September
11
A Year Later
Loss of civil rights post-9/11 alarms Muslims, legal
experts
By PAT MORRISON
A year later, the United States is still reeling from the shock of
the attacks of Sept. 11. As the Bush administration put the nation on high
alert in an effort to protect Americans from further terrorism, the crisis
spawned unprecedented expansion of governmental powers.
Among the first was the USA PATRIOT Act (October 2001), a double
acronym for the unwieldy “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”
The act gave sweeping authority to government agencies to
interrogate, detain and hold suspects without charge -- essentially the
curtailing of constitutionally protected civil liberties in the interest of
national security. It was followed by the creation of the Transportation
Security Agency (February 2002), which took over the former role of the Federal
Aviation Administration in providing airport and airline security; and by
expansion of almost unlimited powers to the Justice Department, Federal Bureau
of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and office of the Attorney
General.
The most recent (and almost universally snubbed) creation of the
Justice Department has apparently died a quiet death because even its initial
supporters soon had qualms about it: “Operation TIPS” (Terrorism
Information and Prevention System) called on postal workers, utility companies,
truckers, librarians and private citizens to “volunteer” to formally
report any suspicious activity that could be linked to terrorism.
Many Americans are tolerant and even supportive of the
government’s intent to stem terrorist attacks and identify major players
in worldwide terrorism. Despite misgivings, most citizens apparently believe
that war -- even an undeclared war waged without clear parameters or goals
against unspecified “evildoers” -- may require the limiting of some
civil rights enshrined in the Constitution.
But the very attempt to “Unite and Strengthen America”
has meant that civil liberties for some Americans have been, at best, put on
hold while they have been subjected to suspicion, harassment and even physical
violence. Perhaps no group has experienced the backlash from 9/11 more than the
U.S. Muslim community.
In late June, more than 500 Muslims from seven Midwestern states
met at the University of Missouri-Kansas City to address issues surrounding
Sept. 11. The Kansas City conference, titled “Muslims for Peace and
Justice,” was one of several similar gatherings around the country
designed to promote an accurate perception of the authentic teachings of Islam
among their non-Muslim neighbors and to promote diversity. Among the workshops
in the three-day conference, sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America,
was a session on civil rights and how the events of Sept. 11 have affected the
day-to-day lives of Muslims.
Dick Kurtenbach, director of the Kansas City office of the
American Civil Liberties Union and one of the workshop presenters, outlined the
eclipse of civil liberties in the post- 9/11 climate and noted an increase in
cases brought to the ACLU’s attention by members of the Muslim and Arab
communities.
Kurtenbach said he believed the United States today is “at
the same level of historical error” in relation to the Arab and Muslim
community as it was during World War II “when tens of thousands of
Japanese-Americans were interred in detention camps with no evidence of
threat.” From the McCarthy era in the 1950s, when lives and careers were
ruined because of blacklisting and threats of communist involvement, to the
’60s and Vietnam with spying on citizens and confiscation of records, he
said, “we have often witnessed our government at its very worst.”
The United States has “made very, very serious mistakes very
often, and it usually happens when we feel threatened,” he said. Linking
the USA Patriot Act to those earlier mistakes, Kurtenbach said that while
“its aim is to make us safe, in reality it makes us less free.” A
significant part of the problem, he said, is that the act takes judges out of
the legal process, “which is why we can have more than 1,000 Arab and
Muslim-Americans unjustly profiled, detained for months without formal charges
and individuals designated as ‘enemy combatants’ without
proof.”
Surveying the current scene in terms of civil liberties and
protection of constitutional rights, Kurtenbach said, “I am usually an
optimistic person. I am a little less optimistic about this particular
situation.”
For American Muslims, the erosion of civil liberties and loss of
freedoms has prompted the ad hoc formation of several groups and organizations.
One is the new Muslim Legal Fund of America, based in Plano, Texas. Its founder
is a strategist by profession, not a lawyer, but said he formed the
organization because of the pressing need he saw for Muslims to have access to
funding for legal representation. In an interview with NCR, Wajahat
Sayeed said he noted with alarm that “the only people [Attorney General
John] Ashcroft is profiling and detaining are Arabs and Muslims.”
“A lot of these cases have already been cleared by the
FBI,” he said, “but it doesn’t make a difference to these
people.”
Sayeed said that according to law, a person cannot be held for
more than six months without being charged, yet large numbers of Arabs and
Muslims continue to be held, “with no charges, no legal representation.
… Some of the treatment in the holding facilities and jails is
horrible,” he said, citing a Texas case in which he says a Muslim inmate
was treated abusively and deprived of food.
Sayeed said his goal is to have a group of about a dozen lawyers
nationwide who could work with specific cases. “We can’t afford to
fly them around the country,” he said -- thus the focus on having
individuals available to help in different locales. Eventually, he said, he
hoped the organization could provide funds to help clients with legal fees and
court costs.
“I don’t have a lot of money and I’m not a lawyer,
but I knew in the current atmosphere, it was time to do something,” Sayeed
said.
Sayeed, who was also a presenter at the civil rights workshop with
Kurtenbach, warned his audience about apathy. “The biggest mistake we in
this hall can make is to think that bad things happen only to other
people.” He cited the case of an FBI raid on a Muslim home outside
Washington in which the suspect’s wife and two daughters, still in their
nightclothes, were held at gunpoint, handcuffed and interrogated in the middle
of the night. “Today it’s a so-called terrorist who’s
detained,” he said. “Next, it’s your daughters who will
be handcuffed.”
Similar concerns were voiced last month by a University of Dayton
law professor and ACLU board member, Richard Saphire. Saphire said he was
troubled by the “particular secretiveness” and sweeping governmental
powers of the Bush administration.
While he said he had no doubt the Bush administration believes its
post-9/11 law enforcement and security measures are in the nation’s best
interests, Saphire said he is alarmed that the American people have too easily
acquiesced to “very restrictive government policies.”
“Most Americans apparently have the attitude that, with
respect to matters of security and terrorism, we’ll just place our
confidence in the hands of the government and hope they know what to do,”
Saphire said. “We just assume that whatever that costs is worth
it.”
Through what he called “frightening” decision-making
processes carefully hidden from public scrutiny, those ruled as combatants can
be “whisked away to God knows where,” Saphire said. He noted that
within six weeks after Sept. 11, some 1,200 people were detained. Some were
deported, some are still in prison and some have been unable to have legal
representation. “The notion that we can take people who we suspect are in
cahoots with terrorists and hold them forever and not supply lawyers and not
process in public -- that’s almost unheard of in American
history.”
Saphire acknowledged that striking a balance between freedom and
security is always difficult, but he said he sees “a lot of ominous signs
out there.”
“With more cameras in public places and surveillance on the
Internet and at public meetings, the realm of individual privacy that’s
immune from government scrutiny is shrinking more and more. That’s
something that’s not easily retrievable,” he said.
He said he thinks many Americans “have begun to accept the
notion that we must concede to the government enormous power to fight an
undeclared, ill-defined and open-ended war on terrorism,” even if it means
giving up cherished freedoms. “And this is something about which we all
should be worried.”
National Catholic Reporter, September 6,
2002
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