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Guilty till proven innocent
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By
Lamya Tawfik, IOL Cairo Office
CAIRO,
October 2 (IslamOnline) – Egyptian analysts severely criticized the
U.S. policy which was implemented Tuesday, October 1, by the
U.S. immigration authorities in which certain individuals from Middle
Eastern and other Muslim countries will be registered upon entry.
According
to the U.K. daily newspaper, the Independent, the measure means that
anyone deemed to fit a “terrorist” profile will be questioned,
fingerprinted and photographed at border posts.
It
is intended to prevent a repeat of security lapses of the kind that
allowed the 11 September hijackers to live undetected in the U.S. for
so long, the paper reported.
The
Independent said that theoretically, every one of the 35 million
foreigners who visit the U.S. in a year could be affected. In
practice, however, the policy will focus on citizens of Iran, Libya,
Iraq, Syria, and Sudan, who will be routinely registered when they
enter the country.
Other
Middle Eastern and Arab countries will be also be affected, it said.
Speaking
on the issue, Mohammad Sayed Saeed, the correspondent for Egyptian
daily newspaper Al-Ahram in Washington said that the procedure is
discriminatory and anti-Muslim.
“There
is a lot of effort being done here to see that this policy is changed,
especially lobbying the congress men and women who have agreed to this
policy,” he said, adding that day after day, the animosity against
Muslims in the U.S. is increasing.
“There
was a noticeable drop in the number of Arab and Muslim visitors coming
in as tourists to the United States during the summer, and especially
among the gulf residents. The reasons, he said, include the terror
caused by the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stance which many of the U.S.
media outlets choose to take.
“Another
reason, is the American foreign policy, especially regarding Iraq and
other Arab countries,” said Saeed.
“There
was also a 50 per cent drop in the number of Arab and Muslim students
that were accepted in the U.S. universities,” he said.
“Discriminatory
acts are very dangerous. Any act that disregards equality is not
acceptable. It holds the innocent guilty for the acts of a few
extremists,” he said.
Saeed
added that there is an increase fear in the U.S. of hidden terrorism,
since most of the 9/11 hijackers were in fact normal people.
However,
he added the U.S. government has been clear from the beginning about
not tolerating anti-Muslim hate crimes and the Department of Justice
has been most of the time, diligent about punishing perpetrators of
such sporadic incidents.
Bahey
Al Deen Hassan, the director of the Cairo Human Rights Center, also
told IslamOnline that the procedure adopted by the U.S. government is
discriminatory.
“However,
it is no different from the discrimination that some Arabs and
especially Palestinians face in a few Arab airports,” he said.
The
U.S. Justice Department says that anyone who has paid frequent visits
to the Middle East, North Africa, Cuba or North Korea – all
considered regions with links to terrorism – is liable to face
special questioning if they can not provide a satisfactory explanation
for their trips, reported the Independent.
The
provisions have drawn strong protest in the U.S. from civil liberties
groups and Arab-American organizations, which complain that they are
discriminatory by singling out people exclusively because of their
race or religion, it added.
