Religious Freedom News
Philadelphia, Vermont Pass Anti-Patriot Act Resolutions
P H I L A D E L P H I A, May 30 - Philadelphia on Thursday became the largest city in the nation to pass a resolution condemning the USA Patriot Act, the same day that Vermont became the third state to do so.
The Philadelphia city council's nonbinding resolution, which says that USA Patriot "weakens, contradicts and undermines" constitutionally protected rights, passed 13-3. It urges the region's three congressmen and two senators to push for a repeal of the act entirely - or its provisions that "violate fundamental rights and liberties."
The vote made Philadelphia the 117th state, county, city or town to condemn the law, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a Massachusetts-based organization that provides a template for anti-Patriot Act resolutions on its Web site and tracks their passage.
"I said it a year ago and I am more convinced today that President Bush, led by [Attorney General] John Ashcroft, is treading on dangerous ground when he continues to wage efforts to end terrorism at the expense of - fundamental civil liberties," said Councilman Angel Ortiz, the resolution's sponsor.
The USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, granted the federal government sweeping new powers to use wiretaps, electronic and computer eavesdropping and searches and the authority to access a wide range of financial and other information in its investigations.
Philadelphia, with a population of about 1.5 million, is the largest city to pass an anti-Patriot Act resolution, according to the defense committee. Broward County, Florida, with a population of about 1.6 million, is the largest community to have done so, according to the group.
Other cities that have passed anti-Patriot Act resolutions include Reading and York in Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Detroit and San Francisco. Besides Vermont, Alaska and Hawaii have both passed statewide
resolutions.
One city, Arcata, Calif., has made enforcing of the law a local offense punishable by a fine - though that law is largely symbolic, since federal law trumps any local ordinance.
Philadelphia's resolution expresses Council's "support of the United States government in its campaign against global terrorism, but also reaffirms that any efforts to end terrorism not be waged at the expense of the fundamental civil liberties of the people of Philadelphia, and all citizens of the United States."
Source: ABC News/The Associated Press
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Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations
By PHILIP SHENON The New York Times
WASHINGTON, July 20- A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department (news - web sites) has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.
The inspector general's report, which was presented to Congress last week and is awaiting public release, is likely to raise new concern among lawmakers about whether the Justice Department can police itself when its employees are accused of violating the rights of Muslim and Arab immigrants and others swept up in terrorism investigations under the 2001 law.
The report said that in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten.
The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies that make up the Justice Department, with most of them assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal penitentiaries and detention centers.
The report said that credible accusations were also made against employees of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; most of the immigration agency was consolidated earlier this year into the Department of Homeland Security.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Barbara Comstock, said tonight that the department "takes its obligations very seriously to protect civil rights and civil liberties, and the small number of credible allegations will be thoroughly investigated."
Ms. Comstock noted that the department was continuing to review accusations made last month in a separate report by the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, that found broader problems in the department's treatment of hundreds of illegal immigrants rounded up after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
While most of the accusations in the report are still under investigation, the report said a handful had been substantiated, including those against a federal prison doctor who was reprimanded after reportedly telling an inmate during a physical examination that "if I was in charge, I would execute every one of you" because of "the crimes you all did."
The report did not otherwise identify the doctor or name the federal detention center where he worked. The doctor, it said, had "allegedly treated other inmates in a cruel and unprofessional manner."
The report said that the inspector general's office was continuing to investigate a separate case in which about 20 inmates at a federal detention center, which was not identified, had recently accused a corrections officer of abusive behavior, including ordering a Muslim inmate to remove his shirt "so the officer could use it to shine his shoes."
In that case, the report said, the inspector general's office was able to obtain a statement from the officer admitting that he had verbally abused the Muslim inmate and that he had been "less that completely candid" with internal investigators from the Bureau of Prisons. The inspector general's office said it had also obtained a sworn statement from another prison worker confirming the inmates' accusations.
The report did not directly criticize the Bureau of Prisons for its handling of an earlier internal investigation of the officer, but the report noted that the earlier inquiry had been closed and the accused officer initially cleared without anyone interviewing the inmates or the officer.
The report is the second in recent weeks from the inspector general to focus on the way the Justice Department is carrying out the broad new surveillance and detention powers it gained under the Patriot Act, which was passed by Congress a month after the 9/11 attacks.
In the first report, which was made public on June 2, Mr. Fine, whose job is to act as the department's internal watchdog, found that hundreds of illegal immigrants had been mistreated after they were detained following the attacks.
That report found that many inmates languished in unduly harsh conditions for months, and that the department had made little effort to distinguish legitimate terrorist suspects from others picked up in roundups of illegal immigrants.
The first report brought widespread, bipartisan criticism of the Justice Department, which defended its conduct at the time, saying that it "made no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further attacks."
