TODAY'S PALMER RAIDS
FBI spies on hundreds of Muslims
By Leslie Feinberg
Many people belatedly recognized that the sweeping roundup
of immigrants in the anti-communist Palmer Raids in the United
States after World War I, or the internment of Japanese people
during World War II, was racist and xenophobic.
But how many can see the racist, anti-immigrant character of
state repression while it is taking place--like right now?
That's the time when clear thinking and instinctive solidarity
with communities under siege must kick in.
"Seeking Terrorist Plots, the FBI Is Tracking Hundreds of
Muslims" blared a front-age article in the Oct. 6 New York
Times. The article explained that "senior law enforcement
officials say the surveillance campaign is being carried out by
every major FBI office in the country and involves 24-hour
monitoring of the suspects' telephone calls, email messages and
Internet use, as well as scrutiny of their credit-card charges,
their travel and their visits to neighborhood gathering places,
including mosques.
"The campaign, which has also involved efforts to recruit
the suspects' friends and family members as government
informers, has raised alarm from civil liberties groups and
some Arab-American and Muslim leaders."
An unnamed senior law enforcement official said, "The
terrorists don't know it, but we're listening in all the time."
Terrorists? None of the people monitored has been convicted of
any crime. What ever happened to innocent until proven
guilty?
On Oct. 4, for example, Attorney General John Ashcroft
announced the arrests of four U.S. citizens in Portland, Ore.,
accusing them of "plotting after the Sept. 11 attacks to join
with Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in a 'jihad' against the
United States." Two other people named as suspects were
reportedly being hunted overseas. (New York Times, Oct. 5)
Prosecutors claim that the six tried to travel to
Afghanistan, supposedly to join Al Qaeda after 9/11, but were
unable to complete their trip. That's it.
Yet from this allegedly aborted trip spring these charges:
conspiracy to wage war against the United States, conspiracy to
provide material support and resources to Al Qaeda, conspiracy
to contribute services to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and
possessing firearms to further crimes of violence. (New York
Post, Oct. 5)
If convicted, they could spend the rest of their lives in
prison cells.
How did the investigation of the six begin? On Sept. 29,
2001, a sheriff's deputy in Washington state said he was
responding to a noise complaint and discovered some people in
"Middle Eastern attire" firing weapons at a gravel pit. They
were breaking no laws. But, reported the New York Post, "the
clothing and foreign accent" of one of the men, a Jordanian
citizen, "stuck in his mind," so the deputy notified the
FBI.
In recent weeks, arrests of 11 people in separate cases in
Lackawanna, N.Y., Detroit and Seattle have been widely heralded
in headlines as blows against "terrorism."
But buried in the Oct. 5 Times report are more understated
caveats like this: "Defense lawyers, civil libertarians and
Muslim leaders have questioned the strength of the evidence in
cases like the one brought today.
"Privately, even some law enforcement officials expressed
skepticism that the people arrested recently represented as
serious a threat as the Justice Department maintains."
Future generations will be horrified at the state repression
of the Bush/Ashcroft gang. But it's what present generations of
activists do that matters most.
That's why the demand to stop the racist mass roundups of
Arab, South Asian and Muslim people in the United States will
be voiced in full throat at the Oct. 26 protest in Washington,
D.C.
Reprinted from the Oct. 17, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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