Category Archives: State Oppression

Aussie Muslims say targeted by new terror laws

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Australia is to impose draconian counter-terrorism laws after Prime Minister John Howard won unanimous support from state premiers Tuesday, September 27, for the laws dubbed unfair by Muslims.

Trying to justify the new laws, Queensland state premier Peter Beattie told a news conference, “In many sense the laws that we have agreed to today are draconian laws, but they are necessary laws to protect Australians,” Reuters reported.

Describing the legislation as “unusual laws because we live in unusual circumstances”, Howard said the London bombings in July had brought home the “chilling reality” that “terrorist attacks” could be staged by a country’s own citizens, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“We are worried there are people in our country who might just do this,” Howard told a news conference after a meeting with the Council of Australian Governments.

The laws include tighter checks on citizenship applicants, jail terms for inciting violence, detention of suspects without charge for up to two weeks, and curtailing suspects’ movements and contacts for up to a year.

They also will provide police with greater stop, search and question powers. But they will be reviewed after five years and include a 10-year “sunset clause”, after which they would have to be dropped, altered or renewed, Howard said.

A prominent moderate Islamic leader, Keyser Trad of the Islamic Friendship Association, immediately condemned the laws and said they targeted Muslims. “They have the potential of creating a fascist state and have the potential to divide society dramatically,” he told AFP.

“I am quite frightened by these laws,” he said, suggesting that they could be used against people who criticized government policy such as the deployment of troops to Iraq.

Islam Online, 27 September 2005 

Guantánamo inmate says US told him to spy on al-Jazeera

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The US military told an al-Jazeera cameraman being held at Guantánamo Bay that he would be released as long as he agreed to spy on journalists at the Arabic news channel, according to documents seen by the Guardian. The journalist has been in the prison without charge for three-and-a-half years after being accused by the US of being a terrorist, allegations he denies. He claims that he has been interrogated more than 100 times but not asked about alleged terrorist offences. Instead, Sami Muhyideen al-Hajj says US military personnel have alleged during interrogation that al-Jazeera has been infiltrated by al-Qaida and that one of its presenters is linked to Islamists.

Guardian, 26 September 2005

Spain jails al-Jazeera reporter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Alouni behind barsA court in Madrid has jailed former al-Jazeera journalist Tayssir Alouni for collaborating with a terrorist organisation. The Qatar-based pan-Arab news network said it would appeal against the conviction, which it called “unfair”. Alouni – who protests his innocence – interviewed Osama Bin Laden before the 11 September attacks. He was sentenced to seven years for acting as financial courier to Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.

BBC News, 26 September 2005

See also Islam Online, 26 September 2005

Muslims want Australian PM to stop inciting hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims rallying in Sydney say the federal government’s proposed anti-terrorism laws would be a major infringement of their rights. Hundreds of members of the Muslim community met at Punchbowl, in Sydney’s south-west, to demonstrate their concerns that the federal government’s actions were inciting hatred towards their culture.

Federation of Australian Muslim Students and Youth (FAMSY) National president Chaaban Omran said Prime Minister John Howard had failed his community by not doing enough to stop anti-Muslim discourse. Mr Omran said the recent London bombings, calls by politicians to ban Muslim headdress in public schools and the media’s negative portrayal of the religion were feeding a growing prejudice. But he described Canberra’s proposed new anti-terror laws as be the largest infringement on the rights of Muslim Australians.

Earlier this month, Mr Howard flagged a new package of security measures, including tighter checks on citizenship applicants, jail terms for inciting violence and police powers to detain suspects without charge for up to a fortnight.

“Instead of coming out with practical steps to address terrorism, these laws will just work to create more intolerance towards Muslims,” Mr Omran told AAP. “As Australians, we just want to be treated like everyone else, we don’t wish to have all these laws set out that will lead to us becoming targets.”

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Hizb ban debated

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbIn the first significant public debate as to whether the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir should be proscribed, some of the organisation’s most severe critics opposed the move.

The debate, entitled Should Hizb ut-Tahrir be Proscribed?, was chaired by David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine, who opened the proceedings by requesting there be no “rants” from the 150-strong audience. He said the ban had been floated by Tony Blair in the wake of July 7 because, it was argued, HT “creates an ideological context in which extremism can flourish”.

For a debate about an organisation described by its critics as hostile to everything the UK stands for, the setting could not have been more British. It was held in what was once William Gladstone’s music room in a building close to the Mall, and tea and biscuits were served.

