Share this story!            

Civil liberties body comes to aid of harassed Muslims

WASHINGTON: The American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday that it is working with lawyers around the country to offer free legal representation to anyone who is approached by the FBI during its latest round of “dragnet” interviews of Arabs and Muslims.

“This dragnet technique used by the FBI is simply racial profiling and violates our most cherished fundamental freedoms,” according to Dalia Hashad, the ACLU’s Arab, Muslim and South Asian Advocate. “Casting blanket suspicion on an entire religious and ethnic community is not a productive means of protecting national security or civil liberties,” added the official.

The ACLU mobilisation came in response to a recent announcement by Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller that the FBI would launch a new round of dragnet-like interviews in Arab and Muslim communities nationwide. This latest effort appears to be a resurrection of a similar programme attempted in 2001 and 2002, in which the FBI questioned more than 8,000 Muslim and Arab men. The questioning did not yield a single arrest of a suspected terrorist.

“These types of FBI tactics are counterproductive. They produce fear and resentment, not results,” Hashad said. “Treating innocent people like criminals is certain to drive a wedge between law enforcement and the communities that agencies should be reaching out to.” According to reports from ACLU lawyers who have accompanied members of the Arab and Muslim community to such interviews, the line of questioning includes inquiries about religious practices and family members, and agents can become coercive. In at least one instance, agents threatened to interfere with the marriage plans of a Muslim man if he did not agree to become an informant on his friends and neighbours. In his interview, FBI agents suggested that if he did not cooperate he could experience “a lot of difficulty” with his plans to marry.

Another example of the way in which the government continues to treat Arabs and Muslims as suspects came to light last week, when news reports revealed that the US Census Bureau, at the request of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), provided detailed statistical data about the distribution of Arab-Americans in the United States. DHS officials claimed that they needed this data for “identifying which language of signage, based upon US ethnic population, would be best to post at the major international airports.”

The ACLU has urged Congress to curb racial profiling through adoption of End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA), federal legislation that defines racial profiling, makes it illegal and would require data collection on all law enforcement encounters. khalid hasan

Home | National

Share this story!