Category Archives: State Oppression

France criticised over discrimination against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Racial profiling and some politicians exploiting racial and xenophobic stereotypes persist in France despite progress in fighting discrimination, a Council of Europe report said Tuesday.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) issued its fourth report on France with positive comments on the country’s High Authority against Discrimination and for Equality (HALDE) for “its key and growing role in the fight against racism”.

However, “while there had been improvements in certain areas, some issues gave rise for concern, such as minorities’ perception of the police, prejudice against Muslims and the tone of the immigration debate,” said Nils Muiznieks, chair of ECRI, the Council’s independent human rights body.

Many racial acts go unreported and for those that are referred to authorities there is a low conviction rate, the report said. “The police frequently resort to racial profiling and take law enforcement decisions on the basis of racial, ethnic or religious stereotypes” rather than individual behaviour, it said.

In the political arena, the report noted that most politicians condemn openly racial comments and race-related acts, but that there are some who exploit the issue. In relation to immigration, “there is widespread suspicion that non-citizens engage in fraud to obtain residence permits and access to rights,” the report said.

Regarding Muslims, part of French society doubts their willingness and ability to “respect French values”. “The debate on the prohibition of the niqab (the face-covering veil) has increased feelings of discrimination among Muslims and may result in further excluding some Muslim women from society,” the report said about the government’s considering a ban on Muslim women wearing the full veil in public.

Problems of discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, nationality or ethnic origin persists in access to employment, education, housing, and goods and services, the report added.

Middle East Online, 16 June 2010

Plastic bags placed over some spy cameras in Birmingham

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bags are to be put over scores of surveillance cameras in parts of Birmingham with large Muslim populations, after local objections.

Safer Birmingham Partnerships (SBP) said 216 cameras were put up including covert ones, mainly in the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook districts. The cameras were financed through a counter-terrorism fund, but the SBP said they would tackle all crime.

Councillor Salma Yaqoob said people had lost faith in the authorities. The Respect Party councillor for Sparkbrook said: “In terms of reassurance it’s going to take a lot more than plastic bags. The residents have lost faith with the authorities for their sneaky handling of the way they went about this and will not be reassured until they have been told the locations of the hidden cameras too.”

SBP said 72 cameras had been placed covertly and would not be covered by the plastic bags. It said 106 cameras were Automatic Number Plate Recognition devices that were purely trained on car registration plates at road level. SBP said 38 overt CCTV cameras had been installed as well, but none of the cameras would be used until after the consultation had been carried out.

The cameras were financed through the Association of Chief Police Officers’ (Acpo) Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM).

BBC News, 17 June 2010

See also the Guardian, 17 June 2010

Update:  See Salma Yaqoob, “Police mislead public over spy cameras”, Press release, 18 June 2010

Yasmin Qureshi calls on police to drop charges against anti-EDL demonstrators

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yasmin_QureshiBolton’s newest MP has accused Greater Manchester Police of heavy-handed tactics during March’s English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism rallies.

Now Yasmin Qureshi, who was elected as Bolton South East MP last month, is calling on GMP to drop charges against anti-fascist activists arrested on the day.

Ms Qureshi was on the UAF front line at the protest against the EDL’s rally in Victoria Square on March 20 and is leading the new national campaign calling on police not to prosecute left-wing protesters.

The newly formed Justice4Bolton campaign is arguing the use of conspiracy laws, rather than charges relating to specific incidents which would require greater evidence, “indicates a move towards de-legitimatising protests against the rise of fascism in the UK”.

Ms Qureshi said: “I did not see or hear any activity amongst the protesters that I would have described as violent disorder, though there were some police officers who, in my view, were being heavy-handed in some cases. I supported the aims of the protest against the English Defence League in Bolton and I was there.”

Justice4Bolton has already won the support of trade unions, anti-fascist organisations and influential MPs including former Northern Ireland and Wales Secretary Peter Hain.

Thousands of UAF and EDL demonstrators held counter-demonstrations in Victoria Square on March 20. Police made more than 70 arrests, with more than 50 of those UAF supporters. Among those arrested on the day were Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism, and Rhetta Moran, joint secretary of Greater Manchester UAF.

Mr Hain said: “The UAF has worked very hard to get rid of the British National Party and the fascist threat and should be congratulated, not prosecuted.”

Bolton News, 16 June 2010

Update:  Cf. “Police deny claims of EDL support”, Bolton News, 17 June 2010

Civil rights groups decry US Muslim’s no-fly plight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yahya WehelieU.S. civil liberties groups are protesting the case of a 26-year-old Muslim-American man who was placed on the no-fly list and barred from returning to the States after spending 18 months in Yemen.

