spot.
I again navigate to “Sexually Transmitted Diseases”, where I find the following advice for HIV-infected travelers:
“Travel, particularly to developing countries, can carry substantial risks for exposure to opportunistic pathogens…especially those who are severely immunosuppressed. Discussing the itinerary with a health-care provider may identify area- and activity-specific risks that can be addressed. Patients should identify sources of medical care in the planned destination before departure and seek medical attention promptly when ill.”
It continues: “Because antiretroviral medications are not available in many parts of the world, patients should bring an adequate supply of their medications, along with copies of prescriptions. Attention should be given to refrigeration of medications. For extended visits, travelers should consult with their providers in advance regarding a plan for maintaining appropriate medical follow-up and supplies of medications. Avoid changes in the medication regimen shortly before travel, to ensure that no side effects or complications of a new regimen occur while traveling.”
But I have the sneaky feeling that there’s something wrong with this picture.
Aha! The dreaded “C-word” has disappeared. No more CONDOMS.
Why am I not surprised? Because what I’m being given to read follows a familiar pattern of the Bush Administration. The CDC website has been changed to push conservative ideology.
It’s not the first time either. For example, the President has consistently supported the view that sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. As a result, a CDC initiative called “Programs That Work” identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its website. All five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only”. CDC has now ended this initiative and erased information about these proven sex education programs from its website.
Information about condom use and efficacy was also deleted from the CDC website. The CDC replaced a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one emphasizing condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
And the President’s “just say no” agenda also extends overseas. He has pledged $15 billion in an “Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief”, designed to provide support to the 15 African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian nations most affected by HIV/Aids. But providing condoms is not part of the program. The Bush Administration has also renewed a ban on providing aid funds to overseas groups that help pregnant women, if they so much as discuss abortion.
Still, I’m disappointed. The website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is visited by millions of people looking for the most cutting edge information and advice. It’s a pity that the Bush Administration continues to delete science and substitute information designed to avoid offending his evangelical base.
Well, it’s just your tax dollars at work!
Let’s C.
C is for Cat? Car? Connecticut?
No. Not even close.
Culture?
You’re getting warmer. Hint: You wear it.
Aha, the dreaded ‘C-word’: CONDOM!
The mere utterance is likely to lead to another battle in the culture wars.
But there: I’ve said it.
Which is more than the Bush Administration is prepared to do.
That’s what I discovered while surfing another bunch of C’s – the CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I was Googling for some pre-travel health advice, and stumbled across something called “The Yellow Book”, which the CDC website tells me contains information for international travelers. It says its “Travelers' Health” section “is one of the CDC's most-visited websites…considered by many to be the gold standard on travel information”. I learn it has been “expanded to offer new information on scuba diving safety, high altitude travel, travelers with special needs, and traveling with children.”
So I click and navigate to the site, where I am diverted by the words “Sexually Transmitted Diseases”. There, “Travelers Health” offers the following advice to people infected with HIV:
“The importance of safe sex practices should be emphasized to the HIV-infected traveler to prevent other sexually transmitted diseases, avoid transmission of HIV to others, and prevent acquisition of different HIV strains that may limit therapeutic options (e.g., non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors are not active against HIV-2). Bringing a personal supply of condoms may be advisable, as the quality and availability of condoms can be unreliable in parts of the developing world (italics ours).”
But then I realize I’m reading the 2001-2002 edition, and learn that “The Yellow Book” is updated every two years.
So in “search within results” I type “2003-2004”.
Now, I’m in the most up-to-date spot.
I again navigate to “Sexually Transmitted Diseases”, where I find the following advice for HIV-infected travelers:
“Travel, particularly to developing countries, can carry substantial risks for exposure to opportunistic pathogens…especially those who are severely immunosuppressed. Discussing the itinerary with a health-care provider may identify area- and activity-specific risks that can be addressed. Patients should identify sources of medical care in the planned destination before departure and seek medical attention promptly when ill.”
It continues: “Because antiretroviral medications are not available in many parts of the world, patients should bring an adequate supply of their medications, along with copies of prescriptions. Attention should be given to refrigeration of medications. For extended visits, travelers should consult with their providers in advance regarding a plan for maintaining appropriate medical follow-up and supplies of medications. Avoid changes in the medication regimen shortly before travel, to ensure that no side effects or complications of a new regimen occur while traveling.”
But I have the sneaky feeling that there’s something wrong with this picture.
Aha! The dreaded “C-word” has disappeared. No more CONDOMS.
Why am I not surprised? Because what I’m being given to read follows a familiar pattern of the Bush Administration. The CDC website has been changed to push conservative ideology.
It’s not the first time either. For example, the President has consistently supported the view that sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. As a result, a CDC initiative called “Programs That Work” identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its website. All five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only”. CDC has now ended this initiative and erased information about these proven sex education programs from its website.
Information about condom use and efficacy was also deleted from the CDC website. The CDC replaced a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one emphasizing condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
And the President’s “just say no” agenda also extends overseas. He has pledged $15 billion in an “Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief”, designed to provide support to the 15 African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian nations most affected by HIV/Aids. But providing condoms is not part of the program. The Bush Administration has also renewed a ban on providing aid funds to overseas groups that help pregnant women, if they so much as discuss abortion.
Still, I’m disappointed. The website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is visited by millions of people looking for the most cutting edge information and advice. It’s a pity that the Bush Administration continues to delete science and substitute information designed to avoid offending his evangelical base.
Well, it’s just your tax dollars at work!
‘EXTREME RENDITION’
By William Fisher
Since long before 9/11, U.S. mainstream media regarded reporting on the practice of ‘extreme rendition’ as a kind of Third Rail of American Journalism. But accounts of widespread prisoner abuse, ghost detainees, testimony from freed prisoners, dissident weblogs, and secret government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, have sounded a noisy wake-up call to the Fourth Estate.
In just the past week alone, the return to the U.S. of a 23-year-old American citizen, Ahmed Abu Ali, from secret detention in Saudi Arabia, has triggered major mainstream media coverage and editorials in the powerful New York Times and Washington Post, and a major article in Newsweek magazine. A week earlier, The New Yorker magazine published a long and detailed article, “Outsourcing Torture” by Jane Mayer, leading with the ‘extreme rendition’ of a Canadian citizen from the U.S. to Syria, where he alleges he was tortured.
Commenting on the Abu Ali case, The Washington Post editorial declared, “The courts need to ensure that no evidence obtained by torture -- with or without the connivance of the U.S. government -- is used to convict people in U.S. courts.” The New York Times editorial said, “In an undisciplined attempt to wring statements out of any conceivable suspect, American officials have worked with countries like Saudi Arabia, a nation whose attitude toward human rights is deplorable, and Syria, which is counted by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism. And now these officials are faced with the problem of what to do with these prisoners, most of whom have proved to be no use to interrogators, but who remain on America's conscience.”
These and a flurry of other news accounts have been generated by prisoner abuses by the U.S. military and its contractors at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan, in suspected secret ‘interrogation centers’ run by the U.S. overseas, and by first-person accounts provided by prisoners freed from or still held in prisons in Egypt, Syria, Guantanamo Bay, and other locations.
President Bush has asserted that “the values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.”
Before 9/11, many mainstream U.S. journalists and editors knew of the ‘extreme rendition’ practice, and reported on testimony on the subject before Congressional committees by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and other government units. Prior to 9/11, ‘extreme rendition’ was thought to be practiced by the C.I.A. only; post-9/11 cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement has now also implicated the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.).
But, while human rights advocacy groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights First, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union, have been outspoken in their condemnation of ‘extreme rendition’, U.S. press coverage has been sporadic, and infrequent stories did not stir up public sentiment. One of the notable exceptions has been the Washington Post, which has written on the subject frequently and recently exposed the C.I.A.’s ‘secret airline’ used to move prisoners to countries where they would very likely face torture. International coverage has been even less visible, with the exception of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
Now, many of the ‘rendered’ prisoners are suing the U.S. Government, thus generating still more news. For example, the Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, alleges he was detained at New York JFK International Airport by U.S. Government authorities enroute back to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia, sent first to Jordan and then to Syria, where he was held for ten months without charge and tortured in detention. The parents of Ahmed Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen, claim their son was held in a Saudi jail for 20 months without charge – and tortured – while the U.S. State and Justice departments claimed no involvement in his detention, and the Saudis claimed they were holding him at the behest of the U.S. As the parents pursued his release in court in the face of ‘secret evidence’, the U.S. government brought him back to America in their custody and charged him with conspiring to assassinate President Bush.
Other suits involve U.S. citizens held by the American military, Australians held at Guantanamo Bay, and a German national spirited off to detention in Afghanistan.
While the total numbers of those “rendered” during the Bush Administration are unknown, former C.I.A. director George Tenet testified to the 9/11 Commission in October 2002 that more than 70 people had been subjected to renditions prior to September 11, 2001. That number is thought to have increased substantially post-9/11.
While public reaction still falls far short of an ‘outcry’, the ‘rendition’ issue has now worked its way to Congress. Last week, U.S. Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced legislation that would end the practice. His bill, the “Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act", requires the State Department to annually compile a list of countries believed to torture and mistreat detainees and prohibits the United States from sending individuals to those countries. It also rejects current State Department practice of obtaining assurances from a country known to torture that it will not torture a particular individual.
Introducing the bill last week, Rep. Markey said, “Extraordinary rendition is wrong because it: violates international treaties that the United States has signed and ratified, including most notably Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits sending a person to another state “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” The practice, he charged, “Undermines the moral integrity of America in the eyes of the world (and) ensures that American captives are likely to be tortured by others out of reciprocity, regardless of the urgency of the pleas of our government or the victim’s family.”
Torture, Markey said, “is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people.”
The bill does permit legal, treaty-based extradition, in which suspects have the right to appeal in a U.S. court to block the proposed transfer based on the likelihood that they would be subjected to torture or other inhumane treatment.
Since long before 9/11, U.S. mainstream media regarded reporting on the practice of ‘extreme rendition’ as a kind of Third Rail of American Journalism. But accounts of widespread prisoner abuse, ghost detainees, testimony from freed prisoners, dissident weblogs, and secret government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, have sounded a noisy wake-up call to the Fourth Estate.
In just the past week alone, the return to the U.S. of a 23-year-old American citizen, Ahmed Abu Ali, from secret detention in Saudi Arabia, has triggered major mainstream media coverage and editorials in the powerful New York Times and Washington Post, and a major article in Newsweek magazine. A week earlier, The New Yorker magazine published a long and detailed article, “Outsourcing Torture” by Jane Mayer, leading with the ‘extreme rendition’ of a Canadian citizen from the U.S. to Syria, where he alleges he was tortured.
Commenting on the Abu Ali case, The Washington Post editorial declared, “The courts need to ensure that no evidence obtained by torture -- with or without the connivance of the U.S. government -- is used to convict people in U.S. courts.” The New York Times editorial said, “In an undisciplined attempt to wring statements out of any conceivable suspect, American officials have worked with countries like Saudi Arabia, a nation whose attitude toward human rights is deplorable, and Syria, which is counted by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism. And now these officials are faced with the problem of what to do with these prisoners, most of whom have proved to be no use to interrogators, but who remain on America's conscience.”
These and a flurry of other news accounts have been generated by prisoner abuses by the U.S. military and its contractors at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan, in suspected secret ‘interrogation centers’ run by the U.S. overseas, and by first-person accounts provided by prisoners freed from or still held in prisons in Egypt, Syria, Guantanamo Bay, and other locations.
President Bush has asserted that “the values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.”
Before 9/11, many mainstream U.S. journalists and editors knew of the ‘extreme rendition’ practice, and reported on testimony on the subject before Congressional committees by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and other government units. Prior to 9/11, ‘extreme rendition’ was thought to be practiced by the C.I.A. only; post-9/11 cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement has now also implicated the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.).
But, while human rights advocacy groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights First, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union, have been outspoken in their condemnation of ‘extreme rendition’, U.S. press coverage has been sporadic, and infrequent stories did not stir up public sentiment. One of the notable exceptions has been the Washington Post, which has written on the subject frequently and recently exposed the C.I.A.’s ‘secret airline’ used to move prisoners to countries where they would very likely face torture. International coverage has been even less visible, with the exception of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
Now, many of the ‘rendered’ prisoners are suing the U.S. Government, thus generating still more news. For example, the Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, alleges he was detained at New York JFK International Airport by U.S. Government authorities enroute back to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia, sent first to Jordan and then to Syria, where he was held for ten months without charge and tortured in detention. The parents of Ahmed Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen, claim their son was held in a Saudi jail for 20 months without charge – and tortured – while the U.S. State and Justice departments claimed no involvement in his detention, and the Saudis claimed they were holding him at the behest of the U.S. As the parents pursued his release in court in the face of ‘secret evidence’, the U.S. government brought him back to America in their custody and charged him with conspiring to assassinate President Bush.
Other suits involve U.S. citizens held by the American military, Australians held at Guantanamo Bay, and a German national spirited off to detention in Afghanistan.
While the total numbers of those “rendered” during the Bush Administration are unknown, former C.I.A. director George Tenet testified to the 9/11 Commission in October 2002 that more than 70 people had been subjected to renditions prior to September 11, 2001. That number is thought to have increased substantially post-9/11.
While public reaction still falls far short of an ‘outcry’, the ‘rendition’ issue has now worked its way to Congress. Last week, U.S. Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced legislation that would end the practice. His bill, the “Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act", requires the State Department to annually compile a list of countries believed to torture and mistreat detainees and prohibits the United States from sending individuals to those countries. It also rejects current State Department practice of obtaining assurances from a country known to torture that it will not torture a particular individual.
Introducing the bill last week, Rep. Markey said, “Extraordinary rendition is wrong because it: violates international treaties that the United States has signed and ratified, including most notably Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits sending a person to another state “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” The practice, he charged, “Undermines the moral integrity of America in the eyes of the world (and) ensures that American captives are likely to be tortured by others out of reciprocity, regardless of the urgency of the pleas of our government or the victim’s family.”
Torture, Markey said, “is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people.”
The bill does permit legal, treaty-based extradition, in which suspects have the right to appeal in a U.S. court to block the proposed transfer based on the likelihood that they would be subjected to torture or other inhumane treatment.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
THE FUTURE OF ASHCROFT’S LEGACY
By William Fisher
Civil libertarians are wondering if America’s new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, will repeat one of the legacies left by his predecessor, John Ashcroft: razzle-dazzle news conferences announcing the arrests of terrorists, followed by trials in which no one is charged or tried for any terror-related offenses.
The latest chapter in this legacy is the conviction of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an
Iraqi-American oncologist, who was convicted last week on 59 of 60 counts, including violating economic sanctions against Iraq, Medicare fraud and tax evasion.
The government alleged that Dr. Dhafir illegally raised millions of dollars and violated U.S sanctions by sending funds to Iraq through his charity -- "Help the Needy" – and also diverted some of these funds for his personal use.
He is thought to be the only U.S citizen convicted of breaking the Iraq sanctions, though other organizations such as Voices in the Wilderness, Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi USA, the American Friends Service Committee, the Order of St Dominic (Dominican priests), Conscience International, Global Exchange, and the International Action Center, have admitted breaking the sanctions with Iraq since before the U.S. invasion.
When Dhafir was arrested in upstate New York in February 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft trumpeted the arrest as part of President Bush's war on terror. He said, “Those who covertly seek to channel money into Iraq under the guise of charitable work will be caught and prosecuted. As President Bush leads an international coalition to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny and support for terror, the Justice Department will see that individuals within our borders cannot undermine these efforts.”
And New York Governor George Pataki declared, 'It is again troubling to see…that there are clear terrorists living here in New York State among us...who are supporting or aiding and abetting those who would destroy our way of life and kill our friends and neighbors.'
But no terrorism charges were ever bought against Dr. Dhafir. A member of Dhafir’s defense team, Joel Cohen, believes that his client “was clearly targeted, clearly investigated, clearly indicted, tried, and clearly convicted because he is a Muslim, (and) because he is a person of Iraqi ancestry….”
The judge in Dhafir’s case denied a defense motion to allow mention of Dhafir’s religion or refer to terrorism during the trial.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an internationally recognized legal authority on civil liberties, believes the Dhafir case is emblematic of a pattern created by the Ashcroft Justice Department.
“Not one person of the more than 5,000 locked up as a foreign national in preventive detention by John Ashcroft was ever convicted of a terrorist crime. The only convictions have been of U.S. citizens. John Ashcroft labeled them as suspected terrorists, but it turned out they had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever, “ Cole said.
