War on terror equals war on minorities

UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) - The U.S.-led global war on terror — which began five years ago after a rash of terrorist attacks on the United States — has been transformed primarily into a war against minorities, says a London-based human rights organisation.

"Too often the war on terror has come at the expense of human rights," says Mark Lattimer, executive director of Minority Rights Group (MRG) International.

In most cases, he said, people from minority communities have been the target, often suffering in silence because of their minority status. The minorities singled out as part of racial profiling, both by the United States and the West, include Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, Pakistanis — and, also in general, Middle Easterners and South Asians.

The United States, Canada and some European states, including Britain, Spain and Holland, have seen anti-terror laws fuel violations of the rights of Muslim, Asian, north African and Middle Eastern minority communities, Lattimer said.

The Muslims and South Asians living in these countries, he pointed out, often feel targeted and isolated, potentially leading to an increase in sympathy with extremist groups, the silencing of moderate voices and setbacks for women's rights.

Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, says the administration of President George W. Bush has received a free pass on many of its so-called anti-terrorist initiatives that violate civil rights because the targets of those efforts are minorities, particularly Muslims and South Asians.

He said that after the attacks on the United States on Sep. 11, 2001, there were the round-ups of Muslim non-citizens from certain countries, the interrogation of thousands of young Muslims and the failed criminal prosecution of many men, suspected of terrorism, because of their Muslim faith.

"For the U.S. administration and for some other governments, a key factor leading to an arrest is the religion or national origin of the supposed suspect," Ratner told IPS.

Muslims are perceived by many in the United States as "the other," a perception that allows them to be treated inhumanely without mass protest, he said, adding that it is hard to imagine those of the non-Muslim majority being rendered to other countries for torture, sent to CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) secret sites or to the U.S.-run Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba, or tried by military commissions.

Sadly, Ratner argued, the United States, which should be the leader in assuring equality of all before the law, has now become the example for the contrary proposition: Muslim faith and country of origin are factors that can lead to suspicion.

"It was similar in the United States during World War II. The United States rounded up Japanese, but did not do so with those of German or Italian heritage. It was thought that the United States learned a lesson from that example; it did not," he added.

Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS there's no doubt that many governments have been exploiting the "war on terror" slogan to try to justify a multitude of sins against basic human rights.

The Bush administration has led the way in this regard, "setting a horrific example — as well as actively winking, nodding and giving support to regimes that mouth the war on terror mantra as a cover for violating human rights," Solomon told IPS.

He said the conclusions of the MRG report ring true — especially because, in the power dynamics within so many countries, racial and religious and ethnic minorities routinely suffer from chronic discrimination and exclusion from power.

Oppressive regimes seek to retain and expand power that rests on grievous economic and political inequities, which often run parallel to racism, ethnic prejudice and religious suppression, said Solomon, author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death".

"Washington's global agenda has to do with economic power, military dominance and geopolitical positioning. As an adaptable umbrella of rhetoric, the war on terror provides superb shelter for what Martin Luther King Jr. called the madness of militarism. And of course all kinds of horrible assaults on human rights become normalised in the process," he added.

In a statement released Friday, MRG said that since Sep. 11, 2001, governments have increasingly used the war on terror to target minorities, particularly ethnic and religious ones, and clamp down on their rights.