Posted on 05/24/2002 9:39:59 AM PDT by Alan Chapman
The US justice department is investigating claims that many of the hundreds of Middle Eastern men detained in American jails after September 11 have been beaten and verbally abused by prison guards.
The inspector general, Glenn Fine, the justice department's internal watchdog, is conducting a "review of allegations" after lawyers representing some of the men still in detention said their clients had been kicked and punched.
Some detainees say abuse at the metropolitan detention centre in Brooklyn intensified after they cooperated with the initial investigation by the inspector general's office.
At least two began a hunger strike this week, their lawyers said. Many are being held for visa-related violations and have not been charged with a crime.
"They have been struck physically, strip-searched, deliberately stopped from praying; they've been cuffed behind their backs, picked up by their thumbs and dragged from one place to another," said Sandra Nicholls, representing two current detainees. "They feel they are suffering reprisals because they talked to the inspector general."
One inmate said he was told: "Now you're suffering like the people in the towers suffered." Two others recently deported had been physically abused before being put in solitary confinement, their lawyer, Martin Stolar, said.
One was "picked up and thrown from corner to corner of his cell while being accused of involvement in September 11," Mr Stolar said.
The second was "knocked around, pushed into a wall by [immigration service] agents, and kept in solitary confinement [for] 23 hours a day, lights on all the time, subject to verbal abuse [about his religion]".
Dennis Hasty, the detention centre's warden, was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Some basic privileges, such as the provision of pillows, were granted to the general prison population but not to the detainees, Ms Nicholls alleged.
"The murderers get this stuff and these people, who haven't been charged with anything, don't," she said.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, about 1,200 non-US nationals were detained for visa-related violations. While a handful did have connections to the hijackers, none has been charged with involvement in those atrocities.
Amnesty International has condemned the "extreme secrecy" with which the detentions have been handled, accusing the immigration and naturalisation service of violating international law.
The American Civil Liberties Union has brought a case against several counties where detainees are being held, accusing them of illegally withholding their names.
Another organisation, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, is suing the bureau of prisons in New York on the inmates' behalf.
Some of the remaining detainees, almost all of whom are being held in Brooklyn and two New Jersey jails, have agreed to voluntary deportation, but are still held for months, according to Drum, a campaigning organisations which holds weekly protests outside the prison.
One lawyer spoke of a four-month wait, even after a detainee had agreed to leave the country and the lawyer had bought his airline ticket.
"Families are being torn apart," said Monami Maulik, an immigrant rights organiser at Drum. "These people are being isolated, often not allowed access to legal assistance. This is racial profiling - the targeting and arresting of immigrants. We want answers."
Detention for minor immigration violations is almost unheard of, but an INS spokesman denied that the policy had been applied in a biased way.
"The actions taken are based upon the 9/11 investigation - period," Russ Bergeron said. "Not their ethnicity. Not their nationality. Not their religion."
And the problem is---?
When I saw the title, my first thought was that VISA decided to start using enforcers to collect on credit card debts.
/john
If you have to ask then you've answered your own question.
They're very skilled at lying. Do these detainees realize that there might, just might, be cameras watching their every move?
Scalping them is another matter entirely.
Not everyone trying to enter the country is plotting a massacre.
...or figuring out how to enter our country illegally...
Even people accused of committing violent crimes are not imprisoned for months without charges being filed against them.
Monami Maulik is a Community Organizer with DRUM (Desi Rising Up & Moving), a social justice organization for working class South Asian immigrants in NYC. DRUM works with immigrants jailed in INS detention centers and their families and with low-income undocumented immigrant youth. If you would like more information about DRUM's Racial Violence Hotline, Community Immigration Clinic series, INS Visitation program, or anti-war organizing, please contact (212) 631-3689 or email us at drum@drumnation.org
From “Organizing in Our Communities Post-September 11th,” by Monami Maulik:
The tragedies of September 11th continue to deeply hurt the South Asian community at large on three levels. First, we have lost over six hundred members of the South Asian community in the World Trade Center. Moreover, a large number of those missing were low-wage, undocumented immigrant service workers whose families do not qualify for federal aid and benefits. Second, during this period of grief, we have had to endure perhaps the worst mass-scale anti-Arab, anti-South Asian, and anti-Muslim violence this country has seen.
Hundreds of incidents ranging from threats to beatings to killings have been reported around the country. Our homes, communities, and places of worship have been under siege on a daily basis. And these are only the incidents that are reported. Moreover, this anti-immigrant backlash is currently being institutionalized via new anti-terrorist legislation, racial profiling, and the suspension of civil liberties. Approximately one thousand immigrants have been illegally detained since September 11th, most of whom are Arab, South Asian, and Muslim. Third, U.S. military presence in Pakistan to wage a war against Afghanistan has many of us concerned with the possible impending devastation of our communities and families back home.
Given this hostile climate nationally for the South Asian immigrant community, particularly for undocumented immigrants in the years to come, there is an urgent need now more than ever to organize against the growing conservatism that can undo years of anti-racist, feminist, anti-homophobic, and pro-working class struggle.
Our short-term objectives must be to re-build security in our communities against racial violence and provide emergency relief to undocumented families. Our long-term objectives need to challenge racism and xenophobia, organize to end state violence in the form of the Patriot Act and other anti-immigrant legislation, and to build the emerging anti-war movement through the inclusion of the South Asian community, particularly those whose voices are historically marginalized, such as women, undocumented immigrants, and low-wage workers.
But as socially conscious South Asians, perhaps our biggest challenge in organizing our communities in the coming years will be to counter the growing conservative backlash we are witnessing. In the past several weeks, mainstream South Asian organizations have followed the destructive path of blind patriotism that has fueled the horrific war against Afghanistan and the passage of the Patriot Act, one of the most anti-immigrant legislations passed by the U.S. in recent history. At the same time, conservative and communalist forces that have fueled anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit, and anti-Christian violence in India have been trying to lobby the U.S. government to inject its military might in South Asia to settle the war over Kashmir.
I'm curious. Do you object to government wealth redistribution on principle or only to undocumented immigrants?
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