A Death Knell for Liberty: Responding to the War on our Rights

[Guest guest]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0922-15.htm

 

Published on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

 

 

A Death Knell for Liberty

Responding to the War on our Rights Before it's Too Late

by Michelle Chen

 

 

The war on civil liberties is now three years old. It was conceived at

the instant that the September 11 attacks spurred a government with

imperialist designs to exploit the perfect combination of widespread

ignorance and fear. The post-attack panic instantly legitimized the

distortion of constitutional freedom to accommodate a new concept of

" national security. " An era of homegrown, state-sponsored terror was born.

 

September 11 set the stage for a crackdown on immigrants of

unprecedented vigor and brutality. Within weeks, over 1200 mostly

Muslim and Arab immigrants were locked up; many were later deported.

The Department of Justice has admitted prison staff frequently abused

detainees at New York's Metropolitan Detention Center, where 762

immigrants were held on minor immigration violations. Arab and Muslim

communities across the country have suffered through FBI harassment

and " volunteer " interrogations.

 

Recent legislative proposals belatedly attempt to repair some of the

deterioration of our constitutional rights. The Homeland Security

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Protection Act, for example, gives

teeth to the Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within the

Department of Homeland Security. Currently, this position, despite its

cool-sounding name, can merely provide " constructive advice so that

policy is shaped in ways that are mindful of and consistent with civil

rights and civil liberties, " according to DHS's Strategic Plan. (More

succinctly, the Officer could do what activists and legal experts have

been doing for years—and share the privilege of being ignored.) The

bill would establish the Officer's powers of oversight over the DHS,

and would make information regarding internal investigations publicly

accessible. Though it will by no means guarantee transparency, it will

at least provide a legal framework to counter DHS authority.

 

The Civil Liberties Restoration Act would check some of the broadest

powers granted to police and officials in the anti-terrorist hysteria.

First, it would rescind the DOJ's executive order, issued days after

September 11, that all immigration hearings related to the attacks be

closed to the public as well as friends and relatives. The DOJ's swift

trashing of due process ultimately led to the shielding of 600 court

proceedings from any sort of public oversight. The CLRA would provide

some protection for immigrants as they negotiate the system,

preventing detention without disclosure of charges, and ensuring the

right to bail (with the ominous exception of loosely defined " flight

risks " and " security threats " ). Jail or deportation could not be used

as punishment for " technical registration violations, " whereas under

the Patriot Act, neglecting to fill out a change-of-address form could

be grounds for deportation. The CLRA would also create an Immigration

Review Commission to assess the conduct of immigration courts, whose

authority has been handicapped by the DOJ.

 

Other legislation designed to prevent the Patriot Act from suffocating

civil liberties includes the Senate's SAFE (Security and Freedom

Ensured) Act, which would prohibit FBI wiretaps and secret searches

without a search warrant; and the Patriot Oversight Restoration Act,

which would curb reckless enforcement of immigration regulations and

the labeling of political protest as " terrorism. " Introducing the

bill, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont reflected somber regret among

legislators two years after passing the Patriot Act: " In the

quarter-century that I have served in the Senate, no administration

has been more secretive, more resistant to congressional oversight,

and more disposed to acting unilaterally, without the approval of the

American people or their democratically elected representatives. "

 

Yet many members of Congress seem either content with the Patriot Act

or astonishingly ignorant of the threat it poses, and several bills

have aimed to strengthen it. The Terrorist Penalties Enhancement Act

multitasks in its assault on human rights by automatically making any

terrorist act " that results in the death of a person " punishable by

death. The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, which

recently passed in both houses, swells the FBI's powers to search

personal financial records as part of any " terrorist investigation. "

The Antiterrorism Tools Enhancement Act enhances the tools of

dictatorship by authorizing DOJ officials to subpoena information and

testimony in so-called terrorism cases even if they cannot demonstrate

probable cause.

 

Along with the upcoming elections, in which all 435 House seats are up

for grabs, these pieces of legislation may reshape the public's

conception of the legitimate scope of government power and the skewed

balance of freedom and security. But as we've seen in the mass

round-ups of immigrants and the slowly tightening noose around our

everyday freedoms, the gap between the law and reality in our

communities stretches each day. Protective legislation will barely

begin to mend the systematic destruction of the legal basis of our

liberties—the Bill of Rights. The green light for the ruthless abuse

of power by the executive branch is not the permissiveness of laws per

se, but the passive trust of an ill-informed public. After all, Bush

and the DOJ officially " banned " racial profiling last year—but quietly

exempted the racist targeting of Arabs, South Asians and Muslims in

terrorism investigations. When no one is watching, even policies that

seem to protect equal rights can be enforced in ways that further

entrench discrimination.

 

More pivotal than the congressional debates on the Patriot Act is the

public dialogue about defending our rights and resisting abuse of

authority—a discourse that has colored every social movement in recent

history and must now be renewed with greater urgency than ever before.

Legislative actions on civil liberties reveal a growing awareness

among lawmakers that we have taken a drastic, possibly irreversible

step backward. But nothing will be achieved unless society as a whole

is conscious and vocal—not only about our rights, but also our

responsibility to protect them from authoritarian power and bigotry.

 

Three years after the anti-terror alarm became a death knell for

liberty, countless lives have been wrecked by deportations,

detentions, and presumption of guilt, with no progress in " national

security " to show for it. If we do not rise against this injustice but

instead surrender to fear, allowing our government to cripple the

spirit of democracy—we'll know where the greatest damage has been done.

 

Michelle Chen (cainzine) is a freelance writer who recently

returned from China after spending a year on a Fulbright research

fellowship. Her writing has appeared in South China Morning Post,

Clamor, ZNet, IntheFray.com, Working for Change, Asia Times and other

publications.