Ms. Comstock, the spokeswoman, said tonight that the department had been sensitive to concerns about civil rights and civil liberties after the 9/11 attacks, and that the department had been aggressive in investigating more that 500 cases of complaints of ethnic "hate crimes" linked to backlash from the attacks.
"We've had 13 federal prosecutions of 18 defendants to date, with a 100 percent conviction rate," she said. "We have a very aggressive effort against post-9/11 discrimination."
A copy of the report, which was dated July 17 and provided to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, was made available to The New York Times by the office of Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House panel.
"This report shows that we have only begun to scratch the surface with respect to the Justice Department's disregard of constitutional rights and civil liberties," Mr. Conyers said in a statement. "I commend the inspector general for having the courage and independence to highlight the degree to which the administration's war on terror has misfired and harmed innocent victims with no ties to terror whatsoever.`
The report is Mr. Fine's evaluation of his efforts to enforce provisions of the Patriot Act that require his office to investigate complaints of abuses of civil rights and civil liberties by Justice Department employees. The provision was inserted into the law by members of Congress who said they feared that the Patriot Act might lead to widespread law enforcement abuses.
The report draws no broad conclusions about the extent of abuses by Justice Department employees, although it suggests that the relatively small staff of the inspector general's office has been overwhelmed by accusations of abuse, many filed by Muslim or Arab inmates in federal detention centers.
The inspector general said that from Dec. 16 through June 15, his office received 1,073 complaints "suggesting a Patriot Act-related" abuse of civil rights or civil liberties.
The report suggested that hundreds of the accusations were easily dismissed as not credible or impossible to prove. But of the remainder, 272 were determined to fall within the inspector general's jurisdiction, with 34 raising "credible Patriot Act violations on their face."
In those 34 cases, it said, the accusations "ranged in seriousness from alleged beatings of immigration detainees to B.O.P. correctional officers allegedly verbally abusing inmates."
The report said that two of the cases were referred to internal investigators at the Federal Bureau of Investigation because they involved bureau employees. In one case, the report said, the bureau investigated and determined to be unsubstantiated a complaint that an F.B.I. agent had "displayed aggressive, hostile and demeaning behavior while administering a pre-employment polygraph examination."
The report said that the second case involved accusations from a naturalized citizen of Lebanese descent that the F.B.I. had invaded his home based on false information and wrongly accused him of possessing an AK-47 rifle. That case, it said, is still under investigation by the bureau.
Source: Yahoo News, July 21, 2003
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Muslim girl suspended for head scarf
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) -- An 11-year-old Oklahoma girl has been suspended from a public school because officials said her Muslim head scarf violates dress code policies.
Board officials met Friday to discuss the fate of suspended sixth-grader Nashala "Tallah" Hern, who was asked to leave school in the eastern Oklahoma town of Muskogee on October 1 because she refused to remove her head scarf, called a "hijab."
School officials instituted a dress code in 1997 prohibiting the wearing of hats and other head coverings indoors. Officials said they implemented the code to stem gang-related activity. Hern declined to remove her hijab, saying it would violate the way she observes her religion.
Officials at the school, the Ben Franklin Science Academy, previously summoned Hern to the office on September 11 to inform her she was no longer allowed to wear the scarf. She had worn it since the school year started a few weeks earlier.
A school attorney said federal education rules adopted in 1998 do not allow for exceptions for religious beliefs.
"As I see it right now, I don't think we can make a special accommodation for religious wear," said school attorney D.D. Hayes. "You treat religious items the same as you would as any other item, no better, no worse. Our dress code prohibits headgear, period."
He added that, under the dress code, a Jewish child would not be allowed to wear a yarmulke, the skullcap traditionally worn by orthodox Jews, to school.
Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the Muslim girl is being singled out because of her religious beliefs.
The girl's father met with school officials Friday in a closed-door hearing to appeal the decision. The school board is expected to have a decision next Wednesday on whether the girl can return to school wearing her head scarf, officials said.
Source: CNN (October 11, 2003)
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Pentagon Defends Gen. Who Chided Muslims
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Pentagon (news - web sites) leaders on Thursday spoke up in support of a top general who has told church audiences that the war on terrorism is a battle with Satan and that Muslims worship idols.
Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin has made several speeches — some in uniform — at evangelical Christian churches in which he cast the war on terrorism in religious terms. Boykin said of a 1993 battle with a Muslim militia leader in Somalia: "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."
Boykin did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday he had not seen Boykin's comments, but he praised the three-star general, who is the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
"He is an officer that has an outstanding record in the United States armed forces," Rumsfeld said at a news conference.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had spoken in uniform at prayer breakfasts, adding he did not think Boykin broke any military rules by giving talks at churches.