In his end-of-year speech to DOJ employees, Ashcroft said “375 people have been charged in terror-related cases over the past three years and 190 have been convicted or pleaded guilty.”
But, according to Cole, “what Ashcroft doesn't say is that most of those people are not indicted on anything to do with terrorism. What he doesn't say is that a Syracuse University research department looked at Justice Department figures found that the median sentence imposed on persons convicted for crimes in cases that the DOJ labeled as terrorism was 14 days. Now, 14 days is not the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of terrorism. It's the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of some completely petty crime.”
The Ashcroft DOJ has brought several other high-profile prosecutions. Among them is the case of “The Lackawanna Six”. Arrested in the Yemeni community of this old steel town in upstate New York, the six young men were charged under the federal anti-terrorism statute with providing material support to al-Quaida which, prior to September 11, 2001, had been designated by the Secretary of State as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Specifically, the men were charged with providing “material support” in the form of training. The training consisted of paying for a uniform, attending the training camp where they learned to use weapons, and standing guard duty. The charges against them also specified viewing videotapes of the bombing of the USS Cole and speeches by Osama Bin-Laden.
None of the defendants engaged in acts that were, at the time, obviously criminal in nature. It was not until several months after their return from Afghanistan that planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The six young men agree to plead guilty to providing "material support" to al Qaeda. Prosecutors said the defendants belonged to a terrorist "sleeper cell."
"One by one," President Bush declared after the arrests, "we're hunting the killers down." Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson said the arrests showed terrorism was not limited to large cities. "It lurks in small towns and rural areas," he said.
But, according to defense attorneys, the defendants pled guilty because the federal government implicitly threatened to send them to a military prison without trial. Instead, they accepted prison terms of 61/2 to 9 years. But prosecutors never offered evidence that the Lackawanna defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism.
In another high-profile case, known as the "Detroit terror cell prosecution," a US federal judge threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men accused of being members of a terrorist “sleeper operational combat cell.”
The ruling came at the request of the Justice Department itself. The department admitted that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial.
Until their dismissal, the Detroit convictions were the only successful post-9/11 terror-related prosecutions, and had been hailed by administration officials and cited as one of the Justice Department’s “notable achievements”.
In his ruling, the judge said that in its “ruthless drive to convict Arab and Islamic suspects”, the DOJ “overcame not only its professional judgment, but its broader obligations to the justice system and the rule of law.”
As White House counsel, Ashcroft’s successor, Alberto Gonzales, was deeply involved in recommending policy options to President Bush for conducting the ‘war on terror’, as well as in the issue of what constitutes torture of prisoners.
First as a U.S. Senator and then as Attorney General, John Ashcroft was always a controversial firebrand. By contrast, Alberto Gonzales is soft-spoken and seemingly more contemplative. But, given his loyalty to the president and the administration’s unrelenting commitment to defeating the terrorists, it may be a stretch to think that there will be any fundamental change in the DOJ.
Civil libertarians are wondering if America’s new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, will repeat one of the legacies left by his predecessor, John Ashcroft: razzle-dazzle news conferences announcing the arrests of terrorists, followed by trials in which no one is charged or tried for any terror-related offenses.
The latest chapter in this legacy is the conviction of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an
Iraqi-American oncologist, who was convicted last week on 59 of 60 counts, including violating economic sanctions against Iraq, Medicare fraud and tax evasion.
The government alleged that Dr. Dhafir illegally raised millions of dollars and violated U.S sanctions by sending funds to Iraq through his charity -- "Help the Needy" – and also diverted some of these funds for his personal use.
He is thought to be the only U.S citizen convicted of breaking the Iraq sanctions, though other organizations such as Voices in the Wilderness, Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi USA, the American Friends Service Committee, the Order of St Dominic (Dominican priests), Conscience International, Global Exchange, and the International Action Center, have admitted breaking the sanctions with Iraq since before the U.S. invasion.
When Dhafir was arrested in upstate New York in February 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft trumpeted the arrest as part of President Bush's war on terror. He said, “Those who covertly seek to channel money into Iraq under the guise of charitable work will be caught and prosecuted. As President Bush leads an international coalition to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny and support for terror, the Justice Department will see that individuals within our borders cannot undermine these efforts.”
And New York Governor George Pataki declared, 'It is again troubling to see…that there are clear terrorists living here in New York State among us...who are supporting or aiding and abetting those who would destroy our way of life and kill our friends and neighbors.'
But no terrorism charges were ever bought against Dr. Dhafir. A member of Dhafir’s defense team, Joel Cohen, believes that his client “was clearly targeted, clearly investigated, clearly indicted, tried, and clearly convicted because he is a Muslim, (and) because he is a person of Iraqi ancestry….”
The judge in Dhafir’s case denied a defense motion to allow mention of Dhafir’s religion or refer to terrorism during the trial.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an internationally recognized legal authority on civil liberties, believes the Dhafir case is emblematic of a pattern created by the Ashcroft Justice Department.
“Not one person of the more than 5,000 locked up as a foreign national in preventive detention by John Ashcroft was ever convicted of a terrorist crime. The only convictions have been of U.S. citizens. John Ashcroft labeled them as suspected terrorists, but it turned out they had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever, “ Cole said.
In his end-of-year speech to DOJ employees, Ashcroft said “375 people have been charged in terror-related cases over the past three years and 190 have been convicted or pleaded guilty.”
But, according to Cole, “what Ashcroft doesn't say is that most of those people are not indicted on anything to do with terrorism. What he doesn't say is that a Syracuse University research department looked at Justice Department figures found that the median sentence imposed on persons convicted for crimes in cases that the DOJ labeled as terrorism was 14 days. Now, 14 days is not the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of terrorism. It's the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of some completely petty crime.”
The Ashcroft DOJ has brought several other high-profile prosecutions. Among them is the case of “The Lackawanna Six”. Arrested in the Yemeni community of this old steel town in upstate New York, the six young men were charged under the federal anti-terrorism statute with providing material support to al-Quaida which, prior to September 11, 2001, had been designated by the Secretary of State as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Specifically, the men were charged with providing “material support” in the form of training. The training consisted of paying for a uniform, attending the training camp where they learned to use weapons, and standing guard duty. The charges against them also specified viewing videotapes of the bombing of the USS Cole and speeches by Osama Bin-Laden.
None of the defendants engaged in acts that were, at the time, obviously criminal in nature. It was not until several months after their return from Afghanistan that planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The six young men agree to plead guilty to providing "material support" to al Qaeda. Prosecutors said the defendants belonged to a terrorist "sleeper cell."
"One by one," President Bush declared after the arrests, "we're hunting the killers down." Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson said the arrests showed terrorism was not limited to large cities. "It lurks in small towns and rural areas," he said.
But, according to defense attorneys, the defendants pled guilty because the federal government implicitly threatened to send them to a military prison without trial. Instead, they accepted prison terms of 61/2 to 9 years. But prosecutors never offered evidence that the Lackawanna defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism.
In another high-profile case, known as the "Detroit terror cell prosecution," a US federal judge threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men accused of being members of a terrorist “sleeper operational combat cell.”
The ruling came at the request of the Justice Department itself. The department admitted that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial.
Until their dismissal, the Detroit convictions were the only successful post-9/11 terror-related prosecutions, and had been hailed by administration officials and cited as one of the Justice Department’s “notable achievements”.
In his ruling, the judge said that in its “ruthless drive to convict Arab and Islamic suspects”, the DOJ “overcame not only its professional judgment, but its broader obligations to the justice system and the rule of law.”
As White House counsel, Ashcroft’s successor, Alberto Gonzales, was deeply involved in recommending policy options to President Bush for conducting the ‘war on terror’, as well as in the issue of what constitutes torture of prisoners.
First as a U.S. Senator and then as Attorney General, John Ashcroft was always a controversial firebrand. By contrast, Alberto Gonzales is soft-spoken and seemingly more contemplative. But, given his loyalty to the president and the administration’s unrelenting commitment to defeating the terrorists, it may be a stretch to think that there will be any fundamental change in the DOJ.
HOW TO PACK FOR OVERSEAS TRAVEL
By William Fisher
The website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers further evidence that the Bush Administration continues to delete science and substitute information designed to avoid offending his conservative base.
Every two years, the CDC issues its “Yellow Book”, which contains information for international travelers. It says its “Travelers' Health” section “is one of CDC's most-visited websites and is updated as new information becomes available.”
In its 2001-2002 edition, under the heading “Sexually Transmitted Diseases”, “Travelers Health” offered the following advice to people infected with HIV:
“The importance of safe sex practices should be emphasized to the HIV-infected traveler to prevent other sexually transmitted diseases, avoid transmission of HIV to others, and prevent acquisition of different HIV strains that may limit therapeutic options (e.g., non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors are not active against HIV-2). Bringing a personal supply of condoms may be advisable, as the quality and availability of condoms can be unreliable in parts of the developing world (italics ours).”
But by the time of the 2003-2004 edition, the script had changed. The “C-word” had disappeared.
The 2003-2004 edition advised HIV-infected travelers that “Travel, particularly to developing countries, can carry substantial risks for exposure to opportunistic pathogens…especially those who are severely immunosuppressed. Discussing the itinerary with a health-care provider may identify area- and activity-specific risks that can be addressed. Patients should identify sources of medical care in the planned destination before departure and seek medical attention promptly when ill.”
It continued: “Because antiretroviral medications are not available in many parts of the world, patients should bring an adequate supply of their medications, along with copies of prescriptions. Attention should be given to refrigeration of medications. For extended visits, travelers should consult with their providers in advance regarding a plan for maintaining appropriate medical follow-up and supplies of medications. Avoid changes in the medication regimen shortly before travel, to ensure that no side effects or complications of a new regimen occur while traveling.”
The CDC, part of the Department of Health Human Services, declares the “Yellow Book” is “considered by many to be the gold standard on travel information” and notes it has been expanded to offer new information on scuba diving safety, high altitude travel, travelers with special needs, and traveling with children.
It says the 2003-2004 edition includes “new health topics”, including “New recommendations for preventing malaria; changes in vaccine recommendations for travelers; changes in recommendations for insect repellent use; expanded text motion sickness and travel-related injury, and; improved maps and expanded indexing.”
The change follows a familiar Bush Administration pattern. The CDC website has been changed a number times to reflect conservative ideology.
For example, the President has consistently supported the view that sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. As a result, a CDC initiative called “Programs That Work” identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its website. All five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only”. CDC has now ended this initiative and erased information about these proven sex education programs from its website.
Information about condom use and efficacy was also deleted from the CDC website. The CDC replaced a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one emphasizing condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
The President’s “just say no” agenda also extends overseas. He has pledged $15 billion in an “Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief”, designed to provide support to the 15 African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian nations most affected by HIV/aids. But providing condoms is not part of the program. The Bush Administration has also renewed a ban on providing aid funds to overseas groups that help pregnant women, if they so much as discuss abortion.
The website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers further evidence that the Bush Administration continues to delete science and substitute information designed to avoid offending his conservative base.
Every two years, the CDC issues its “Yellow Book”, which contains information for international travelers. It says its “Travelers' Health” section “is one of CDC's most-visited websites and is updated as new information becomes available.”
In its 2001-2002 edition, under the heading “Sexually Transmitted Diseases”, “Travelers Health” offered the following advice to people infected with HIV:
“The importance of safe sex practices should be emphasized to the HIV-infected traveler to prevent other sexually transmitted diseases, avoid transmission of HIV to others, and prevent acquisition of different HIV strains that may limit therapeutic options (e.g., non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors are not active against HIV-2). Bringing a personal supply of condoms may be advisable, as the quality and availability of condoms can be unreliable in parts of the developing world (italics ours).”
But by the time of the 2003-2004 edition, the script had changed. The “C-word” had disappeared.
The 2003-2004 edition advised HIV-infected travelers that “Travel, particularly to developing countries, can carry substantial risks for exposure to opportunistic pathogens…especially those who are severely immunosuppressed. Discussing the itinerary with a health-care provider may identify area- and activity-specific risks that can be addressed. Patients should identify sources of medical care in the planned destination before departure and seek medical attention promptly when ill.”
It continued: “Because antiretroviral medications are not available in many parts of the world, patients should bring an adequate supply of their medications, along with copies of prescriptions. Attention should be given to refrigeration of medications. For extended visits, travelers should consult with their providers in advance regarding a plan for maintaining appropriate medical follow-up and supplies of medications. Avoid changes in the medication regimen shortly before travel, to ensure that no side effects or complications of a new regimen occur while traveling.”
The CDC, part of the Department of Health Human Services, declares the “Yellow Book” is “considered by many to be the gold standard on travel information” and notes it has been expanded to offer new information on scuba diving safety, high altitude travel, travelers with special needs, and traveling with children.
It says the 2003-2004 edition includes “new health topics”, including “New recommendations for preventing malaria; changes in vaccine recommendations for travelers; changes in recommendations for insect repellent use; expanded text motion sickness and travel-related injury, and; improved maps and expanded indexing.”
The change follows a familiar Bush Administration pattern. The CDC website has been changed a number times to reflect conservative ideology.
For example, the President has consistently supported the view that sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. As a result, a CDC initiative called “Programs That Work” identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its website. All five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only”. CDC has now ended this initiative and erased information about these proven sex education programs from its website.
Information about condom use and efficacy was also deleted from the CDC website. The CDC replaced a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one emphasizing condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
The President’s “just say no” agenda also extends overseas. He has pledged $15 billion in an “Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief”, designed to provide support to the 15 African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian nations most affected by HIV/aids. But providing condoms is not part of the program. The Bush Administration has also renewed a ban on providing aid funds to overseas groups that help pregnant women, if they so much as discuss abortion.
Democracy Comes Knocking in Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine
The article below was written by Rami G. Khouri, Executive Editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut. It is published here with the permission of the author.
By Rami G. Khouri
Some exciting and important forces are exerting themselves in parts of the Middle East, and some historic occupation-liberation dynamics are taking place in other parts of this region - and it is important not to mix up these two very different things.
A wave of analyses from many parts of Europe and North America is suddenly trumpeting events in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Egypt as part of a common awakening in which Arabs and Muslims are asserting their humanity and dignity by voting in elections or demanding more democratic rights. That is only partly correct. We have three very different historical and political processes at work here, and they may well end up one day at the same final destination of stable, democratic and prospering societies. I hope so, as do the many people in this region who have worked for this goal for many decades, at great personal danger to themselves in most cases.
So the first point to be made from within this region is that it is a refreshing treat to hear foreign governments and analysts now commonly advocating and applauding democratization forces in this region, instead of feeding the tyrants who jailed and killed democrats. I hope that the wave of promoting democracy, freedom and free market economics is not, like its predecessor era of propping up criminals and thugs, merely a transient and self-serving phase that fits the needs of the times as seen from Washington, London, Paris and Moscow.
The second point to be made is that domestic autocracy or tyranny and foreign occupation are equally bad but very different contexts. Iraq and Afghanistan are the easiest of the five situations to decipher. Evil regimes there were removed by the force of foreign armies, and the natives are being given a chance to reshape their societies through Western-style elections.
These are noble and historic endeavors, though still deeply controversial as to their origin, implementation, intent and consequence. Time will tell how they evolve.
The Palestinians are a unique case for they have suffered the longest foreign military occupation of the past three generations of world history.
So they continue to battle the Israeli occupation with all means available to them, from diligent self-improvement and acquiescent complacency, to nonviolent protest and active diplomacy, to armed struggle against Israeli troops and terror against Israeli civilians. Palestinian society for decades has been prevented from enjoying democratic elections primarily because of the Israeli occupation. In the meantime, Palestinian political life has almost always been defined by an impressive component of pluralism and internal checks-and-balances, with some obvious lapses here and there, to be sure.
To applaud the Palestinians for suddenly practicing democracy in their recent elections is hypocritical nonsense and slightly insulting to boot. Those who know and follow the Palestinian people would know that the will to live in decency and dignity has been a defining national and personal characteristic for all the decades that these people have been occupied by Israel, ignored by the Arab states, or duped by Western and Eastern powers.
The impressive Palestinian historical struggle for freedom against Israeli usurpation and occupation, and simultaneously against Western powers' colonial manipulations, towers over the recently held Palestinian presidential election like the Empire State Building towers over a U.S. Postal Service mailbox in central New York.
The conduct of the Lebanese and Egyptians is probably the most noteworthy and truly historic of the five cases mentioned above. For here we have people truly fighting against enormous local odds, at great danger to themselves, to live in freedom, equality, opportunity and dignity.
