U.S. Religious, Racial Profiling Growing, Experts Testify

by Dina Rashed

Timothy K. Lewis, former judge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, presided over the hearing while a number of commissioners listened to testimonies of the unequal treatment that challenges the communities on almost daily basis.

"All testimonies will be put in a report for international distribution and we hope that the American Congress will also act on this issue of human rights," said Lewis.

"We are not against effective law enforcement, but we are against abuse of civil rights in the name of law enforcement," he said.

Lewis said that evidence is compiling that on the contrary these measures are working against law enforcement as communities are becoming more frightened and flow of information is drying up from the sources.

Drawing on his experience with the Muslim and Arab communities, Jim Fennerty, of the National Lawyers Guild, said they have been under attack every time they criticized the American foreign policy, and even more after 9/11.

"We are heading to a society where everything is based on secrecy," he said, referring to the measures of law enforcement officers in rounding up whom they consider suspects without properly notifying their family members about their charges or even their whereabouts.

Fennerty also slammed the new measures of the law enforcement such as FBI, which rounds up members of the community whenever they speak in criticism of U.S. foreign policy and the war abroad.

There is no basis for FBI's involvement in peaceful public demonstrations especially those organized by pro-Palestinian in response to Middle East events, since such demonstrations are not a criminal activity, a requirement for FBI to investigate, he stressed.

Furthermore, this profiling has been extended from individuals to institutions and charities working with Muslims and Arabs, Fennerty said, asserting that such charities are suffering because people are afraid of donating lest they would be labeled terrorist.

"It's an attitude now, it's easy to scapegoat every Muslim and every Palestinian," he concluded.

Ali Khan, the Executive Director of the Chicago chapter of the American Muslim Council, gave a more personal account of ethnic and religious profiling in airports following September 11.

He said that like the Japanese Americans were rounded up during the World War II, and the communists in the 1960s, now Muslims are suffering discriminatory policies.

"I am as American as anyone in this room, I love this country, but I am the only one that has to prove his patriotism," Khan lamented.

He recalled his own experience in a Las Vegas airport where he was not permitted aboard the plane and was interrogated in front of all other passengers because of his name, religion and ethnic background.

Khan contended that organizations such as Amnesty International and American Civil Liberties Union can help the community with many cases of profiling that do not make it to the light.

"A lot of people are frightened and scared and do not even come out with what happens to them," he noted.

Latino communities, on the other hand, suffer other forms of profiling mainly associated with the work and housing policies.

Florentina Rendon, from the HOPE Fair Housing Center, explained the numerous raids that police officers mount on houses of the Latino community for suspicion of overcrowdings.

In many cases, families are prohibited from using the rear doors of their homes, and accepting visitors in order to control the human flow into the houses.

Emma Lozano, of Centro sin Fronteras, complained the unfair employment policies that many Latino face in the U.S., and said that the community is being taken advantage of because they offer cheap labor and get much fewer benefits than the average American worker.

African Americans still face numerous police brutality whether during raids on drugs by officers in many public housing units or within the police stations, said Lydia Taylor, of the Justice Coalition of Greater Chicago.

She added that the war on drugs and gangs has been the excuse of law enforcement to terrorize the black community, and that the Chicago city's ban on racial profiling did not go beyond the rhetoric.

"Racial profiling is an extension of slavery," Taylor charged.

Such testimonies come in consistence with prior testimonies of communities' members on Saturday which brought over 150 community members and activists to listen to experiences of minorities who have been unjustly targeted.

The two hearings have been organized by a number of Chicago-based and national organizations such as Amnesty International, Applied Research Center, Arab American Action Network, Coalition of African, Asian, European and Latino Immigrants of Illinois, Justice Coalition of Greater Chicago and Southwest Youth Collaboration.

"The United Nations was founded on the Human Rights Declaration, peace and security of the entire international community was based on eradicating racial discrimination," said Nancy Bothne, Midwest Regional Director for Amnesty International, in her remarks.

This documentation of testimonies will be a strong tool for many community leaders and activists involved in the civil rights movement in the U.S.

They will also serve as an educational tool about the discrimination that minorities face and activist hope that reports from the two hearings will enable them to convince law-makers on the local and the national level of the gravity of many legislations that negatively impacts lives of hardworking immigrants.