Yahya Wehelie, an American citizen, remains stranded in Cairo after being stopped there by FBI agents while en route back to his Virginia home six weeks ago, The New York Times reports. The agents questioned Wehelie about his contact with other Americans in Yemen, including a New Jersey man suspected of joining al-Qaida and killing a hospital guard in Yemen.

Yehelie and his family, who live in Burke, Va., told the Times he despises al-Qaida and went to Yemen to study and meet a wife. Though issued a temporary passport and cleared by the FBI to return to the U.S., he remains on the federal no-fly list, unable to travel home by plane and fresh out of other options.

“How can he travel home if he can’t fly?” Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in an interview with AOL News. “We’re just concerned that this is part of a pattern of government officials stopping Muslim travelers, American Muslim citizens, to pressure them to give up the constitutional rights that they would normally have if they were on American soil.”

Hooper said Wehelie was interrogated several times, subjected to “psychological pressure” and denied access to an attorney. He told AOL News he emphatically objects to allowing anyone who is a danger to America to board a flight here, but said that does not seem to be the case with Wehelie. “These no-fly lists are vast,” he said. “There needs to be some legal type of oversight on who should really be on it.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has also decried Wehelie’s case and those like it, saying the “vast majority” involve American Muslims. “There is absolutely no legal basis for placing a U.S. citizen into effective exile. There’s no question that it’s illegal to do so,” Ben Wizner, an ACLU senior staff attorney, told AOL News. “If the U.S. wants to investigate [Wehelie], there is unquestionably a safe way to bring him home to do so.”

AOL News, 16 June 2010

See also CAIR press release, 16 June 2010

Stop these exclusion orders against Muslim preachers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sources tell me that the Home Office is currently considering issuing two exclusion orders. One would be against a Jamaican-born Muslim preacher called Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips and the other against Zakir Naik, who is due to arrive in the UK on Friday to begin a speaking tour to huge audiences at the Sheffield Arena, London’s Wembley Arena and the LG Arena in Birmingham’s NEC. Naik is based in Mumbai, India and has in recent years built up a huge international following among Muslims. His lectures and debates on the topic of comparative religion are played continuously on Peace TV – the satellite channel that he founded.

This is just the latest in a series of “naming and shaming” exclusion orders that began a couple of years ago when the former Labour government said that it would introduce a policy of banning “preachers of hate” from visiting the UK. At the end of last month the Sunday Times ran an article about Zakir Naik that seems to have panicked some people in the government. For his part Naik has since issued a press statement saying that he “unequivocally condemns acts of violence including 9/11, 7/7 and 7/11 [the serial train bombing in Mumbai], which are completely and absolutely unjustifiable on any basis.”

We already have a sufficient number of laws on the statute books to deal with incitement to hatred and violence, and the fact is that both Bilal Philips and Zakir Naik have visited the UK on several occasions in the past – and their speaking tours have passed by without incident. Neither speaker has said anything that has got them in trouble with the law, so why not just uphold our existing laws rather than seek to pre-emptively ban them? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the exclusion order policy is yet another government PR gimmick designed to show that it is getting tough on those it regards as being extremists.

Inayat Bunglawala at Comment is Free, 15 June 2010

Spanish government announces plans to ban veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cruzada contra el burkaSpain’s government plans to ban the use of the Islamic burqa in public places under a proposed new law on religious freedom, the justice minister said Tuesday.

“We believe that there are things like the burqa which are hard to reconcile with human dignity and which especially pose problems of identification in public places,” Francisco Caamano told reporters. The new law “will have to include measures on these symbols which impede identification in public places” for reasons of “security”, Caamano said.

His remarks came a day after the mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, announced it would be the first large city in Spain to ban the use of the full-face Islamic veil in public buildings.

Two other towns in the northeastern region of Catalonia, Lerida and El Venrell, have recently imposed bans on the use of the Islamic veil in public buildings. Two more, Tarragona and Gerona, are considering similar measures, as is Coin in the southern region of Andalucia.

AFP, 15 June 2010

Barcelona to ban veil in municipal buildings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Barcelona is to become the first major Spanish city to bar the use of face-covering Islamic veils in municipal buildings.

City Mayor Jordi Hereu announced the measure Monday but insisted it was not specifically religious. He says it is aimed at all dress that impedes identification, and thus includes motorcycle helmets and ski masks.

Lleida, also in the Spanish region of Catalonia, last month became the first Spanish city to regulate use of body-covering burqas or face-covering niqab garments.

Barcelona town hall said the measure was largely symbolic given that it is unusual to see women wearing burqas or niqabs in the city, which has a population of 1.5 million.

Associated Press, 14 June 2010

See also Reuters, which reports that a Partido Popular councillor has complained that the ban does not go far enough: “The mayoral decree is a half-measure, because as well as forbidding the burqa and niqab in public installations, it is necessary to forbid it on the street.”