Egyptians in small numbers are challenging the desire of their president, Hosni Mubarak, to run for a fifth consecutive six-year term. His inclination to be a president-for-life, with a ruling party and security sector that perpetuate their control of all major aspects of political, economic and military life, is an insult to the right of ordinary Egyptians and other Arabs to be treated like adults, rather than children. Egyptians have had enough of executive authority that is not rotated peacefully and regularly, for this results in mediocrity, stagnation, corruption, national deterioration and degradation of the human spirit itself - all of which are clearly visible in contemporary Egypt. The slogan used by those who oppose Mubarak's fifth term is "enough."
Tellingly, that same word "enough" this week also appeared on posters and walls all around Beirut, where ordinary Lebanese and political leaders alike have launched an impressive rebellion against the present Lebanese government and the Syrian regime that is its selector, patron and backer. As has happened in Egypt, a threshold of fear of incumbent government authorities - both Syrian and Lebanese, in this case - has been shattered. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri accelerated to a historic pitch the now widespread, explicit and vocal calls for the Syrians to leave Lebanon and the Lebanese government to resign.
This is a rare genuine grassroots, populist, spontaneous Arab movement to change an existing power structure, and so it is qualitatively significant in terms of modern Arab political history. Perhaps the most significant aspect of it is that it is also the first contemporary instance of Arabs defining their political values, goals and activism, boldly setting out to build a better society, and then seeing Western powers support them in their endeavor. This sure beats U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld giving aid to ensure Saddam Hussein's survival in the 1980s and then sending in the Marines two decades later to remove him from power.
By all means, then: Bring on democracy, support Arab democrats, oppose Arab autocrats, end Israeli occupation, promote Arab self-determination and, above all, please, make a reasonable effort to recognize the differences, and relationships, among all the above.
By Rami G. Khouri
Some exciting and important forces are exerting themselves in parts of the Middle East, and some historic occupation-liberation dynamics are taking place in other parts of this region - and it is important not to mix up these two very different things.
A wave of analyses from many parts of Europe and North America is suddenly trumpeting events in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Egypt as part of a common awakening in which Arabs and Muslims are asserting their humanity and dignity by voting in elections or demanding more democratic rights. That is only partly correct. We have three very different historical and political processes at work here, and they may well end up one day at the same final destination of stable, democratic and prospering societies. I hope so, as do the many people in this region who have worked for this goal for many decades, at great personal danger to themselves in most cases.
So the first point to be made from within this region is that it is a refreshing treat to hear foreign governments and analysts now commonly advocating and applauding democratization forces in this region, instead of feeding the tyrants who jailed and killed democrats. I hope that the wave of promoting democracy, freedom and free market economics is not, like its predecessor era of propping up criminals and thugs, merely a transient and self-serving phase that fits the needs of the times as seen from Washington, London, Paris and Moscow.
The second point to be made is that domestic autocracy or tyranny and foreign occupation are equally bad but very different contexts. Iraq and Afghanistan are the easiest of the five situations to decipher. Evil regimes there were removed by the force of foreign armies, and the natives are being given a chance to reshape their societies through Western-style elections.
These are noble and historic endeavors, though still deeply controversial as to their origin, implementation, intent and consequence. Time will tell how they evolve.
The Palestinians are a unique case for they have suffered the longest foreign military occupation of the past three generations of world history.
So they continue to battle the Israeli occupation with all means available to them, from diligent self-improvement and acquiescent complacency, to nonviolent protest and active diplomacy, to armed struggle against Israeli troops and terror against Israeli civilians. Palestinian society for decades has been prevented from enjoying democratic elections primarily because of the Israeli occupation. In the meantime, Palestinian political life has almost always been defined by an impressive component of pluralism and internal checks-and-balances, with some obvious lapses here and there, to be sure.
To applaud the Palestinians for suddenly practicing democracy in their recent elections is hypocritical nonsense and slightly insulting to boot. Those who know and follow the Palestinian people would know that the will to live in decency and dignity has been a defining national and personal characteristic for all the decades that these people have been occupied by Israel, ignored by the Arab states, or duped by Western and Eastern powers.
The impressive Palestinian historical struggle for freedom against Israeli usurpation and occupation, and simultaneously against Western powers' colonial manipulations, towers over the recently held Palestinian presidential election like the Empire State Building towers over a U.S. Postal Service mailbox in central New York.
The conduct of the Lebanese and Egyptians is probably the most noteworthy and truly historic of the five cases mentioned above. For here we have people truly fighting against enormous local odds, at great danger to themselves, to live in freedom, equality, opportunity and dignity.
Egyptians in small numbers are challenging the desire of their president, Hosni Mubarak, to run for a fifth consecutive six-year term. His inclination to be a president-for-life, with a ruling party and security sector that perpetuate their control of all major aspects of political, economic and military life, is an insult to the right of ordinary Egyptians and other Arabs to be treated like adults, rather than children. Egyptians have had enough of executive authority that is not rotated peacefully and regularly, for this results in mediocrity, stagnation, corruption, national deterioration and degradation of the human spirit itself - all of which are clearly visible in contemporary Egypt. The slogan used by those who oppose Mubarak's fifth term is "enough."
Tellingly, that same word "enough" this week also appeared on posters and walls all around Beirut, where ordinary Lebanese and political leaders alike have launched an impressive rebellion against the present Lebanese government and the Syrian regime that is its selector, patron and backer. As has happened in Egypt, a threshold of fear of incumbent government authorities - both Syrian and Lebanese, in this case - has been shattered. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri accelerated to a historic pitch the now widespread, explicit and vocal calls for the Syrians to leave Lebanon and the Lebanese government to resign.
This is a rare genuine grassroots, populist, spontaneous Arab movement to change an existing power structure, and so it is qualitatively significant in terms of modern Arab political history. Perhaps the most significant aspect of it is that it is also the first contemporary instance of Arabs defining their political values, goals and activism, boldly setting out to build a better society, and then seeing Western powers support them in their endeavor. This sure beats U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld giving aid to ensure Saddam Hussein's survival in the 1980s and then sending in the Marines two decades later to remove him from power.
By all means, then: Bring on democracy, support Arab democrats, oppose Arab autocrats, end Israeli occupation, promote Arab self-determination and, above all, please, make a reasonable effort to recognize the differences, and relationships, among all the above.
Monday, February 21, 2005
THE FUTURE OF ASHCROFT’S LEGACY
By William Fisher
Civil libertarians are wondering if America’s new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, will repeat one of the legacies left by his predecessor, John Ashcroft: razzle-dazzle news conferences announcing the arrests of terrorists, followed by trials in which no one is charged or tried for any terror-related offenses.
The latest chapter in this legacy is the conviction of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an
Iraqi-American oncologist, who was convicted last week on 59 of 60 counts, including violating economic sanctions against Iraq, Medicare fraud and tax evasion.
The government alleged that Dr. Dhafir illegally raised millions of dollars and violated U.S sanctions by sending funds to Iraq through his charity -- "Help the Needy" – and also diverted some of these funds for his personal use.
He is thought to be the only U.S citizen convicted of breaking the Iraq sanctions, though other organizations such as Voices in the Wilderness, Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi USA, the American Friends Service Committee, the Order of St Dominic (Dominican priests), Conscience International, Global Exchange, and the International Action Center, have admitted breaking the sanctions with Iraq since before the U.S. invasion.
When Dhafir was arrested in upstate New York in February 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft trumpeted the arrest as part of President Bush's war on terror. He said, “Those who covertly seek to channel money into Iraq under the guise of charitable work will be caught and prosecuted. As President Bush leads an international coalition to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny and support for terror, the Justice Department will see that individuals within our borders cannot undermine these efforts.”
And New York Governor George Pataki declared, 'It is again troubling to see…that there are clear terrorists living here in New York State among us...who are supporting or aiding and abetting those who would destroy our way of life and kill our friends and neighbors.'
But no terrorism charges were ever bought against Dr. Dhafir. A member of Dhafir’s defense team, Joel Cohen, believes that his client “was clearly targeted, clearly investigated, clearly indicted, tried, and clearly convicted because he is a Muslim, (and) because he is a person of Iraqi ancestry….”
The judge in Dhafir’s case denied a defense motion to allow mention of Dhafir’s religion or refer to terrorism during the trial.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an internationally recognized legal authority on civil liberties, believes the Dhafir case is emblematic of a pattern created by the Ashcroft Justice Department.
“Not one person of the more than 5,000 locked up as a foreign national in preventive detention by John Ashcroft was ever convicted of a terrorist crime.
The only convictions have been of U.S. citizens. John Ashcroft labeled them as suspected terrorists, but it turned out they had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever, “ Cole said.
In his end-of-year speech to DOJ employees, Ashcroft said “375 people have been charged in terror-related cases over the past three years and 190 have been convicted or pleaded guilty.”
But, according to Cole, “what Ashcroft doesn't say is that most of those people are not indicted on anything to do with terrorism. What he doesn't say is that a Syracuse University research department looked at Justice Department figures found that the median sentence imposed on persons convicted for crimes in cases that the DOJ labeled as terrorism was 14 days. Now, 14 days is not the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of terrorism. It's the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of some completely petty crime.”
The Ashcroft DOJ has brought several other high-profile prosecutions. Among them is the case of “The Lackawanna Six”. Arrested in the Yemeni community of this old steel town in upstate New York, the six young men were charged under the federal anti-terrorism statute with providing material support to al-Quaida which, prior to September 11, 2001, had been designated by the Secretary of State as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Specifically, the men were charged with providing “material support” in the form of training. The training consisted of paying for a uniform, attending the training camp where they learned to use weapons, and standing guard duty. The charges against them also specified viewing videotapes of the bombing of the USS Cole and speeches by Osama Bin-Laden.
None of the defendants engaged in acts that were, at the time, obviously criminal in nature. It was not until several months after their return from Afghanistan that planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The six young men agree to plead guilty to providing "material support" to al Qaeda. Prosecutors said the defendants belonged to a terrorist "sleeper cell."
"One by one," President Bush declared after the arrests, "we're hunting the killers down." Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson said the arrests showed terrorism was not limited to large cities. "It lurks in small towns and rural areas," he said.
But, according to defense attorneys, the defendants pled guilty because the federal government implicitly threatened to send them to a military prison without trial. Instead, they accepted prison terms of 61/2 to 9 years. But prosecutors never offered evidence that the Lackawanna defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism.
In another high-profile case, known as the "Detroit terror cell prosecution," a US federal judge threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men accused of being members of a terrorist “sleeper operational combat cell.”
The ruling came at the request of the Justice Department itself. The department admitted that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial.
Until their dismissal, the Detroit convictions were the only successful post-9/11 terror-related prosecutions, and had been hailed by administration officials and cited as one of the Justice Department’s “notable achievements”.
In his ruling, the judge said that in its “ruthless drive to convict Arab and Islamic suspects”, the DOJ “overcame not only its professional judgment, but its broader obligations to the justice system and the rule of law.”
As White House counsel, Ashcroft’s successor, Alberto Gonzales, was deeply involved in recommending policy options to President Bush for conducting the ‘war on terror’, as well as in the issue of what constitutes torture of prisoners.
First as a U.S. Senator and then as Attorney General, John Ashcroft was always a controversial firebrand. By contrast, Alberto Gonzales is soft-spoken and seemingly more contemplative. But, given his loyalty to the president and the administration’s unrelenting commitment to defeating the terrorists, it may be a stretch to think that there will be any fundamental change in the DOJ.
Civil libertarians are wondering if America’s new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, will repeat one of the legacies left by his predecessor, John Ashcroft: razzle-dazzle news conferences announcing the arrests of terrorists, followed by trials in which no one is charged or tried for any terror-related offenses.
The latest chapter in this legacy is the conviction of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an
Iraqi-American oncologist, who was convicted last week on 59 of 60 counts, including violating economic sanctions against Iraq, Medicare fraud and tax evasion.
The government alleged that Dr. Dhafir illegally raised millions of dollars and violated U.S sanctions by sending funds to Iraq through his charity -- "Help the Needy" – and also diverted some of these funds for his personal use.
He is thought to be the only U.S citizen convicted of breaking the Iraq sanctions, though other organizations such as Voices in the Wilderness, Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi USA, the American Friends Service Committee, the Order of St Dominic (Dominican priests), Conscience International, Global Exchange, and the International Action Center, have admitted breaking the sanctions with Iraq since before the U.S. invasion.
When Dhafir was arrested in upstate New York in February 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft trumpeted the arrest as part of President Bush's war on terror. He said, “Those who covertly seek to channel money into Iraq under the guise of charitable work will be caught and prosecuted. As President Bush leads an international coalition to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny and support for terror, the Justice Department will see that individuals within our borders cannot undermine these efforts.”
And New York Governor George Pataki declared, 'It is again troubling to see…that there are clear terrorists living here in New York State among us...who are supporting or aiding and abetting those who would destroy our way of life and kill our friends and neighbors.'
But no terrorism charges were ever bought against Dr. Dhafir. A member of Dhafir’s defense team, Joel Cohen, believes that his client “was clearly targeted, clearly investigated, clearly indicted, tried, and clearly convicted because he is a Muslim, (and) because he is a person of Iraqi ancestry….”
The judge in Dhafir’s case denied a defense motion to allow mention of Dhafir’s religion or refer to terrorism during the trial.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an internationally recognized legal authority on civil liberties, believes the Dhafir case is emblematic of a pattern created by the Ashcroft Justice Department.
“Not one person of the more than 5,000 locked up as a foreign national in preventive detention by John Ashcroft was ever convicted of a terrorist crime.
The only convictions have been of U.S. citizens. John Ashcroft labeled them as suspected terrorists, but it turned out they had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever, “ Cole said.
In his end-of-year speech to DOJ employees, Ashcroft said “375 people have been charged in terror-related cases over the past three years and 190 have been convicted or pleaded guilty.”
But, according to Cole, “what Ashcroft doesn't say is that most of those people are not indicted on anything to do with terrorism. What he doesn't say is that a Syracuse University research department looked at Justice Department figures found that the median sentence imposed on persons convicted for crimes in cases that the DOJ labeled as terrorism was 14 days. Now, 14 days is not the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of terrorism. It's the kind of sentence you get if you're convicted of some completely petty crime.”
The Ashcroft DOJ has brought several other high-profile prosecutions. Among them is the case of “The Lackawanna Six”. Arrested in the Yemeni community of this old steel town in upstate New York, the six young men were charged under the federal anti-terrorism statute with providing material support to al-Quaida which, prior to September 11, 2001, had been designated by the Secretary of State as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Specifically, the men were charged with providing “material support” in the form of training. The training consisted of paying for a uniform, attending the training camp where they learned to use weapons, and standing guard duty. The charges against them also specified viewing videotapes of the bombing of the USS Cole and speeches by Osama Bin-Laden.
None of the defendants engaged in acts that were, at the time, obviously criminal in nature. It was not until several months after their return from Afghanistan that planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The six young men agree to plead guilty to providing "material support" to al Qaeda. Prosecutors said the defendants belonged to a terrorist "sleeper cell."
"One by one," President Bush declared after the arrests, "we're hunting the killers down." Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson said the arrests showed terrorism was not limited to large cities. "It lurks in small towns and rural areas," he said.
But, according to defense attorneys, the defendants pled guilty because the federal government implicitly threatened to send them to a military prison without trial. Instead, they accepted prison terms of 61/2 to 9 years. But prosecutors never offered evidence that the Lackawanna defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism.
In another high-profile case, known as the "Detroit terror cell prosecution," a US federal judge threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men accused of being members of a terrorist “sleeper operational combat cell.”
The ruling came at the request of the Justice Department itself. The department admitted that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial.
Until their dismissal, the Detroit convictions were the only successful post-9/11 terror-related prosecutions, and had been hailed by administration officials and cited as one of the Justice Department’s “notable achievements”.
In his ruling, the judge said that in its “ruthless drive to convict Arab and Islamic suspects”, the DOJ “overcame not only its professional judgment, but its broader obligations to the justice system and the rule of law.”
As White House counsel, Ashcroft’s successor, Alberto Gonzales, was deeply involved in recommending policy options to President Bush for conducting the ‘war on terror’, as well as in the issue of what constitutes torture of prisoners.
First as a U.S. Senator and then as Attorney General, John Ashcroft was always a controversial firebrand. By contrast, Alberto Gonzales is soft-spoken and seemingly more contemplative. But, given his loyalty to the president and the administration’s unrelenting commitment to defeating the terrorists, it may be a stretch to think that there will be any fundamental change in the DOJ.