"There is a very wide gray area on what the rules permit," Myers said. "At first blush, it doesn't look like any rules were broken."
A Republican senator visiting the Pentagon Thursday was more critical.
Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island said he had not been aware of Boykin's statements as reported in the news media, then added, "If that's accurate, to me it's deplorable."
A Muslim civil rights group on Thursday called for Boykin to be reassigned.
"Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policy-making position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America's motives and intentions," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Awad's statement noted that a verse in the Quran says Muslims believe in the same God as Jews and Christians.
Boykin's church speeches, first reported by NBC News and the Los Angeles Times, cast the war on terrorism as a religious battle between Christians and the forces of evil.
Appearing in dress uniform before a religious group in Oregon in June, Boykin said Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan."
Rumsfeld on Thursday repeated the Bush administration position that the war on terrorism is not a war against Islam but against people "who have tried to hijack a religion."
The defense secretary said he could not prevent military officials from making controversial statements.
"We're a free people. And that's the wonderful thing about our country," Rumsfeld said. "I think that for anyone to run around and think that that can be managed and controlled is probably wrong. Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) could do it pretty well, because he'd go around killing people if they said things he didn't like."
Source: Yahoo News, Oct 16, 2003
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Muslims hold rallies in France against anti-headscarf law for schools
PARIS (AFP) - Hundreds of Muslims marching in French cities to protest a new law banning Islamic headscarves in schools threatened to show their discontent by voting against the government in regional elections next month.
However the demonstrations failed to produce the groundswell of opposition the organisers had been hoping for among France's five-million strong Muslim population.
In Paris, an estimated 1,000 men and women -- many of the latter wearing scarves over their hair -- marched with banners proclaiming "No to the racist law against young people who wear headscarves" and "One scarf = One vote".
In the southern city of Marseille, 300 to 500 protesters gathered, according to different counts given by police and organisers.
Police in Montpellier said a 600-strong march filed through the city, while organisers said 1,500 took part, and in Lille, up to 800 protesters came out.
Despite the relatively low turn-outs, protesters said they were determined to maintain their public pressure against the draft law on "secularity", which passed its first hurdle in the lower house of parliament last Tuesday and is now before the upper house.
President Jacques Chirac's ruling centre-right Union for a Popular Majority party has struck a deal with the opposition Socialist party that will almost see the measure become law in time for the start of the next school year in September.
The law bans the wearing of conspicuous religious ornamentation such as Islamic headscarves, Jewish skull caps and large Christian crosses in state-run schools. It may also be applied to the turbans worn by France's tiny Sikh minority and to students wearing bandanas or beards.
Some French politicians and rights groups abroad have criticised the proposed law as a disguised form of discrimination against the country's big North African population, which is predominantly Muslim and often found in troubled urban areas around the big cities.
Teachers and the French public overwhelmingly support the ban, however, saying it upholds France's republican ideal of a strict separation of state and religion.
Jacques Myard, the mayor of Maisons-Laffitte and MP for the Yvelines region outside Paris that is home to many North African immigrant families, defended the planned legislation in a letter to Saturday's International Herald Tribune newspaper by saying it was needed to block a rise in radical Islam.
"In schools, religious neutrality provides the necessary serenity for the absorption of knowledge while respecting the opinions," he said.
"These rules operated perfectly until 1989, the moment when fundamentalist Muslims wanted Islamic headscarves to be permitted in schools."
That, and other demands such as women-only hours for public swimming pools and same-sex doctors, "is aimed at placing women in a minority status, which is wholly out of line with our principles and our values of equality of the sexes and of all citizens," he said.
But the organisers of the marches Saturday -- associations tied to an influential Geneva-based Islamic philosopher, Tariq Ramadan, and extreme-left groups -- say the measure amounts to discrimination.
Muslim women demonstrating in the Paris march insisted that wearing scarves was entirely their own choice, and should thus be protected as a sign of religious freedom.
One 33-year-old who gave only her first name, Samira, said the government's focus on the law "is a false problem that hides the real problems of the Muslim community: unemployment, poverty and exclusion."
Another, who declined to be identified, mocked France's motto of "liberty, equality, fraternity" by saying: "Liberty, equality -- but only on their terms."
Another woman, Ghislaine, 31, said the government would feel the weight of the Muslim community's fury in regional elections to be held March 21 and 28.
"We are part of the electorate -- we're going to try and punish them," she said.
Source: Yahoo News, February 14, 2004
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Activists on Missouri campus split on Patriot Act
By Chris Blank
Special to CNN
Thursday, June 24, 2004
COLUMBIA, Missouri (CNN) -- The Iraq war, jobs and the economy have overshadowed the contentious issue of the Patriot Act during this year's presidential election, but it has not been completely overlooked by activists on the University of Missouri campus.