‘Artificial debate’ on veil in Spain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Very few Spaniards have ever seen a Muslim woman dressed in a burqa – an all-body veil – walking on local streets.There are no more than an estimated few dozen burqas in the country of 46 million residents, yet the garment has become the object of a heated debate.

Seven municipalities have announced or are considering bans on the burqa, a conservative party is taking the matter to the senate, and some Muslim leaders have vowed to take legal action to reverse the bans. “This is an entirely artificial debate, with political motives behind it,” Encarnacion Gutierrez, secretary-general of Madrid’s Islamic Culture Foundation (FUNCI), told the German Press Agency dpa.

Spain has about 1.3 million Muslims. Most of them are of Moroccan origin. It is not rare for Muslim women in Spain to wear the Islamic headscarf or hijab, which covers the hair. Yet very few of them wear the niqab, a garment covering all but the eyes, and even fewer don the burqa, which includes a semi-transparent veil hiding the eyes.

The burqa, which is worn mainly in Afghanistan, and the niqab are thought to have a pre-Islamic origin. Yet opposition to all-body veils in the West has encouraged some Muslim women to claim them as a sign of their religious identity. In the north-eastern Spanish city of Lleida, for instance, some women reportedly started wearing the niqab after the municipality became the first in Spain to ban all-body veils from public buildings in May.

El Vendrell followed Lleida’s example on Friday, and five other north-eastern municipalities are considering similar bans. Muslim leaders from 11 mosques in the region intend to defend women’s “democratic” right to wear the burqa or niqab at the Constitutional Court.

“I cover myself to feel closer to Allah,” said Zohra Nia, a 38- year-old Moroccan woman who wears the niqab. “My goal is to hide my beauty” from men other than her husband or close relatives, Nia told the daily El Pais in Tarragona, one of the municipalities which are expected to outlaw the burqa and the niqab.

Spain’s main opposition conservative People’s Party (PP) is taking the debate to the senate, which it wants to adopt a motion calling on Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government to ban all- body veils from public places. “Most Spaniards regard the use of these garments as being discriminating, harmful and contrary to the dignity of women,” conservative senator Alicia Sanchez-Camacho said. The burqa is also a security issue, because its wearer cannot be identified, she pointed out.

Zapatero’s Socialist government has not taken a clear stance on the issue. Spain does not even have nationwide rules governing the use of the hijab, with some schools allowing pupils to wear it, while others expel girls who refuse to remove it in class.

Gutierrez says she opposes the use of the burqa, but sees bans as doing more harm than good. Debates on subjects such as the burqa could become “explosive” in Spain, which created an “anti-Muslim” Christian identity after expelling the last of its former Muslim rulers in the late 15th century, she said. It was contradictory for Spain to allow women to wear extremely scanty clothing, but to question women’s right to cover their bodies, Gutierrez said.Covering women’s bodies in a sign of chastity is not only an Islamic concept, but forms part of Christianity and other traditions as well, she pointed out.

DPA, 13 June 2010

Possible legal challenge to spy cameras in Muslim areas

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A counterterrorism surveillance project targeted at two Muslim neighbourhoods in Birmingham could be halted after human rights lawyers pledged to seek a judicial review.

There were angry scenes at two public meetings in the city this week, when officials were confronted over the findings of a Guardian investigation into the scheme to gather data about vehicles entering Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath.

Under Project Champion, the suburbs will be monitored by 150 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras – three times more than in the entire city centre. The cameras form “rings of steel”, meaning residents cannot enter or leave the areas without their cars being tracked. Data will be stored for two years.

Testing of cameras has begun, but plans to go live in early August are in jeopardy after lawyers acting for Liberty began gathering evidence for a legal challenge.

Lawyers from Liberty said Project Champion’s focus on predominantly Muslim areas may constitute a breach of rights to non-discrimination under article 14 of the Human Rights Act. “Spying on a whole community will only hamper efforts to tackle extremism,” said Corinna Ferguson, legal officer for Liberty. “This misguided scheme must not go ahead.”

The absence of any formal public consultation could also form grounds for a legal challenge, she added.

Guardian, 11 June 2010

Canadian court to rule on ‘veil’ testimony

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Ontario court is considering whether an alleged rape victim may testify with her face covered, which defendants say would call her truthfulness in question.

At a preliminary hearing last year, a judge ordered the 32-year-old woman to remove her niqab, or burqa, so defense lawyers could assess her claims of being molested. She resisted, saying her religion bars her from exposing her face to non-family members, the Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.

The defendants – a cousin and uncle of the woman – argue the truthfulness of her testimony cannot be determined if her face is hidden.

Some legal experts claim veils provide a convenient shield for a lying witness, while others reject the idea of facial expressions being a reliable guide to honesty, the newspaper said. The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund says disallowing veils would drive Muslim women from the justice system.

The case is currently before an Ontario appeals court.

UPI, 8 June 2010