FIGHTING IN THE SHADOWS
By William Fisher
The defense team in the case of a 23-year-old American citizen held in a Saudi Arabian prison for over a year without charge has had to respond to a U.S. Government motion to dismiss the case without ever seeing the government’s motion.
David Cole of the Georgetown Law Center, one of Ali’s defense attorneys, said, “I’ve been involved in many secret evidence cases before, but never where a U.S. citizen’s liberty has been at stake. The government maintains that it can dispose of a legal challenge to a U.S. citizen’s detention without even allowing his lawyers to see the evidence or the argument being used against him. We are left to fight shadows."
Ali, a Houston-born student, was arrested in Saudi Arabia in June 2003, while taking an exam at the University of Medina, and has since been held in a Saudi prison without charge or access to legal counsel. Saudi authorities claim they have no case against Ali, and that his detention was at the behest of the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government claims it had nothing to do with his arrest or imprisonment, but has declined to publicly produce any evidence to document this claim. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited Ali during his detention. The U.S. Government has reportedly asked Saudi authorities to indict Ali or return him to U.S. custody.
The suit against the government was brought last summer by Ali’s Jordanian-born parents, who contend that their son is in de-facto detention by the U.S. government. They allege the U.S. arranged for their son to be held by the Saudi government on suspicion of terrorist acts and that U.S. authorities expected he would be tortured there. In December 2004, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruled that that the parents could seek government documents to try to prove these allegations, but the government maintains the documents are secret.
The defense team believes the government is trying have the case dismissed to avoid disclosing its role in Ali's imprisonment.
In a new brief filed on behalf of Ali’s parents, the defense contends that “no court at any level” has ever dismissed a case “where the physical liberty of a U.S. citizen is at stake. To the contrary, courts have consistently held that reliance on secret evidence in proceedings where physical liberty is at stake violates due process.”
The brief continued, “The government’s interest in national security cannot be so all-encompassing that it requires that [Petitioners] be denied virtually every fundamental feature of due process.”
“Nothing is more fundamental to the American system of justice than the notion that adversarial testing is the best way to avoid error and protect individual rights,” the brief said. The government “cannot both keep evidence secret and use it affirmatively to block any legal challenge to the detention of a U.S. citizen,” the defense brief declared.
The government has argued that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over what happens to an American citizen held abroad. But the defense says, “No court has found that the state secrets privilege may trump a U.S. citizen’s right to be free from unlawful incarceration.”
The defense brief contends that “one would be hard pressed to design a procedure more likely to result in erroneous deprivation” of Mr. Abu Ali’s liberty than dismissal of his case “based on a secret, one-sided presentation of facts and legal argument.”
The government, according to the brief, “has taken the position that the Court should review unrebutted evidence and argument, and actively participate in the factual development of the case. But the Court cannot take the place of an advocate. Even when courts have the opportunity to review secret evidence, they have consistently ruled the petitioners’ rights are not adequately protected” when they have no access to the evidence to be used against them.
It adds that the government’s latest motion to dismiss “is nothing less than an attempt to unilaterally proceed under the flawed ‘discovery proposal’ it previously advanced. The government seeks to short-circuit discovery altogether by instead submitting a one-sided, secret presentation of its version of the facts on the very issue discovery was designed to illuminate – whether Mr. Abu Ali is in the United States’ constructive custody.”
As evidence that the U.S. is involved in Ali’s detention in Saudi Arabia, the brief charges that “less than 24 hours after this Court’s recent hearing…Ali was allowed to call his parents for the first time since November, but allowed to speak for only ten minutes and was not allowed to answer any questions about his treatment at the prison or consular visits.”
Ali‘s family charges that their son is a victim of ‘rendition’ – in which suspects are taken to, or held by, other countries and interrogated without the protection of U.S. laws. The practice is known to be used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other agencies. Frequently, the targets of ‘rendition’ are sent to or detained by countries known to torture or abuse prisoners.
At an earlier hearing in Washington last week, Judge Bates said he had “serious reservations about dismissing the case “based on information that would be presented to him privately in chambers”. He said that although he was “mindful of the government's concerns about national security, he would be “reluctant to dismiss” claims of unjust imprisonment without a public explanation.”
Two months after his arrest, in September 2003, Ali was interrogated by FBI agents, who reportedly threatened to declare him an “enemy combatant” and send him to Guantanamo Bay, or put him on trial in Saudi Arabia, where he would have no legal defense. He was then placed in solitary confinement for three months.
But “The Washington Post” reported that the Saudi embassy said in an e-mail that a senior Saudi official had issued the following statement: Abu Ali "is being detained with the full knowledge and support of the U.S. government. There is an ongoing investigation regarding this individual. At this time, we have received no request for extradition."
Abu Ali’s parents are being represented by the prominent Washington, D.C. law firm of Arnold & Porter, The World Organization For Human Rights USA, an advocacy group, and Mr. Cole.
U.S interest in Ali stems from an alleged connection to a now-concluded Virginia terrorism case. During a July 2003 bail hearing for one of the Virginia defendants, Sabri Benkhala, said Ali was an associate of his who had allegedly confessed to belonging to al-Q’aeda during interrogations that were conducted by Saudi Arabia authorities and observed by the FBI. Benkhala was acquitted of the charges.
No date has been set for the judge's decision.
The defense team in the case of a 23-year-old American citizen held in a Saudi Arabian prison for over a year without charge has had to respond to a U.S. Government motion to dismiss the case without ever seeing the government’s motion.
David Cole of the Georgetown Law Center, one of Ali’s defense attorneys, said, “I’ve been involved in many secret evidence cases before, but never where a U.S. citizen’s liberty has been at stake. The government maintains that it can dispose of a legal challenge to a U.S. citizen’s detention without even allowing his lawyers to see the evidence or the argument being used against him. We are left to fight shadows."
Ali, a Houston-born student, was arrested in Saudi Arabia in June 2003, while taking an exam at the University of Medina, and has since been held in a Saudi prison without charge or access to legal counsel. Saudi authorities claim they have no case against Ali, and that his detention was at the behest of the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government claims it had nothing to do with his arrest or imprisonment, but has declined to publicly produce any evidence to document this claim. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited Ali during his detention. The U.S. Government has reportedly asked Saudi authorities to indict Ali or return him to U.S. custody.
The suit against the government was brought last summer by Ali’s Jordanian-born parents, who contend that their son is in de-facto detention by the U.S. government. They allege the U.S. arranged for their son to be held by the Saudi government on suspicion of terrorist acts and that U.S. authorities expected he would be tortured there. In December 2004, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruled that that the parents could seek government documents to try to prove these allegations, but the government maintains the documents are secret.
The defense team believes the government is trying have the case dismissed to avoid disclosing its role in Ali's imprisonment.
In a new brief filed on behalf of Ali’s parents, the defense contends that “no court at any level” has ever dismissed a case “where the physical liberty of a U.S. citizen is at stake. To the contrary, courts have consistently held that reliance on secret evidence in proceedings where physical liberty is at stake violates due process.”
The brief continued, “The government’s interest in national security cannot be so all-encompassing that it requires that [Petitioners] be denied virtually every fundamental feature of due process.”
“Nothing is more fundamental to the American system of justice than the notion that adversarial testing is the best way to avoid error and protect individual rights,” the brief said. The government “cannot both keep evidence secret and use it affirmatively to block any legal challenge to the detention of a U.S. citizen,” the defense brief declared.
The government has argued that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over what happens to an American citizen held abroad. But the defense says, “No court has found that the state secrets privilege may trump a U.S. citizen’s right to be free from unlawful incarceration.”
The defense brief contends that “one would be hard pressed to design a procedure more likely to result in erroneous deprivation” of Mr. Abu Ali’s liberty than dismissal of his case “based on a secret, one-sided presentation of facts and legal argument.”
The government, according to the brief, “has taken the position that the Court should review unrebutted evidence and argument, and actively participate in the factual development of the case. But the Court cannot take the place of an advocate. Even when courts have the opportunity to review secret evidence, they have consistently ruled the petitioners’ rights are not adequately protected” when they have no access to the evidence to be used against them.
It adds that the government’s latest motion to dismiss “is nothing less than an attempt to unilaterally proceed under the flawed ‘discovery proposal’ it previously advanced. The government seeks to short-circuit discovery altogether by instead submitting a one-sided, secret presentation of its version of the facts on the very issue discovery was designed to illuminate – whether Mr. Abu Ali is in the United States’ constructive custody.”
As evidence that the U.S. is involved in Ali’s detention in Saudi Arabia, the brief charges that “less than 24 hours after this Court’s recent hearing…Ali was allowed to call his parents for the first time since November, but allowed to speak for only ten minutes and was not allowed to answer any questions about his treatment at the prison or consular visits.”
Ali‘s family charges that their son is a victim of ‘rendition’ – in which suspects are taken to, or held by, other countries and interrogated without the protection of U.S. laws. The practice is known to be used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other agencies. Frequently, the targets of ‘rendition’ are sent to or detained by countries known to torture or abuse prisoners.
At an earlier hearing in Washington last week, Judge Bates said he had “serious reservations about dismissing the case “based on information that would be presented to him privately in chambers”. He said that although he was “mindful of the government's concerns about national security, he would be “reluctant to dismiss” claims of unjust imprisonment without a public explanation.”
Two months after his arrest, in September 2003, Ali was interrogated by FBI agents, who reportedly threatened to declare him an “enemy combatant” and send him to Guantanamo Bay, or put him on trial in Saudi Arabia, where he would have no legal defense. He was then placed in solitary confinement for three months.
But “The Washington Post” reported that the Saudi embassy said in an e-mail that a senior Saudi official had issued the following statement: Abu Ali "is being detained with the full knowledge and support of the U.S. government. There is an ongoing investigation regarding this individual. At this time, we have received no request for extradition."
Abu Ali’s parents are being represented by the prominent Washington, D.C. law firm of Arnold & Porter, The World Organization For Human Rights USA, an advocacy group, and Mr. Cole.
U.S interest in Ali stems from an alleged connection to a now-concluded Virginia terrorism case. During a July 2003 bail hearing for one of the Virginia defendants, Sabri Benkhala, said Ali was an associate of his who had allegedly confessed to belonging to al-Q’aeda during interrogations that were conducted by Saudi Arabia authorities and observed by the FBI. Benkhala was acquitted of the charges.
No date has been set for the judge's decision.
TV’S THIRD RAIL
By William Fisher
“If a local candidate wants to be on television, and cannot afford to advertise, his only hope may be to have a freak accident,” said U.S. Senator John McCain as he introduced legislation to compel local television stations to improve their coverage of local political campaigns.
“One of the most startling statistics from the study is the ratio of political advertisements to candidate news stories aired during a half-hour news cast. Reduced news coverage led candidates to spend over $1.6 billion on television ads in 2004 to introduce themselves to voters, double the amount spent in 2000,” he declared.
McCain, a Republican from Arizona, is the co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. Most observers find this law had little effect on campaign contributions during the 2004 presidential campaign due to a loophole that allowed unlimited spending by so-called “527 groups” – not-for-profit organizations not connected to candidates’ organizations or party apparatus.
In an effort to encourage local television outlets to devote more time to coverage of local races, McCain introduced his “Localism in Broadcasting Reform Act of 2005.” The proposal would reduce the license term for broadcasters from eight years to three years, thereby requiring broadcasters to provide the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with information every three years on why their license should be renewed.
The bill would also require the FCC to review five percent of all license and renewal applications, and would command broadcasters to post on their Internet sites information detailing their commitment to local public affairs programming.
McCain’s effort was triggered by a new study carried by the Lear Center Local News Archive (www.localnewsarchive.org) at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication. Principal Investigators were Martin Kaplan, Associate Dean of the Annenberg School and Director of The Norman Lear Center; Ken Goldstein Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the University’s Center for the Study of Politics; and Matthew Hale, Assistant Professor at the Center for Public Service at Seton Hall University.
Key study findings include:
Local stations devoted 12 times as much coverage to sports and weather than they did to coverage of local elections.
Eight times more news coverage went to stories about accidental injuries than local elections
Sixty-four percent of the 4,333 broadcasts captured contained at least one election story. A typical half-hour of news contained three minutes and 11 seconds of campaign coverage. An average campaign story was 86 seconds long, and an average candidate soundbite (which appeared in just 28 percent of the stories) was 12 seconds long.
Fifty-five percent of the broadcasts captured contained a presidential story. By contrast, just eight percent of those broadcasts contained a story about a local candidate race, which includes campaigns for the U.S. House, state senate or assembly, mayor or city council seat, judgeship, law enforcement posts, education-related offices, and regional and county offices. Eight times more coverage went to stories about accidental injuries, and 12 times more coverage to sports and weather, than to coverage of all local races combined.
Nineteen percent of the stories focused on voting issues such as the location of polling stations, absentee ballot information and reports on early voting efforts, as well as on national voting issues like potential voting irregularities. Just under five percent of the stories focused on local and statewide ballot initiatives.
More stories focused on campaign strategy and the horserace (44 percent of the stories captured) than on campaign issues (32 percent).
The amount of time given to presidential news coverage was in most cases roughly equivalent to the amount of presidential advertising time, even in markets where the presidential race was competitive. By contrast, in races for the U.S. Senate, ads outnumbered news by as much as 17-to-one, and in U.S. House races by as much as seven-to-one.
These findings are based on an analysis of evening news broadcasts aired between 5:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. by 44 affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC in 11 markets during the 29-day period from October 4 to November 1, 2004. The markets are New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, Miami, Denver, Orlando, Tampa, Dayton and Des Moines. Together, they account for 23 percent of all television viewers in the country.
The study also examined local political news on Spanish-language television stations in Los Angeles, New York City and Miami. On average, these stations did even worse than English-language stations. English-language stations averaged more campaign stories, longer campaign stories and contained more candidate soundbites than Spanish-language stations.
Election-focused news comprised 11.2 percent of all English-language news and 9.5 percent of all Spanish language news aired by local affiliates.
Sixty-four percent of the English-language campaign stories, and 67 percent of the Spanish-language campaign stories, focused on the presidential race. Only six percent of the English-language campaign stories, and just three percent of the campaign stories on the Spanish-language stations, focused on local races, such as those for the U.S. House, State Senate, State Assembly, mayor, courts, law enforcement, education-related offices, and other regional offices.
The average length of an English-language story was one minute 43 seconds. The average length of a Spanish-language story was one minute 18 seconds. The average length of a candidate soundbite on the English-language stations was 12 seconds, compared to 10 seconds for an average Spanish-language soundbite.
The Annenberg School’s Kaplan recalled, "Last summer, Senator McCain and (former) FCC Chairman Michael Powell challenged America’s broadcasters to live up to the promise in their licenses to provide significant coverage of local races. Based on our findings, it looks like that challenge pretty much fell on deaf ears. Coverage of local politics on local news is an endangered species."
He said, "There are stations that do a good job covering campaigns and local politics, but often they do it despite murderous pressures for ratings and the assumption that audiences are turned off by public affairs programming. It takes real leadership from news directors and station managers to overcome those odds."
McCain said: “To those broadcasters whose dismal performance is captured in this study or whose performance was as dismal as the broadcasters in the study, I question how you are meeting your obligation to use the Nation’s spectrum to serve the “public interest.” He added: “I refuse to believe that the ‘public interest’ is served by three minutes of campaign coverage and a 12 second sound bite from a candidate during a half-hour local news program. Citizens deserve more from their local broadcaster.”
A number of factors contribute to the poor showing of local television. Among them: Viewers seem to prefer accidents, fires and murders to politics; news staffs and budgets of local TV stations have been shrinking for the past few years; one of the reasons is that increased media concentration has made it possible for news to be fed to local stations from a central source, usually the owner of a chain of television stations.
“If a local candidate wants to be on television, and cannot afford to advertise, his only hope may be to have a freak accident,” said U.S. Senator John McCain as he introduced legislation to compel local television stations to improve their coverage of local political campaigns.
“One of the most startling statistics from the study is the ratio of political advertisements to candidate news stories aired during a half-hour news cast. Reduced news coverage led candidates to spend over $1.6 billion on television ads in 2004 to introduce themselves to voters, double the amount spent in 2000,” he declared.
McCain, a Republican from Arizona, is the co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. Most observers find this law had little effect on campaign contributions during the 2004 presidential campaign due to a loophole that allowed unlimited spending by so-called “527 groups” – not-for-profit organizations not connected to candidates’ organizations or party apparatus.