College Democrats object to the act, touted by two-term Missouri governor and former senator Attorney General John Ashcroft, but believe the average voter doesn't care or know much about it.
"I really don't think it's going to be that big of a deal in the election," College Democrats President Caleb Lewis said.
Nevertheless, Lewis said his group will try to educate people on campus and around the Columbia area by distributing information about the successes and failures of the law.
President Bush has called on Congress to renew and expand the law before it expires next year. In 2001, the Patriot Act passed in the U.S. Senate 98-1.
Among other things, the act relaxes restrictions on information-sharing between U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officers and authorizes "roving wiretaps," so that law enforcement can get court orders to wiretap phones a suspected terrorist might use.
"There are massive abuses of civil liberties. I don't know the last time we've seen something this serious," Lewis added.
Despite the Bush administration's view of the Patriot Act as an anti-terrorism tool, opponents cite provisions allowing a single search warrant to tap multiple telephone lines as an example of the problems.
Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union also object to the provision that allows the government to detain non-U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism for up to seven days without charges.
"But the Patriot Act does have some good things, like increasing the penalties for terrorist attacks, increasing the statute of limitations for terrorism offenses, and increased money laundering restrictions," Lewis said.
College Republicans President Brian Johnson said his organization has not taken an official stance but said he believed the majority of the members support the law.
"In any open society, there is going to be a continuum between freedom and security, and I think any debate about how to strike that balance is a good debate," Johnson said. "I do believe the Patriot Act strikes a good balance, but I'm also a Libertarian at heart. I want to hear good arguments on both sides."
Johnson said the debate has been disappointing because opponents have substituted exaggeration for fact.
"I went to a presentation by the [American Civil Liberties Union] about the Patriot Act really wanting to hear a clear argument against the Patriot Act, but the woman who introduced the speaker was a complete leftist who said we got hit on September 11 and then we got hit again by John Ashcroft," Johnson said. "That kind of hyperbole and rhetoric just doesn't make sense."
Lacking knowledge
While the College Republicans and Democrats debated some of the implications of the Patriot Act on foreign policy in the first of several scheduled debates, many students only know that the law exists.
"I agree with the idea of increasing security, but I think that maybe it's going overboard, but I really don't know very much about it," M.U. senior Marsha Oo said.
"I'm not really familiar with it because I have just heard of it from my mom watching the news," freshman Greg Williams said. "It sounds interesting, and I want to learn more."
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/missouri/index.html
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Pennsylvania Couple Risks Jail Time Sign on Their House Opposing Abortion
by Maria Gallagher
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
August 10, 2004
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The pro-abortion American Civil Liberties Union is coming to the defense of a Pennsylvania couple who have been threatened with jail time for posting a pro-life sign on their front porch.
Paula Knudsen of the ACLU of Pennsylvania said in an Associated Press article that the issue "cuts to the heart of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights."
Three weeks ago, Colman and Frances Wessel of Paxtang, Pennsylvania erected a sign with a pro-life message and a picture of Jesus Christ.
Paxtang city officials claim the sign violates a borough ordinance restricting signs to those "for public, religious and charitable institutions and uses such as parks, schools, churches and similar uses."
But the ACLU, which routinely files litigation defending legal abortion, takes a different view, arguing that the Wessels are simply exercising their Constitutional rights in posting the sign.
"It doesn't matter whether it's affixed to your house, in your yard, or to a banner flying from your balcony. Political and religious messages are protected by the First Amendment," the ACLU's Knudsen said.
Still, borough officials have threatened the Wessels with up to two months in jail and a $500 fine for refusing to remove the sign from outside their home.
A code enforcement officer sent a letter to the couple saying the sign "does not promote a charity of any kind. Therefore, you are required to remove the sign immediately."
However, the Wessels have refused to budge.
Colman Wessel told the local press, "We're just exercising our freedom of speech and religion. Is it the pro-life words or the picture of Jesus they don't like?"
The Wessel house is not the only Paxtang home with signs out front. Other homes sport signs in support of political candidates and troops in Iraq.
However, Paxtang Mayor William J. Parker, who says he opposes abortion, wants the sign removed.
Parker told the local press, "If everyone with a self-serving interest puts a sign up, we'd have signs all over Paxtang. That's a visual impairment. When will it end?"
Pro-life leaders in Pennsylvania say they're shocked at the way the Wessels have been treated. The sign contains no graphic images -- only a statement in defense of the pro-life cause and the "Sacred Heart of Jesus," a popular Catholic image.
"If you can have a flag on your porch proclaiming your allegiance to your favorite football team, you ought to be able to show your support for the pro-life movement in a similar way," said a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.
Source: LifeNews.com
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