Imran Waheed, a psychiatrist, opened the batting for HT by saying: “There are many myths I would like to dispel … We are not looking for a Taliban state or one that oppresses women.”

He also denied the organisation was anti-semitic. He said HT had been formed as a non-violent Islamic party in 1953 to replace the “unelected dictators and despots” ruling in much of the Muslim world. The aim was for a caliphate, an Islamic authority, to govern in Muslim countries but the group was not seeking to introduce one into Britain.

“Our members have never resorted to armed struggle,” he said. “They are as likely to use violence as Tony Blair is to pay for his own holidays.”

Guardian, 23 September 2005

Swedish party urges monitoring Muslim students

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Swedish right-wing Liberal People’s Party has called on school teachers to spy on their Muslim students under the pretext of combating extremism, drawing immediate rebuke from the teachers union.

“We want Swedish teachers to spy on their Muslim students who have extremist tendencies,” the party’s education spokesman, Jan Björklund, said Wednesday, September 21.

Liberal People’s Party MP Lotta Edholm has also proposed cooperation between the teachers and Säpo (intelligence service) to hunt down “Muslim extremists”. “We see for us a form of information exchange: Säpo should inform teachers about these groups but the schools should also give important information to Säpo about how young people think,” she added.

Since 2002 the Liberal People’s Party has been seeking to attract voters by adopting right-wing populist policies. Party leader Lars Leijonborg has proposed tougher rules for immigrants applying for the Swedish citizenship. The party recently hosted controversial Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a vocal critic of Islam.

The proposal of the Liberal People’s Party drew immediate fire from the teachers’ union Lärarförbundet. “If one is going to observe students on a very vague basis and do what Säpo has asked it could have long-term and destructive consequences for the individual student,” Eva-Lis Preisz, the union’s chairwoman, told Aftonbladet newspaper.

In an opinion poll by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, some 64% of the respondents opposed spying on Muslim school children, while 34% supported the proposal.

Islam Online, 22 September 2005

21st-century McCarthyism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Hizb ut-Tahrir does not espouse violence even against dictatorial Arab governments, much less against western states. If Britain bans such an organisation even though it is not supporting terrorism, it will be an echo of what the US government did from the late 1940s amid McCarthyist paranoia. Then Communist party members were named and blacklisted, foreign-born members deported, leaders put on trial for plotting the overthrow of the government – though the US government never banned the Communist party outright.”

Natasha Walter in the Guardian, 21 September 2005

My fight for justice for Guantánamo prisoners

Posted on by Bob Pitt

My fight for justice for Guantánamo prisoners

By John Higginson

Metro, 20 September 2005

“The most important thing going on right now is the hunger strike in Guantánamo”, says lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith. “There are ten British nationals all of them to my knowledge going into their sixth week of starving themselves to death. These people are going to die in the next few weeks and the military are trying to keep all that a secret.”

Stafford-Smith, 46, is the legal director of Reprieve, a British charity protecting the human rights of people facing the death penalty.

One of the worst alleged miscarriages of justice in Guantánamo Bay is that of Omar Deghayes, a Libyan who spent 15 years in London. The 35-year-old completed a degree here and went to Afghanistan to carry out humanitarian law work. He moved to Pakistan and was seized by US forces in 2002.

According to his supporters, he was picked up by bounty hunters and sold to US troops. He has not been charged with any offence. The only evidence against him is a video which the US claims links him to terrorism – but facial recognition experts say he is not the man in the video.

“Omar was one of America’s 50 top terrorists based on a video they had of a terrorist in Chechnya”, Mr Stafford-Smith said. “When Omar finally found out why he was being held, he told me he had never been to Chechnya. The video is not Omar. The man is a Chechnyan terrorist, who is believed to have died in April 2004. So Omar has been held for three-and-a-half years on a total misidentification.

“He has been pretty savagely treated in Guantánamo and blinded in his right eye. He told me, ‘I may as well take my life into my own hands rather than waiting for them to take it’. He is firm in his belief to take his life.”

‘Don’t apologize, governor Romney!’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Andrew C. McCarthy gives his enthusiastic backing to Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts governor who called for the wiretapping of US moques.

National Review Online, 19 September 2005

But McCarthy’s plan – which would involve snooping on “not all mosques, but many of them” – is a bit liberal for Robert Spencer’s tastes: “The only problem here is that we cannot know which mosques need monitoring without monitoring them.” According to Spencer, 80% of mosques in the US are under “extremist” influence. Clearly, the only solution is to wiretap the lot.

Jihad Watch, 19 September 2005