In an effort to encourage local television outlets to devote more time to coverage of local races, McCain introduced his “Localism in Broadcasting Reform Act of 2005.” The proposal would reduce the license term for broadcasters from eight years to three years, thereby requiring broadcasters to provide the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with information every three years on why their license should be renewed.
The bill would also require the FCC to review five percent of all license and renewal applications, and would command broadcasters to post on their Internet sites information detailing their commitment to local public affairs programming.
McCain’s effort was triggered by a new study carried by the Lear Center Local News Archive (www.localnewsarchive.org) at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication. Principal Investigators were Martin Kaplan, Associate Dean of the Annenberg School and Director of The Norman Lear Center; Ken Goldstein Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the University’s Center for the Study of Politics; and Matthew Hale, Assistant Professor at the Center for Public Service at Seton Hall University.
Key study findings include:
Local stations devoted 12 times as much coverage to sports and weather than they did to coverage of local elections.
Eight times more news coverage went to stories about accidental injuries than local elections
Sixty-four percent of the 4,333 broadcasts captured contained at least one election story. A typical half-hour of news contained three minutes and 11 seconds of campaign coverage. An average campaign story was 86 seconds long, and an average candidate soundbite (which appeared in just 28 percent of the stories) was 12 seconds long.
Fifty-five percent of the broadcasts captured contained a presidential story. By contrast, just eight percent of those broadcasts contained a story about a local candidate race, which includes campaigns for the U.S. House, state senate or assembly, mayor or city council seat, judgeship, law enforcement posts, education-related offices, and regional and county offices. Eight times more coverage went to stories about accidental injuries, and 12 times more coverage to sports and weather, than to coverage of all local races combined.
Nineteen percent of the stories focused on voting issues such as the location of polling stations, absentee ballot information and reports on early voting efforts, as well as on national voting issues like potential voting irregularities. Just under five percent of the stories focused on local and statewide ballot initiatives.
More stories focused on campaign strategy and the horserace (44 percent of the stories captured) than on campaign issues (32 percent).
The amount of time given to presidential news coverage was in most cases roughly equivalent to the amount of presidential advertising time, even in markets where the presidential race was competitive. By contrast, in races for the U.S. Senate, ads outnumbered news by as much as 17-to-one, and in U.S. House races by as much as seven-to-one.
These findings are based on an analysis of evening news broadcasts aired between 5:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. by 44 affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC in 11 markets during the 29-day period from October 4 to November 1, 2004. The markets are New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, Miami, Denver, Orlando, Tampa, Dayton and Des Moines. Together, they account for 23 percent of all television viewers in the country.
The study also examined local political news on Spanish-language television stations in Los Angeles, New York City and Miami. On average, these stations did even worse than English-language stations. English-language stations averaged more campaign stories, longer campaign stories and contained more candidate soundbites than Spanish-language stations.
Election-focused news comprised 11.2 percent of all English-language news and 9.5 percent of all Spanish language news aired by local affiliates.
Sixty-four percent of the English-language campaign stories, and 67 percent of the Spanish-language campaign stories, focused on the presidential race. Only six percent of the English-language campaign stories, and just three percent of the campaign stories on the Spanish-language stations, focused on local races, such as those for the U.S. House, State Senate, State Assembly, mayor, courts, law enforcement, education-related offices, and other regional offices.
The average length of an English-language story was one minute 43 seconds. The average length of a Spanish-language story was one minute 18 seconds. The average length of a candidate soundbite on the English-language stations was 12 seconds, compared to 10 seconds for an average Spanish-language soundbite.
The Annenberg School’s Kaplan recalled, "Last summer, Senator McCain and (former) FCC Chairman Michael Powell challenged America’s broadcasters to live up to the promise in their licenses to provide significant coverage of local races. Based on our findings, it looks like that challenge pretty much fell on deaf ears. Coverage of local politics on local news is an endangered species."
He said, "There are stations that do a good job covering campaigns and local politics, but often they do it despite murderous pressures for ratings and the assumption that audiences are turned off by public affairs programming. It takes real leadership from news directors and station managers to overcome those odds."
McCain said: “To those broadcasters whose dismal performance is captured in this study or whose performance was as dismal as the broadcasters in the study, I question how you are meeting your obligation to use the Nation’s spectrum to serve the “public interest.” He added: “I refuse to believe that the ‘public interest’ is served by three minutes of campaign coverage and a 12 second sound bite from a candidate during a half-hour local news program. Citizens deserve more from their local broadcaster.”
A number of factors contribute to the poor showing of local television. Among them: Viewers seem to prefer accidents, fires and murders to politics; news staffs and budgets of local TV stations have been shrinking for the past few years; one of the reasons is that increased media concentration has made it possible for news to be fed to local stations from a central source, usually the owner of a chain of television stations.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Censorship of the Media Creating Insidious Chill on Free Expression on our Airwaves
The following is a 2/16/2005 floor statement by Rep. Bernard Sanders in opposition to The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act 2005.
By US Rep. Bernie Sanders
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I think we can all agree that we do not want our children exposed to obscenity on the public airwaves. That goes without saying.
As someone who last year voted in favor of similar legislation, I am increasingly alarmed by the culture of censorship that seems to be developing in this country, and I will not be voting for this bill today. This censorship is being conducted by the corporate owners of our increasingly consolidated, less diverse media. And it is being done by the government. This result is an insidious chill on free expression on our airwaves.
There are a lot of people in Congress who talk about freedom, freedom and freedom but, apparently, they do not really believe that the American people should have the "freedom" to make the choice about what they listen to on radio or watch on TV. There are a lot of people in Congress who talk about the intrusive role of "government regulators," but today they want government regulators to tell radio and TV stations what they can air. I disagree with that. A vote for this bill today will make America a less free society.
Mr. Speaker: I am not a conservative. But on this issue I find myself in strong agreement with Mr. Adam D. Thierer, the Director of Telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute - a very conservative think tank. And here is the very common sense, pro-freedom position that he brings forth:
"Those of use who are parents understand that raising a child in today's modern media marketplace is a daunting task at times. But that should not serve as an excuse for inviting Uncle Sam in to play the role of surrogate parent for us and the rest of the public without children.
"Even if lawmakers have the best interest of children in mind, I take great offense at the notion that government officials must do this job for me and every other American family.
"Censorship on an individual/parental level is a fundamental part of being a good parent. But censorship at a government level is an entirely different matter because it means a small handful of individuals get to decide what the whole nation is permitted to see, hear or think.
"I've always been particularly troubled by the fact that so many conservatives, who rightly preach the gospel of personal and parental responsibility about most economic issues, seemingly give up on this notion when it comes to cultural issues."
Mr. Speaker, the specter of censorship is growing in America today, and we have got to stand firmly in opposition to it. What America is about is not necessarily liking what you have to say or agreeing with you, but it is your right to say it. Today, it is Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction or Howard Stern's vulgarity. What will it be tomorrow?
Let me give just a couple of examples of increased censorship on the airwaves. In January of 2004, CBS refused to air a political advertisement during the Super Bowl by MoveOn.org that was critical of President Bush's role in creating the federal deficit. Last November, sixty-six ABC affiliates refused to air the brilliant World War II movie "Saving Private Ryan," starring Tom Hanks, for fear that they would be fined for airing programming containing profanity and graphic violence, even though ABC had aired the uncut movie in previous years. This ironically was a movie that showed the unbelievable sacrifices that American soldiers made on D-Day fighting for freedom against Hitler, but ABC affiliates around the country didn't feel free to show it. Last November, CBS and NBC refused to run a 30-second ad from the United Church of Christ because it suggested that gay couples were welcome to their Church. The networks felt that it was "too controversial" to air. And just last month, many PBS stations refused to air an episode of Postcards with Buster, a children's show, because Education Secretary Spellings objected to the show's content, which included Buster, an 8-year old bunny-rabbit, learning how to make maple syrup from a family with two mothers in Vermont.
Mr. Speaker, each of these examples represent a different aspect of the culture of censorship that is growing in America today. My fear is that the legislation we have before us today will only compound this problem and make a bad situation worse.
This legislation would impose vastly higher fines on broadcasters for so-called indecent material. But this legislation does not provide any relief from the vague standard of indecency that can be arbitrarily applied by the FCC. That means broadcasters, particularly small broadcasters, will have no choice but to engage in a very dangerous cycle of self-censorship to avoid a fine that could drive some of them into bankruptcy. Broadcasters are already doing it now. Imagine what will happen when a violation can bring a $500,000 fine. If this legislation is enacted, the real victim will be free expression and Americans' First Amendment rights.
In the past week I have sought out the views of broadcasters in my own state of Vermont and I have heard from many of them. Without exception they are extremely concerned about the effect this legislation will have on programming decisions.
Mr. Speaker, I am enclosing a copy of a statement by Mr. John King, President and CEO of Vermont Public Television.
Statement of Mr. John King, President and CEO of VT Public Television on H.R. 310:
Vermont Public Television, like other local broadcasters, does its best to serve the needs and interests of its local community. It's a great privilege and a great responsibility to have a broadcast license. While we acknowledge that there must be sanctions for broadcasters who misuse the public airwaves, we believe the sanctions proposed in HR 310 are extreme.
The FCC's proposals for increased fines for obscenity, indecency and profanity have already had a chilling effect on broadcasters nationally and locally, including Vermont Public Television. The legislation also makes lodging a complaint easier and puts the burden of proof on the station. Codifying these proposals into law will make the situation worse.
While many people might assume the new sanctions are aimed at commercial broadcasters, public broadcasters are feeling the effects every day. Public television's educational programming for children has always provided a safe haven. The same public television stations that take such care of their young viewers also respect the intelligence and discretion of their adult viewers to make the best viewing choices for themselves.
Vermont Public Television has always operated responsibly in our programming for adults. At times, our programs included adult language and situations appropriate to the informational or artistic purpose of a program. While there have always been prohibitions against gratuitous indecency, the FCC always took context into account. Now, it seems that context is no longer considered.
Much as we might like to invoke our First Amendment rights, we dare not risk the large fine that could come with a single violation. The $500,000 maximum fine could put a small station like VPT out of business.
Last year, when the FCC proposed increased fines and told broadcasters there was one word that would never be appropriate on the air, PBS and its member stations, including Vermont Public Television, began to make content choices so as not to run afoul of the new FCC restrictions.
PBS programmers began making edits to national programs being distributed to stations. An "American Experience" documentary on Emma Goldman was scrutinized for what might possibly look like a bare breast and edited, just to be sure. On "Antiques Roadshow," a nude poster was edited. This month, most PBS stations will air a drama from HBO called "Dirty War ." In the story, a woman showers to remove radiation. When the program airs on PBS, the shower scene will be edited.
Our programming director, and no doubt most local programmers, have become very cautious. Once the FCC starts telling broadcasters they must not use certain words or situations, programmers tend to avoid producing and airing programs with words and situations that might even come close to content that could be subject to fines.
At VPT, we produce many live local programs with panelists representing many points of view. We take calls from viewers live on the air. There has never been a problem with language, but the legislation's reference to using a "time delay blocking mechanism" makes us worry. We don't use a time delay. Are we subject to a fine if a panelist or a caller uses a word considered obscene, indecent or profane?
Our programming director says the FCC proposals have already made us rule out airing independent films on our "Reel Independent" program. Films by Vermont filmmakers that we would have aired in past years are not being accepted for broadcast now.
We cannot support HR 310 as it is written.
By US Rep. Bernie Sanders
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I think we can all agree that we do not want our children exposed to obscenity on the public airwaves. That goes without saying.
As someone who last year voted in favor of similar legislation, I am increasingly alarmed by the culture of censorship that seems to be developing in this country, and I will not be voting for this bill today. This censorship is being conducted by the corporate owners of our increasingly consolidated, less diverse media. And it is being done by the government. This result is an insidious chill on free expression on our airwaves.
There are a lot of people in Congress who talk about freedom, freedom and freedom but, apparently, they do not really believe that the American people should have the "freedom" to make the choice about what they listen to on radio or watch on TV. There are a lot of people in Congress who talk about the intrusive role of "government regulators," but today they want government regulators to tell radio and TV stations what they can air. I disagree with that. A vote for this bill today will make America a less free society.
Mr. Speaker: I am not a conservative. But on this issue I find myself in strong agreement with Mr. Adam D. Thierer, the Director of Telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute - a very conservative think tank. And here is the very common sense, pro-freedom position that he brings forth:
"Those of use who are parents understand that raising a child in today's modern media marketplace is a daunting task at times. But that should not serve as an excuse for inviting Uncle Sam in to play the role of surrogate parent for us and the rest of the public without children.
"Even if lawmakers have the best interest of children in mind, I take great offense at the notion that government officials must do this job for me and every other American family.
"Censorship on an individual/parental level is a fundamental part of being a good parent. But censorship at a government level is an entirely different matter because it means a small handful of individuals get to decide what the whole nation is permitted to see, hear or think.
"I've always been particularly troubled by the fact that so many conservatives, who rightly preach the gospel of personal and parental responsibility about most economic issues, seemingly give up on this notion when it comes to cultural issues."
Mr. Speaker, the specter of censorship is growing in America today, and we have got to stand firmly in opposition to it. What America is about is not necessarily liking what you have to say or agreeing with you, but it is your right to say it. Today, it is Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction or Howard Stern's vulgarity. What will it be tomorrow?
Let me give just a couple of examples of increased censorship on the airwaves. In January of 2004, CBS refused to air a political advertisement during the Super Bowl by MoveOn.org that was critical of President Bush's role in creating the federal deficit. Last November, sixty-six ABC affiliates refused to air the brilliant World War II movie "Saving Private Ryan," starring Tom Hanks, for fear that they would be fined for airing programming containing profanity and graphic violence, even though ABC had aired the uncut movie in previous years. This ironically was a movie that showed the unbelievable sacrifices that American soldiers made on D-Day fighting for freedom against Hitler, but ABC affiliates around the country didn't feel free to show it. Last November, CBS and NBC refused to run a 30-second ad from the United Church of Christ because it suggested that gay couples were welcome to their Church. The networks felt that it was "too controversial" to air. And just last month, many PBS stations refused to air an episode of Postcards with Buster, a children's show, because Education Secretary Spellings objected to the show's content, which included Buster, an 8-year old bunny-rabbit, learning how to make maple syrup from a family with two mothers in Vermont.
Mr. Speaker, each of these examples represent a different aspect of the culture of censorship that is growing in America today. My fear is that the legislation we have before us today will only compound this problem and make a bad situation worse.
This legislation would impose vastly higher fines on broadcasters for so-called indecent material. But this legislation does not provide any relief from the vague standard of indecency that can be arbitrarily applied by the FCC. That means broadcasters, particularly small broadcasters, will have no choice but to engage in a very dangerous cycle of self-censorship to avoid a fine that could drive some of them into bankruptcy. Broadcasters are already doing it now. Imagine what will happen when a violation can bring a $500,000 fine. If this legislation is enacted, the real victim will be free expression and Americans' First Amendment rights.
In the past week I have sought out the views of broadcasters in my own state of Vermont and I have heard from many of them. Without exception they are extremely concerned about the effect this legislation will have on programming decisions.
Mr. Speaker, I am enclosing a copy of a statement by Mr. John King, President and CEO of Vermont Public Television.
Statement of Mr. John King, President and CEO of VT Public Television on H.R. 310:
Vermont Public Television, like other local broadcasters, does its best to serve the needs and interests of its local community. It's a great privilege and a great responsibility to have a broadcast license. While we acknowledge that there must be sanctions for broadcasters who misuse the public airwaves, we believe the sanctions proposed in HR 310 are extreme.
The FCC's proposals for increased fines for obscenity, indecency and profanity have already had a chilling effect on broadcasters nationally and locally, including Vermont Public Television. The legislation also makes lodging a complaint easier and puts the burden of proof on the station. Codifying these proposals into law will make the situation worse.
While many people might assume the new sanctions are aimed at commercial broadcasters, public broadcasters are feeling the effects every day. Public television's educational programming for children has always provided a safe haven. The same public television stations that take such care of their young viewers also respect the intelligence and discretion of their adult viewers to make the best viewing choices for themselves.
Vermont Public Television has always operated responsibly in our programming for adults. At times, our programs included adult language and situations appropriate to the informational or artistic purpose of a program. While there have always been prohibitions against gratuitous indecency, the FCC always took context into account. Now, it seems that context is no longer considered.
Much as we might like to invoke our First Amendment rights, we dare not risk the large fine that could come with a single violation. The $500,000 maximum fine could put a small station like VPT out of business.
Last year, when the FCC proposed increased fines and told broadcasters there was one word that would never be appropriate on the air, PBS and its member stations, including Vermont Public Television, began to make content choices so as not to run afoul of the new FCC restrictions.
PBS programmers began making edits to national programs being distributed to stations. An "American Experience" documentary on Emma Goldman was scrutinized for what might possibly look like a bare breast and edited, just to be sure. On "Antiques Roadshow," a nude poster was edited. This month, most PBS stations will air a drama from HBO called "Dirty War ." In the story, a woman showers to remove radiation. When the program airs on PBS, the shower scene will be edited.
Our programming director, and no doubt most local programmers, have become very cautious. Once the FCC starts telling broadcasters they must not use certain words or situations, programmers tend to avoid producing and airing programs with words and situations that might even come close to content that could be subject to fines.
At VPT, we produce many live local programs with panelists representing many points of view. We take calls from viewers live on the air. There has never been a problem with language, but the legislation's reference to using a "time delay blocking mechanism" makes us worry. We don't use a time delay. Are we subject to a fine if a panelist or a caller uses a word considered obscene, indecent or profane?
Our programming director says the FCC proposals have already made us rule out airing independent films on our "Reel Independent" program. Films by Vermont filmmakers that we would have aired in past years are not being accepted for broadcast now.
We cannot support HR 310 as it is written.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Women and Elections
The following article was written by Raid Qusti and published in Arab News, one of the Middle East's leading English language dailies. It is reproduced here with the permission of the author.
By Raid Qusti
Covering the recent municipal elections in the Kingdom was a thrilling experience. On one hand, as a journalist, I was able to meet both candidates and voters. On the other hand, as a Saudi, the whole process was unprecedented in our nation’s history. Along with many others, I hope the elections marked the beginning of public participation in decision-making. Almost all of those I spoke to said that they were doing this from a feeling of national duty. Their love for their country, first and foremost, was what compelled them first to register as voters and then cast their votes to choose their candidates. They also felt the whole process has begun a new era in Saudi Arabia that will pave the way for larger elections: The entire municipal council and the Shoura Consultative Council as well.
The Riyadh municipality elections were also an opportunity for foreign journalists to speak openly to Saudis and ask them about their reactions and feelings. It was a chance for them to make their analysis as a result of direct contact with the people and not from talking to other journalists, international analysts or even those who regularly comment on things in Saudi Arabia but have never actually managed to visit the country.
What I noticed from the questions asked by foreign journalists in the press conferences organized by the Election Commission was that they were focused mainly on two issues: Women not being allowed to vote and also on whether these small elections would lead to larger ones in future.
Commission officials cited the reasons why the government was unable to include women in these elections. The reasons were, as we have heard many times, the technical difficulties of having separate voting centers for women, as well as employing women in cities and rural areas to receive women voters. Because of the limited time available, it simply was not possible, they said. Even though many women readers of Arab News criticized me in the past for supporting the government’s reasons for not including women in this round, I still believe them to be practical. Interestingly, this same topic was brought up round a dinner table with my relatives.
Both my father-in-law and my wife — herself a media person and a supporter of women’s rights — believe that at present, allowing women to vote would not have been practical due to the social conditions in Saudi Arabia.
Their views as well as mine do not mean, however, that a woman who chooses to vote or nominate herself should be prevented from doing so in the future. As a citizen, that should be her right. From my point of view, I am not concerned about the practicalities of setting up separate women’s centers or employing women to do certain jobs in cities or rural areas. Those things could be overcome with proper planning and carried out without problems. What is beyond that is what I want to comment on.
Having seen how candidates in Riyadh plastered their photos on street advertisements and in local newspapers, how would a woman candidate have run her campaign? We must bear in mind that many Saudis still believe that a woman’s picture should only be viewed by close relatives and certainly not by unrelated members of the public.
Let’s get practical. Would a Saudi woman actually want to place her picture and her full name on a street advertisement or in a newspaper advertisement? She wouldn’t. And even if she were allowed to do so by the authorities, only a handful of the female community would actually consider doing it. If we open our daily newspapers and read columns by female journalists, we will see that the writers are faceless. Not because the law prevents a woman from putting her photo beside her column but because she chooses not to for social and cultural reasons.
Hypothetically, let us say that women did not need to place street advertisements or advertisements in newspapers. How else would they reach the public? Would they set up tents like their male counterparts? And even if they did, since the religious leaders here deem mixing sinful, how would she receive men and women who are curious to ask about her platform? Would the tents be split in half, one side for men and the other for women? Would she even allow herself to go to the male’s side to address them and answer questions?
Or would it all have to be done over microphones or split units? And continuing hypothetically, let us say one of the women won a seat on the council. She then becomes an official. Would our society accept the fact of a woman appearing in public in a press conference, talking to the media and making official announcements, as is the case in neighboring Gulf states? And what about the municipality itself? How would male and female colleagues within the municipality interact since they would have to be in separate buildings or departments; would all contact be over the phone?
Clearly that would be the only possibility since mixing the sexes is considered sinful.
Readers should not misunderstand me. We are not Bahrain or Kuwait or any other Gulf state.
As long as traditions and customs that are not universal in the 21st century prevail in the Kingdom and as long as we continue to teach in our universities that “Listening to a woman’s voice is sinful,” women who honestly believe they have a role in our society’s development will be either labeled “brainwashed by the West” or “sinners.”
By Raid Qusti
Covering the recent municipal elections in the Kingdom was a thrilling experience. On one hand, as a journalist, I was able to meet both candidates and voters. On the other hand, as a Saudi, the whole process was unprecedented in our nation’s history. Along with many others, I hope the elections marked the beginning of public participation in decision-making. Almost all of those I spoke to said that they were doing this from a feeling of national duty. Their love for their country, first and foremost, was what compelled them first to register as voters and then cast their votes to choose their candidates. They also felt the whole process has begun a new era in Saudi Arabia that will pave the way for larger elections: The entire municipal council and the Shoura Consultative Council as well.
The Riyadh municipality elections were also an opportunity for foreign journalists to speak openly to Saudis and ask them about their reactions and feelings. It was a chance for them to make their analysis as a result of direct contact with the people and not from talking to other journalists, international analysts or even those who regularly comment on things in Saudi Arabia but have never actually managed to visit the country.
What I noticed from the questions asked by foreign journalists in the press conferences organized by the Election Commission was that they were focused mainly on two issues: Women not being allowed to vote and also on whether these small elections would lead to larger ones in future.
Commission officials cited the reasons why the government was unable to include women in these elections. The reasons were, as we have heard many times, the technical difficulties of having separate voting centers for women, as well as employing women in cities and rural areas to receive women voters. Because of the limited time available, it simply was not possible, they said. Even though many women readers of Arab News criticized me in the past for supporting the government’s reasons for not including women in this round, I still believe them to be practical. Interestingly, this same topic was brought up round a dinner table with my relatives.
Both my father-in-law and my wife — herself a media person and a supporter of women’s rights — believe that at present, allowing women to vote would not have been practical due to the social conditions in Saudi Arabia.
Their views as well as mine do not mean, however, that a woman who chooses to vote or nominate herself should be prevented from doing so in the future. As a citizen, that should be her right. From my point of view, I am not concerned about the practicalities of setting up separate women’s centers or employing women to do certain jobs in cities or rural areas. Those things could be overcome with proper planning and carried out without problems. What is beyond that is what I want to comment on.
Having seen how candidates in Riyadh plastered their photos on street advertisements and in local newspapers, how would a woman candidate have run her campaign? We must bear in mind that many Saudis still believe that a woman’s picture should only be viewed by close relatives and certainly not by unrelated members of the public.
Let’s get practical. Would a Saudi woman actually want to place her picture and her full name on a street advertisement or in a newspaper advertisement? She wouldn’t. And even if she were allowed to do so by the authorities, only a handful of the female community would actually consider doing it. If we open our daily newspapers and read columns by female journalists, we will see that the writers are faceless. Not because the law prevents a woman from putting her photo beside her column but because she chooses not to for social and cultural reasons.
Hypothetically, let us say that women did not need to place street advertisements or advertisements in newspapers. How else would they reach the public? Would they set up tents like their male counterparts? And even if they did, since the religious leaders here deem mixing sinful, how would she receive men and women who are curious to ask about her platform? Would the tents be split in half, one side for men and the other for women? Would she even allow herself to go to the male’s side to address them and answer questions?
Or would it all have to be done over microphones or split units? And continuing hypothetically, let us say one of the women won a seat on the council. She then becomes an official. Would our society accept the fact of a woman appearing in public in a press conference, talking to the media and making official announcements, as is the case in neighboring Gulf states? And what about the municipality itself? How would male and female colleagues within the municipality interact since they would have to be in separate buildings or departments; would all contact be over the phone?
Clearly that would be the only possibility since mixing the sexes is considered sinful.
Readers should not misunderstand me. We are not Bahrain or Kuwait or any other Gulf state.
As long as traditions and customs that are not universal in the 21st century prevail in the Kingdom and as long as we continue to teach in our universities that “Listening to a woman’s voice is sinful,” women who honestly believe they have a role in our society’s development will be either labeled “brainwashed by the West” or “sinners.”
Monday, February 14, 2005
We Need Our Best, Brightest to Improve Our Global Image
The article below was written by Khaled Almeena, editor of Arab News, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, one of the Middle East's leading English language newspapers. It is reproduced here with his permission.
By Khaled Almaeena
The prime minister of Hungary apologized last week for joking that the Saudi soccer team had “very many terrorists” on its roster. Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany made the remark at a Socialist Party event, referring to Hungary’s 0-0 tie against Saudi Arabia in Turkey last week.
“I think that there were many terrorists also among the Saudi soccer players and our sons fought with death-defying bravery against the terrorists, so a draw away from home is a fantastic result,” Gyurcsany was quoted as saying by the state news agency.
On Tuesday, he said his comments were made in the context of a TV show parody, and anyone who took them seriously is driven by “political intolerance or even ill-will.”
Even his apology was halfhearted. Gyurcsany, a former communist, knows nothing about Saudi Arabia. His remarks shocked many Hungarians who also do not know much about the Kingdom but believe that a person in such a responsible position should not utter irresponsible remarks about a country that has its own status in the world and a special place in the hearts of more than a billion Muslims.
Apparently his advisers did not tell him that an international counterterrorism conference was being held in Riyadh at the time he was uttering his foolish and frivolous remark.
He had no idea that municipal elections were going to be held.
He had no idea that Saudi Arabia was one of the key players in the battle against communism and that Hungarian Freedom Day is the result of those countries that faced the communist onslaught and were steadfast to contain it.
Prime Minister Gyurcsany is unaware he offended not only Saudis but also Muslims the world over. I spoke to a senior journalist who said that there was a protest and that the 11 Arab ambassadors in Budapest have viewed this statement with “seriousness.”
I am happy to note it; however, I believe that a more effective response should be made.
To show our displeasure, we can even recall our ambassador for a short time. Economic activities should be downgraded or even suspended temporarily.
I am not exaggerating. Would this prime minister utter such scandalous remarks about other nations? When a German minister spoke unfavorably about the United States, she was forced to resign.
When Prince Harry wore a Nazi armband on his sleeve at a fancy costume party, the gates of hell broke open. There were calls from Israel for him to visit the crematoriums at Auschwitz.
When Marlon Brando made a remark that Hollywood was dominated by Jews (he in no way insulted them) he was forced to apologize. But we are fair game! People, institutions and governments attack institutions, our religion and us. John Ashcroft, former US attorney general, made some very disparaging remarks about our religion.
US Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, considered a hero by many Americans, also created a stir by making inflammatory comments.
The list goes on and on.
What then are we going to do about it?
Just as we don’t think it’s proper to make offensive remarks about other cultures and religions, we are offended by remarks made about us.
Should we, with the advice of public relations firms with their own interests at heart, place ads in Hungarian and American newspapers, saying, “There are no terrorists on the Saudi soccer team!!”?
Should we send a delegation to Hungary “explaining” our position?
What should we do?
I firmly believe that we must take a proactive stand. I am a strong advocate of free speech and the right of any individual to speak out, but it should be implicit that those rights come with responsibility, logic, tolerance and — most importantly — truth.
The statement of the Hungarian prime minister was bereft of these virtues.
In the light of this incident and others certain to come, it is crucial that our embassies abroad forge strong connections with local media and be ready to respond to such verbal attacks immediately.
Our diplomats should have insight into the happenings in their host countries and do what foreign ambassadors do here — visit the newspapers, exchange views and even arrange for journalists to visit their countries.
The main thing is to establish personal contacts.
Let’s not leave the management of our nation’s image in the hands of public relations companies more concerned with their contract terms than our reputation around the globe.
We already have enough examples of its consequences. It is also important that we review the selection process of those going abroad on diplomatic missions.
They have to be truly global.
I know of one (and there are many) who spent a decade in a country and didn’t bother to learn the language, let alone perfect it.
In the 21st century, in a highly complex world with a focus on speed, technology, immediate decision-making and a probing global media, we cannot afford to be complacent.
Fortunately, our country has a large number of highly qualified and committed men and women who can stand up against the best of the world and spread an understanding of our people, our culture and our faith. All they need is less bureaucracy and the chance to excel.
They would be viewed more favorably than some of our present diplomats are because they would be able to expand upon the good will that already exists for our country worldwide and present an image in which we all can take pride.
By Khaled Almaeena
The prime minister of Hungary apologized last week for joking that the Saudi soccer team had “very many terrorists” on its roster. Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany made the remark at a Socialist Party event, referring to Hungary’s 0-0 tie against Saudi Arabia in Turkey last week.
“I think that there were many terrorists also among the Saudi soccer players and our sons fought with death-defying bravery against the terrorists, so a draw away from home is a fantastic result,” Gyurcsany was quoted as saying by the state news agency.
On Tuesday, he said his comments were made in the context of a TV show parody, and anyone who took them seriously is driven by “political intolerance or even ill-will.”
Even his apology was halfhearted. Gyurcsany, a former communist, knows nothing about Saudi Arabia. His remarks shocked many Hungarians who also do not know much about the Kingdom but believe that a person in such a responsible position should not utter irresponsible remarks about a country that has its own status in the world and a special place in the hearts of more than a billion Muslims.
Apparently his advisers did not tell him that an international counterterrorism conference was being held in Riyadh at the time he was uttering his foolish and frivolous remark.
He had no idea that municipal elections were going to be held.
He had no idea that Saudi Arabia was one of the key players in the battle against communism and that Hungarian Freedom Day is the result of those countries that faced the communist onslaught and were steadfast to contain it.
Prime Minister Gyurcsany is unaware he offended not only Saudis but also Muslims the world over. I spoke to a senior journalist who said that there was a protest and that the 11 Arab ambassadors in Budapest have viewed this statement with “seriousness.”
I am happy to note it; however, I believe that a more effective response should be made.
To show our displeasure, we can even recall our ambassador for a short time. Economic activities should be downgraded or even suspended temporarily.
I am not exaggerating. Would this prime minister utter such scandalous remarks about other nations? When a German minister spoke unfavorably about the United States, she was forced to resign.
When Prince Harry wore a Nazi armband on his sleeve at a fancy costume party, the gates of hell broke open. There were calls from Israel for him to visit the crematoriums at Auschwitz.
When Marlon Brando made a remark that Hollywood was dominated by Jews (he in no way insulted them) he was forced to apologize. But we are fair game! People, institutions and governments attack institutions, our religion and us. John Ashcroft, former US attorney general, made some very disparaging remarks about our religion.
US Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, considered a hero by many Americans, also created a stir by making inflammatory comments.
The list goes on and on.
What then are we going to do about it?
Just as we don’t think it’s proper to make offensive remarks about other cultures and religions, we are offended by remarks made about us.
Should we, with the advice of public relations firms with their own interests at heart, place ads in Hungarian and American newspapers, saying, “There are no terrorists on the Saudi soccer team!!”?
Should we send a delegation to Hungary “explaining” our position?
What should we do?
I firmly believe that we must take a proactive stand. I am a strong advocate of free speech and the right of any individual to speak out, but it should be implicit that those rights come with responsibility, logic, tolerance and — most importantly — truth.
The statement of the Hungarian prime minister was bereft of these virtues.
In the light of this incident and others certain to come, it is crucial that our embassies abroad forge strong connections with local media and be ready to respond to such verbal attacks immediately.
Our diplomats should have insight into the happenings in their host countries and do what foreign ambassadors do here — visit the newspapers, exchange views and even arrange for journalists to visit their countries.
The main thing is to establish personal contacts.
Let’s not leave the management of our nation’s image in the hands of public relations companies more concerned with their contract terms than our reputation around the globe.
We already have enough examples of its consequences. It is also important that we review the selection process of those going abroad on diplomatic missions.
They have to be truly global.
I know of one (and there are many) who spent a decade in a country and didn’t bother to learn the language, let alone perfect it.
In the 21st century, in a highly complex world with a focus on speed, technology, immediate decision-making and a probing global media, we cannot afford to be complacent.
Fortunately, our country has a large number of highly qualified and committed men and women who can stand up against the best of the world and spread an understanding of our people, our culture and our faith. All they need is less bureaucracy and the chance to excel.
They would be viewed more favorably than some of our present diplomats are because they would be able to expand upon the good will that already exists for our country worldwide and present an image in which we all can take pride.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
CHINA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
The following is an editorial from The Daily Star, Beirut. It is reproduced here with permission.
Middle Eastern governments would do well to follow China's example.
The Prophet Mohammed, in conveying the divine word to Muslims, commanded them to search for knowledge "even though it be in China," calling such a pursuit a "duty" for the faithful. Ironically today, we should be learning a lot from our friends in the Far East. There has been a recent push for the application of a certain knowledge in China that would be useful to the survival of regimes in the Islamic world. In the past few years, China has made great strides to define and develop a justice system that will protect and uphold the legal rights of its citizens. In 2001, the Chinese Justice Ministry invited International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), a non-governmental organization that works to ensure that citizens of all countries have access to basic legal rights, to help develop legal aid and defender services. Through the work of the ministry and NGOs on legal reform, China is now poised, as IBJ's President Karen I. Tse put it, for "a revolution in legal rights."
Here in the Arab world, we are still lagging behind in this global revolution. We are still living under military dictatorships, totalitarian regimes and unconstitutional monarchies. While China is enjoying the development of a society built upon the rule of law, our societies are stagnating under the strangling grip of security regimes.
Strengthening the rule of law is the key not only to promoting democracy, but also to protecting human rights, expanding economic growth and eliminating poverty. If local leaders are serious about bettering the lives of their citizenries, then they must work to adopt legal systems that will protect and promote the rule of law.
America, too, can play a role. If the U.S. wants to be true to its Greater Middle East initiative and stated goal of promoting democracy in the region, we must see a real push for legal reform, not just a push for stability. The U.S. must work to promote justice in tandem with its "war on terrorism." For far too many heavy-handed regimes in the region have been allowed to trample on or ignore legal rights in the name of "security." And the disenfranchized are turning in greater and greater numbers to the solutions offered up by Islamic fundamentalists. The United States cannot defeat terrorism in the region without promoting democracy and reform.
We must realize a new future for ourselves in a just and effective legal system. To climb this wall, we should take China's lead and enact reforms to secure a legal system based on the rule of law.
Middle Eastern governments would do well to follow China's example.
The Prophet Mohammed, in conveying the divine word to Muslims, commanded them to search for knowledge "even though it be in China," calling such a pursuit a "duty" for the faithful. Ironically today, we should be learning a lot from our friends in the Far East. There has been a recent push for the application of a certain knowledge in China that would be useful to the survival of regimes in the Islamic world. In the past few years, China has made great strides to define and develop a justice system that will protect and uphold the legal rights of its citizens. In 2001, the Chinese Justice Ministry invited International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), a non-governmental organization that works to ensure that citizens of all countries have access to basic legal rights, to help develop legal aid and defender services. Through the work of the ministry and NGOs on legal reform, China is now poised, as IBJ's President Karen I. Tse put it, for "a revolution in legal rights."
Here in the Arab world, we are still lagging behind in this global revolution. We are still living under military dictatorships, totalitarian regimes and unconstitutional monarchies. While China is enjoying the development of a society built upon the rule of law, our societies are stagnating under the strangling grip of security regimes.
Strengthening the rule of law is the key not only to promoting democracy, but also to protecting human rights, expanding economic growth and eliminating poverty. If local leaders are serious about bettering the lives of their citizenries, then they must work to adopt legal systems that will protect and promote the rule of law.
America, too, can play a role. If the U.S. wants to be true to its Greater Middle East initiative and stated goal of promoting democracy in the region, we must see a real push for legal reform, not just a push for stability. The U.S. must work to promote justice in tandem with its "war on terrorism." For far too many heavy-handed regimes in the region have been allowed to trample on or ignore legal rights in the name of "security." And the disenfranchized are turning in greater and greater numbers to the solutions offered up by Islamic fundamentalists. The United States cannot defeat terrorism in the region without promoting democracy and reform.
We must realize a new future for ourselves in a just and effective legal system. To climb this wall, we should take China's lead and enact reforms to secure a legal system based on the rule of law.
Friday, February 11, 2005
INSANE ASYLUM
By William Fisher
In the same week that the U.S House of Representatives passed restrictive new legislation that would make it far more difficult for refugees to gain asylum in the U.S., another arm of government, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF), issued a report charging that asylum-seekers are often jailed for long periods, treated like criminals, deported in a capricious and inconsistent manner that shows “extreme disparities” in who is granted asylum or deported, and are likely win asylum only if they have lawyers.
The House passed the REAL-ID Act, authored by conservative Republican James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin by a vote of 261 to 161, with 42 Democrats joining 219 Republicans in the majority. President Bush endorsed the measure, but did not actively lobby for its passage. Instead, he is pressing for a ‘guest worker’ program that would facilitate the entry of more immigrants, especially from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, who provide low-cost labor for jobs Americans do not seem to want.
The REAL-ID bill now goes to the U.S. Senate, where it is likely to face stiff bipartisan opposition. Sensenbrenner introduced a similar bill in the last session of Congress as part of the intelligence reorganization legislation designed to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but immigration provisions were largely stripped from the final bill by the Senate as a compromise to assure passage of the broader legislation.
The bill would block states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, restrict asylum , and complete a controversial border fence between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. The White House said in a policy statement issued hours before debate began that the bill would "strengthen the ability of the United States to protect against terrorist entry into and activities within the United States." But immigration advocates, groups supporting civil and privacy rights, and state government organizations opposed the bill. They said it would make it harder for those fleeing persecution to seek asylum in this country and would endanger public safety and national security by denying driver's licenses to millions of illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF), established under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), announced results of a study of how a new immigration procedure – Expedited Removal – was affecting asylum-seekers.
The study found that asylum-seekers are consistently detained in jails or jail-like facilities, along with criminals and aliens who have committed criminal offenses.
Immigration judges, the study concluded, had significantly different rates of granting or denying asylum claims, even within the same court, and immigration officers sometimes improperly encouraged asylum-seekers to withdraw their applications for admission.
In 15 percent (12/79) of observed cases, the study said, when an arriving alien expressed a fear of return to the inspector, the alien was not referred for a hearing. “Among these twelve cases were several aliens who expressed fear of political, religious, or ethnic persecution, which are clearly related to the grounds for asylum. In seven of these twelve cases, the inspector incorrectly indicated on the sworn statement that the applicant claimed he had no fear of return.”
Most DHS procedures lack effective quality assurance measures to ensure that they are consistently followed, the study declared. “Consequently, the outcome of an asylum claim appears to depend not only on the strength of the claim, but also on which officials consider the claim, and whether or not the alien has an attorney.“ Asylum-seekers without a lawyer had a much lower chance of being granted asylum (2%) than those with an attorney (25%).
While DHS policy favors the release of asylum-seekers who have established credible fear, identity, community ties, and no likelihood of posing a security risk, implementation of these criteria also varies widely from place to place. The study found there was little documentation in the files to allow a determination of how these criteria were actually being applied.
The study said that in denying asylum applications on the basis of credibility, immigration judges frequently cited documents the study found to be unreliable and incomplete.
It added that there are serious impediments to communication and information-sharing within DHS. Unreliable and/or incomplete documentation “is susceptible to being misinterpreted”, or “misapplied by the immigration judge, and may ultimately result in the denial of the asylum-seeker’s claim.”
The study noted that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) sustained 24% of Expedited Removal asylum appeals in fiscal year 2001, only 2-4% of such appeals have been granted since 2002, when the court began allowing the issuance of “summary affirmances” rather than detailed decisions. “It is highly unlikely that any asylum seeker denied by an immigration judge will find protection by appealing to the BIA.”
It noted that Expedited Removal has been expanded twice in recent years, “without first addressing the flaws in the system which undermine the protections for asylum seekers”.
The study recommended that the incoming Secretary of Homeland Security “ensure that it is no longer he – but a high ranking official who reports to him – who is responsible for coordinating refugee and asylum matters among the various bureaus. Without day-to-day oversight of asylum policy and its implementation department-wide, the flaws in the system identified in this study cannot be effectively addressed”, leaving asylum-seekers “at risk of being returned to countries where they may face persecution.”
The study also recommended that the DHS should: Create an office -- headed by a high-level official --authorized to address cross-cutting issues related to asylum and expedited removal; ease the burden on the detention system, the immigration courts, and bona fide asylum seekers by allowing asylum officers to grant asylum in approvable cases at the time of the credible fear interview; promulgate regulations to promote more consistent implementation of existing parole criteria to ensure that credible asylum-seekers are released from detention; reconcile conflicting field guidance to require that any expression of fear at the port of entry must result in either a referral for a credible fear determination or contact with an asylum officer to speak to the alien via a telephonic interpretation service to determine whether or not the alien needs to be referred; facilitate legal assistance for asylum seekers subject to expedited removal; and implement and monitor quality assurance procedures to ensure more reliable information for homeland security purposes, and to ensure that asylum seekers are not turned away in error.
CIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal agency created to monitor religious freedom in other countries and advise the President, Secretary of State and Congress on how best to promote it.
The two key government departments in immigration matters – the DOJ and the DHS – have new leadership in the second Bush term. Former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales has become the new Attorney General, and a former DOJ official and now a Federal Judge, Michael Chertoff, is expected to be confirmed next week to head the DHS. Both have been criticized by human rights groups for helping shape post 9/11 U.S. policies on immigrant detention and prisoner abuse.
In the same week that the U.S House of Representatives passed restrictive new legislation that would make it far more difficult for refugees to gain asylum in the U.S., another arm of government, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF), issued a report charging that asylum-seekers are often jailed for long periods, treated like criminals, deported in a capricious and inconsistent manner that shows “extreme disparities” in who is granted asylum or deported, and are likely win asylum only if they have lawyers.
The House passed the REAL-ID Act, authored by conservative Republican James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin by a vote of 261 to 161, with 42 Democrats joining 219 Republicans in the majority. President Bush endorsed the measure, but did not actively lobby for its passage. Instead, he is pressing for a ‘guest worker’ program that would facilitate the entry of more immigrants, especially from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, who provide low-cost labor for jobs Americans do not seem to want.
The REAL-ID bill now goes to the U.S. Senate, where it is likely to face stiff bipartisan opposition. Sensenbrenner introduced a similar bill in the last session of Congress as part of the intelligence reorganization legislation designed to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but immigration provisions were largely stripped from the final bill by the Senate as a compromise to assure passage of the broader legislation.
The bill would block states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, restrict asylum , and complete a controversial border fence between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. The White House said in a policy statement issued hours before debate began that the bill would "strengthen the ability of the United States to protect against terrorist entry into and activities within the United States." But immigration advocates, groups supporting civil and privacy rights, and state government organizations opposed the bill. They said it would make it harder for those fleeing persecution to seek asylum in this country and would endanger public safety and national security by denying driver's licenses to millions of illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF), established under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), announced results of a study of how a new immigration procedure – Expedited Removal – was affecting asylum-seekers.
The study found that asylum-seekers are consistently detained in jails or jail-like facilities, along with criminals and aliens who have committed criminal offenses.
Immigration judges, the study concluded, had significantly different rates of granting or denying asylum claims, even within the same court, and immigration officers sometimes improperly encouraged asylum-seekers to withdraw their applications for admission.
In 15 percent (12/79) of observed cases, the study said, when an arriving alien expressed a fear of return to the inspector, the alien was not referred for a hearing. “Among these twelve cases were several aliens who expressed fear of political, religious, or ethnic persecution, which are clearly related to the grounds for asylum. In seven of these twelve cases, the inspector incorrectly indicated on the sworn statement that the applicant claimed he had no fear of return.”
Most DHS procedures lack effective quality assurance measures to ensure that they are consistently followed, the study declared. “Consequently, the outcome of an asylum claim appears to depend not only on the strength of the claim, but also on which officials consider the claim, and whether or not the alien has an attorney.“ Asylum-seekers without a lawyer had a much lower chance of being granted asylum (2%) than those with an attorney (25%).
While DHS policy favors the release of asylum-seekers who have established credible fear, identity, community ties, and no likelihood of posing a security risk, implementation of these criteria also varies widely from place to place. The study found there was little documentation in the files to allow a determination of how these criteria were actually being applied.
The study said that in denying asylum applications on the basis of credibility, immigration judges frequently cited documents the study found to be unreliable and incomplete.
It added that there are serious impediments to communication and information-sharing within DHS. Unreliable and/or incomplete documentation “is susceptible to being misinterpreted”, or “misapplied by the immigration judge, and may ultimately result in the denial of the asylum-seeker’s claim.”
The study noted that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) sustained 24% of Expedited Removal asylum appeals in fiscal year 2001, only 2-4% of such appeals have been granted since 2002, when the court began allowing the issuance of “summary affirmances” rather than detailed decisions. “It is highly unlikely that any asylum seeker denied by an immigration judge will find protection by appealing to the BIA.”
It noted that Expedited Removal has been expanded twice in recent years, “without first addressing the flaws in the system which undermine the protections for asylum seekers”.
The study recommended that the incoming Secretary of Homeland Security “ensure that it is no longer he – but a high ranking official who reports to him – who is responsible for coordinating refugee and asylum matters among the various bureaus. Without day-to-day oversight of asylum policy and its implementation department-wide, the flaws in the system identified in this study cannot be effectively addressed”, leaving asylum-seekers “at risk of being returned to countries where they may face persecution.”
The study also recommended that the DHS should: Create an office -- headed by a high-level official --authorized to address cross-cutting issues related to asylum and expedited removal; ease the burden on the detention system, the immigration courts, and bona fide asylum seekers by allowing asylum officers to grant asylum in approvable cases at the time of the credible fear interview; promulgate regulations to promote more consistent implementation of existing parole criteria to ensure that credible asylum-seekers are released from detention; reconcile conflicting field guidance to require that any expression of fear at the port of entry must result in either a referral for a credible fear determination or contact with an asylum officer to speak to the alien via a telephonic interpretation service to determine whether or not the alien needs to be referred; facilitate legal assistance for asylum seekers subject to expedited removal; and implement and monitor quality assurance procedures to ensure more reliable information for homeland security purposes, and to ensure that asylum seekers are not turned away in error.
CIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal agency created to monitor religious freedom in other countries and advise the President, Secretary of State and Congress on how best to promote it.
The two key government departments in immigration matters – the DOJ and the DHS – have new leadership in the second Bush term. Former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales has become the new Attorney General, and a former DOJ official and now a Federal Judge, Michael Chertoff, is expected to be confirmed next week to head the DHS. Both have been criticized by human rights groups for helping shape post 9/11 U.S. policies on immigrant detention and prisoner abuse.
LEGAL HUBRIS
By William Fisher
Shortly before he left office, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told employees at the Department of Justice (DOJ) that America is “a freer nation than before because our families can live peacefully in their communities, our wives, daughters and mothers can travel the streets safely, and our children are turning away from illegal drugs.”
But it would be difficult to convince Rodi Alvarado that she is “freer”.
Mrs. Alvarado is a Guatemalan refugee who is at the center of a 10-year debate over whether battered women can successfully gain asylum in the U.S. Her case had been in the hands of Mr. Ashcroft, who said two years ago he would decide her fate. But just before he stepped down, he passed the responsibility to his successor, Alberto Gonzales, former White House Counsel.
Ashcroft decided neither to grant nor deny asylum to Alvarado. He said a decision should await new regulations from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which supervises most immigration matters. The DHS says its new regulations would make domestic abuse a valid legal basis for asylum-seekers. The government started working on such regulations many years ago, long before the DHS was created.
The DHS says it will not press for Mrs. Alvarado’s deportation regardless of how much longer it may take the agency to finalize the new regulations. Meanwhile, Mrs. Alvarado remains in legal limbo. Though she can remain in the U.S., that is only a partial victory since she cannot be reunited with her children, who remain in Guatemala.
Mrs. Alvarado’s husband, a former soldier in the Guatemalan military, brutally beat her over a period of 10 years while the Guatemalan police and courts ignored her repeated attempts to get help. When she ran away, her husband found her and beat her unconscious. Finally, in 1995, she fled to the U.S. in search of safety. She now works as a housekeeper at a convent in San Francisco.
Mrs. Alvarado’s case has created a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of U.S. Government immigration policies. Advocates for women and immigration rights had hoped Alvarado's situation would already have led to a change in U.S. policy to recognize asylum cases filed by victims of domestic violence. Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno proposed such a change in her final hours in office in 2001.
With the change in administrations and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the proposal languished. Opponents have said new asylum rules would lead to a surge in claims, an assertion disputed by advocates.
Under U.S. law, asylum applicants have to show they can't go home because they face persecution because of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The regulation proposed by Reno would have allowed battered women to be considered members of a social group.
The Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinic Women’s Refugee Project, which filed a ‘friend of the court’ brief in the Alvarado case, said, “While we are disappointed that Attorney General Ashcroft did not follow the full recommendation of the Department of Homeland Security, and grant Mrs. Alvarado permanent asylum as he absolutely should have, we are encouraged that a basic regulatory framework -- at least in proposed form -- has been established which may allow for a principled approach to this issue." Nancy Kelly and Deborah Anker of Harvard said in a joint statement. "It is critical that women victims of violence be treated fairly and evenhandedly under U.S. law."
A coalition of organizations signed the Women Refugees Project's amicus brief and have supported Alvarado's efforts to obtain asylum. These organizations include the Center for Refugee Studies, Human Rights First and the Family Violence Prevention Fund, as well as Amnesty International-USA, the National Immigration, the Project of the National Lawyers Guild, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children, and the Women’s Division of Human Rights Watch.
The Refugee Project says there is broad, bipartisan support for granting asylum to Alvarado, including from many conservative organizations and Republican
officeholders such as Concerned Women for America, World Relief, and U.S.
Republican Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snow of Maine.
Mrs. Alvarado’s case could well be complicated by political environment created by the ongoing congressional controversy over immigration and asylum. Last week, the House of Representatives passed the so-called REAL I.D. act. The bill would block states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, restrict asylum , and complete a controversial border fence between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. The White House said in a policy statement issued hours before debate began that the bill would "strengthen the ability of the United States to protect against terrorist entry into and activities within the United States."
But immigration advocates, groups supporting civil and privacy rights, and state government organizations opposed the bill. They said it would make it harder for those fleeing persecution to seek asylum in this country and would endanger public safety and national security by denying driver's licenses to millions of illegal immigrants.
The REAL-ID bill now goes to the U.S. Senate, where it is likely to face stiff bipartisan opposition. Sensenbrenner introduced a similar bill in the last session of Congress as part of the intelligence reorganization legislation designed to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but immigration provisions were largely stripped from the final bill by the Senate as a compromise to assure passage of the broader legislation.
Shortly before he left office, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told employees at the Department of Justice (DOJ) that America is “a freer nation than before because our families can live peacefully in their communities, our wives, daughters and mothers can travel the streets safely, and our children are turning away from illegal drugs.”
But it would be difficult to convince Rodi Alvarado that she is “freer”.
Mrs. Alvarado is a Guatemalan refugee who is at the center of a 10-year debate over whether battered women can successfully gain asylum in the U.S. Her case had been in the hands of Mr. Ashcroft, who said two years ago he would decide her fate. But just before he stepped down, he passed the responsibility to his successor, Alberto Gonzales, former White House Counsel.
Ashcroft decided neither to grant nor deny asylum to Alvarado. He said a decision should await new regulations from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which supervises most immigration matters. The DHS says its new regulations would make domestic abuse a valid legal basis for asylum-seekers. The government started working on such regulations many years ago, long before the DHS was created.
The DHS says it will not press for Mrs. Alvarado’s deportation regardless of how much longer it may take the agency to finalize the new regulations. Meanwhile, Mrs. Alvarado remains in legal limbo. Though she can remain in the U.S., that is only a partial victory since she cannot be reunited with her children, who remain in Guatemala.
Mrs. Alvarado’s husband, a former soldier in the Guatemalan military, brutally beat her over a period of 10 years while the Guatemalan police and courts ignored her repeated attempts to get help. When she ran away, her husband found her and beat her unconscious. Finally, in 1995, she fled to the U.S. in search of safety. She now works as a housekeeper at a convent in San Francisco.
Mrs. Alvarado’s case has created a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of U.S. Government immigration policies. Advocates for women and immigration rights had hoped Alvarado's situation would already have led to a change in U.S. policy to recognize asylum cases filed by victims of domestic violence. Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno proposed such a change in her final hours in office in 2001.
With the change in administrations and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the proposal languished. Opponents have said new asylum rules would lead to a surge in claims, an assertion disputed by advocates.
Under U.S. law, asylum applicants have to show they can't go home because they face persecution because of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The regulation proposed by Reno would have allowed battered women to be considered members of a social group.
The Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinic Women’s Refugee Project, which filed a ‘friend of the court’ brief in the Alvarado case, said, “While we are disappointed that Attorney General Ashcroft did not follow the full recommendation of the Department of Homeland Security, and grant Mrs. Alvarado permanent asylum as he absolutely should have, we are encouraged that a basic regulatory framework -- at least in proposed form -- has been established which may allow for a principled approach to this issue." Nancy Kelly and Deborah Anker of Harvard said in a joint statement. "It is critical that women victims of violence be treated fairly and evenhandedly under U.S. law."
A coalition of organizations signed the Women Refugees Project's amicus brief and have supported Alvarado's efforts to obtain asylum. These organizations include the Center for Refugee Studies, Human Rights First and the Family Violence Prevention Fund, as well as Amnesty International-USA, the National Immigration, the Project of the National Lawyers Guild, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children, and the Women’s Division of Human Rights Watch.
The Refugee Project says there is broad, bipartisan support for granting asylum to Alvarado, including from many conservative organizations and Republican
officeholders such as Concerned Women for America, World Relief, and U.S.
Republican Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snow of Maine.
Mrs. Alvarado’s case could well be complicated by political environment created by the ongoing congressional controversy over immigration and asylum. Last week, the House of Representatives passed the so-called REAL I.D. act. The bill would block states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, restrict asylum , and complete a controversial border fence between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. The White House said in a policy statement issued hours before debate began that the bill would "strengthen the ability of the United States to protect against terrorist entry into and activities within the United States."
But immigration advocates, groups supporting civil and privacy rights, and state government organizations opposed the bill. They said it would make it harder for those fleeing persecution to seek asylum in this country and would endanger public safety and national security by denying driver's licenses to millions of illegal immigrants.
The REAL-ID bill now goes to the U.S. Senate, where it is likely to face stiff bipartisan opposition. Sensenbrenner introduced a similar bill in the last session of Congress as part of the intelligence reorganization legislation designed to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but immigration provisions were largely stripped from the final bill by the Senate as a compromise to assure passage of the broader legislation.
OUR SECRET GOVERNMENT
By William Fisher
From Washington this week came more evidence that the Bush Administration has no plans to change its excessive secrecy policies. The U.S Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) removed more than 20 significant documents from its website, and the Justice Department (DOJ) told an advocacy group it will cost them nearly $400,000 to obtain records they requested about immigrants detained after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Documents removed from the USCCR’s website include a number of reports that could embarrass the Bush Administration. For example: Briefing on Boundaries of Justice: Immigration Policies Post-September 11; Briefing on Civil Rights Issues Facing Muslims and Arab Americans in Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and North Dakota Post-September 11; Briefing on the Consequences of Government Race Data Collection Bans on Civil Rights; and The Supreme Court Revisits Affirmative Action.
A majority of commissioners on the USCCR voted along party lines to remove the documents. The USCCR is a government agency. Of its seven commissioners, four are chosen by the President (currently Republicans) and three (currently two Democrats and one Independent) by Congress. Its mandate is to investigate complaints alleging that citizens are being deprived of their right to vote by reason of their race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin; study and collect information relating to discrimination or a denial of equal protection of the laws under the Constitution because of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration of justice; appraise federal laws and policies with respect to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws because of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration of justice; and serve as a national clearinghouse for information in respect to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws.
In another secrecy-related development, an advocacy group, People for the American Way (PAW) requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), all documents related to the decision to seal the records of immigrants detained in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. PAW believes the unusually large price tag is DOJ’s latest move in an ongoing struggle to withhold the information.
The civil rights organization filed the FOIA request more than a year ago. The Justice Department immediately denied the request on the grounds of privacy and then denied the organization’s appeal. PAW, unsatisfied with the Justice Department’s claims, filed a lawsuit in August 2004 seeking the records.
Two days before the deadline for arguing why the lawsuit should be summarily denied, the Justice Department reported that it had changed its position and would search for the requested records. PAW was told that an initial canvass of U.S. Attorneys’ offices led to an estimated search time of 13,314 hours. at $28 an hour, would make the total search fee approximately $373,000.
PAW requested the information so it could produce a public report about the
government’s efforts to use secrecy against hundreds of unidentified detainees
who were arrested and held for months without criminal charges following the
9/11 attacks.
Between 9/11 and the present time, some 5,000 people – mostly Arabs, other Muslims, and South Asians, have been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), part of the DOJ. There have been no terrorist-related convictions. Most of the detainees were held in a prison system operated by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Many were held without charge or access to family or attorneys for months. Many were deported for typically minor visa violations, and some were returned to countries where they would likely be arrested and imprisoned by local security authorities. The DOJ has consistently refused to release the names of the detainees.
One of the architects of the post 9/11 detention policy was President Bush’s lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, who was recently confirmed to be the next Attorney General. Another former DOJ official, Judge Michael Chertoff, is thought to have been a key player in designing the policy; he has been nominated by President Bush to be the next heads of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the immigration prison system.
PAW said it hopes to publish a report about government secrecy efforts against hundreds of unidentified detainees.
The organization’s president, Ralph G. Neas, said the DOJ’s fee demand is “outrageous, and another in a series of strategies to deny access to public information. Apparently, they’ve taken the ‘free’ out of ‘Freedom of Information.’ If you want to learn about secret trials carried out by your government with your money, you’re going to need deep pockets,” said Neas.
“It’s clear that this is just the latest tactic in the Justice Department’s ongoing effort to hide information from the American public, particularly about ‘secret’ legal proceedings for immigrants held for months and sometimes years in the wake of the terrorist attacks,” said Neas.
In an editorial, The New York Times said the DOJ was charging a “huge fee (that) is well beyond established criteria and amounts to an insult to intent of Freedom of Information Act”. The FOIA was signed in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was intended to give citizens more access to government documents.
PAW’s request was prompted by the secret case of a Deerfield Beach, Fla., resident, Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, an Algerian native and one of hundreds of men of Middle East origin detained without criminal charge by federal agents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bellahouel, a waiter, was detained by FBI agents for overstaying his student visa after they learned he'd probably served food to some of the hijackers and may have been seen going into a movie theater with a hijacker.
He spent five months in custody and was called to testify before the grand jury that indicted accused Sept. 11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. He was released in March 2002, without any criminal charge. But his habeas case proceeded secretly for another year until it was mistakenly placed on the docket at the appellate court in Miami.
While he was still in custody, in January 2002, Bellahouel filed a habeas corpus case in The Southern District of Florida. The case proceeded in complete secrecy on orders of U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck. A clerk's error at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2003 briefly let Bellahouel's name surface, allowing a newspaper to discover his case. Now, Bellahouel's name appears nowhere on the Southern District's public docket.
Last year, PAW joined a coalition formed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, including 23 media, law and public interest organizations -- including the New York Times and American Lawyer Media, the Daily Business Review's parent, that unsuccessfully sought to formally intervene in Bellahouel's heavily censored case, which was then before the Supreme Court for possible review. The Daily Business Review is the newspaper that discovered the error made by the court clerk.
From Washington this week came more evidence that the Bush Administration has no plans to change its excessive secrecy policies. The U.S Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) removed more than 20 significant documents from its website, and the Justice Department (DOJ) told an advocacy group it will cost them nearly $400,000 to obtain records they requested about immigrants detained after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Documents removed from the USCCR’s website include a number of reports that could embarrass the Bush Administration. For example: Briefing on Boundaries of Justice: Immigration Policies Post-September 11; Briefing on Civil Rights Issues Facing Muslims and Arab Americans in Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and North Dakota Post-September 11; Briefing on the Consequences of Government Race Data Collection Bans on Civil Rights; and The Supreme Court Revisits Affirmative Action.
A majority of commissioners on the USCCR voted along party lines to remove the documents. The USCCR is a government agency. Of its seven commissioners, four are chosen by the President (currently Republicans) and three (currently two Democrats and one Independent) by Congress. Its mandate is to investigate complaints alleging that citizens are being deprived of their right to vote by reason of their race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin; study and collect information relating to discrimination or a denial of equal protection of the laws under the Constitution because of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration of justice; appraise federal laws and policies with respect to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws because of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration of justice; and serve as a national clearinghouse for information in respect to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws.
In another secrecy-related development, an advocacy group, People for the American Way (PAW) requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), all documents related to the decision to seal the records of immigrants detained in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. PAW believes the unusually large price tag is DOJ’s latest move in an ongoing struggle to withhold the information.
The civil rights organization filed the FOIA request more than a year ago. The Justice Department immediately denied the request on the grounds of privacy and then denied the organization’s appeal. PAW, unsatisfied with the Justice Department’s claims, filed a lawsuit in August 2004 seeking the records.
Two days before the deadline for arguing why the lawsuit should be summarily denied, the Justice Department reported that it had changed its position and would search for the requested records. PAW was told that an initial canvass of U.S. Attorneys’ offices led to an estimated search time of 13,314 hours. at $28 an hour, would make the total search fee approximately $373,000.
PAW requested the information so it could produce a public report about the
government’s efforts to use secrecy against hundreds of unidentified detainees
who were arrested and held for months without criminal charges following the
9/11 attacks.
Between 9/11 and the present time, some 5,000 people – mostly Arabs, other Muslims, and South Asians, have been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), part of the DOJ. There have been no terrorist-related convictions. Most of the detainees were held in a prison system operated by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Many were held without charge or access to family or attorneys for months. Many were deported for typically minor visa violations, and some were returned to countries where they would likely be arrested and imprisoned by local security authorities. The DOJ has consistently refused to release the names of the detainees.
One of the architects of the post 9/11 detention policy was President Bush’s lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, who was recently confirmed to be the next Attorney General. Another former DOJ official, Judge Michael Chertoff, is thought to have been a key player in designing the policy; he has been nominated by President Bush to be the next heads of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the immigration prison system.
PAW said it hopes to publish a report about government secrecy efforts against hundreds of unidentified detainees.
The organization’s president, Ralph G. Neas, said the DOJ’s fee demand is “outrageous, and another in a series of strategies to deny access to public information. Apparently, they’ve taken the ‘free’ out of ‘Freedom of Information.’ If you want to learn about secret trials carried out by your government with your money, you’re going to need deep pockets,” said Neas.
“It’s clear that this is just the latest tactic in the Justice Department’s ongoing effort to hide information from the American public, particularly about ‘secret’ legal proceedings for immigrants held for months and sometimes years in the wake of the terrorist attacks,” said Neas.
In an editorial, The New York Times said the DOJ was charging a “huge fee (that) is well beyond established criteria and amounts to an insult to intent of Freedom of Information Act”. The FOIA was signed in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was intended to give citizens more access to government documents.
PAW’s request was prompted by the secret case of a Deerfield Beach, Fla., resident, Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, an Algerian native and one of hundreds of men of Middle East origin detained without criminal charge by federal agents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bellahouel, a waiter, was detained by FBI agents for overstaying his student visa after they learned he'd probably served food to some of the hijackers and may have been seen going into a movie theater with a hijacker.
He spent five months in custody and was called to testify before the grand jury that indicted accused Sept. 11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. He was released in March 2002, without any criminal charge. But his habeas case proceeded secretly for another year until it was mistakenly placed on the docket at the appellate court in Miami.
While he was still in custody, in January 2002, Bellahouel filed a habeas corpus case in The Southern District of Florida. The case proceeded in complete secrecy on orders of U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck. A clerk's error at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2003 briefly let Bellahouel's name surface, allowing a newspaper to discover his case. Now, Bellahouel's name appears nowhere on the Southern District's public docket.
Last year, PAW joined a coalition formed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, including 23 media, law and public interest organizations -- including the New York Times and American Lawyer Media, the Daily Business Review's parent, that unsuccessfully sought to formally intervene in Bellahouel's heavily censored case, which was then before the Supreme Court for possible review. The Daily Business Review is the newspaper that discovered the error made by the court clerk.
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