Islam News @ NYTWould you like your own blog hosted at Talk Islam? Email the admin at "salaam at talk islam dot info" !
Talk Islam uses Wordpress MU and the Prologue theme by Automattic
DISCLAIMER: Please see the About Talk Islam page for fair use issues and our privacy policy.
DONATE: Talk Islam needs your support!
A Somali militant group, Hizbul Islam, has denounced the mass arrest of hundreds of Somali immigrants in Kenya after protests over the treatment of Abdullah al Faisal. The group issued no threat of retaliation.
Hizbul Islam was aligned with al Shabaab until October when the two groups turned on each other.
The Jesuit Refugee Service has released a report that it hopes will prompt Italy to reconsider its policy of deporting illegal migrants to Libya.
One migrant recalls the words guards used to deny help to one of his dehydrated friends: “Here the hospital is not for black people but only for Libyans. If you want, go back and die in your country.”
He says a boy, who suffered from asthma, died shortly after being told: “If you come here on your own, you die on your own.”
“Many of us had scabies. Some of my friends had swollen genitals. When the guards saw this they beat them hard with a stick, put them in solitary confinement and just left them there,” another migrant says.
….Living in Tripoli is described as a frightening prospect, living in fear of being robbed or beaten by the locals, even children.
“A little boy will come up to you and search for your money. If you refuse he will hit you, spit at you and report you to the police. You just put up your hands and allow him to check your pockets. You are nothing, he is Libyan.”
If only the migrants were attractive young women, Qaddafi might be making a conspicuous display of sparing no expense on their behalf.
Things you think you’d never hear in America: ‘We can make him disappear.’
“If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008.
Also present was Amnesty International’s Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report “Jailed Without Justice” and said in an interview, “It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn’t believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren’t anything wrong.”
Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants — nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag.
This is related to the previous post:
In 2006 ICE punished several Iraqi hunger strikers in Virginia–they were protesting being unlawfully held for more than six months after agreeing to deportation–by shuffling them between a variety of different facilities, ensuring that they would not encounter lawyers or be found by loved ones.
The plaintiffs initiated the lawsuit in 2002 on behalf of Arab and Muslim aliens who were held on immigration violations following the Sept. 11 terror attacks and subjected to abuse, mistreatment and lengthy detentions.
The abuse included beatings, strip searches and sleep deprivation. The allegations have been substantiated by two reports by the Office of the Inspector General.
Five of the men settled with the government in November. A sixth plaintiff withdrew his claims several years ago.
Rachel Meeropol of the Center for Constitutional Rights served as lead counsel for the plaintiffs. She called Friday’s ruling a “mixed bag.”
“By dismissing [the equal protection] claim, the circuit has endorsed using religion and ethnicity as a proxy for suspicion of terrorist activity. That’s the part of the decision we’re disappointed in,” Meeropol said.
(via)
The HPV vaccine mandate for immigrant women has been eliminated.
This week the reproductive justice movement is celebrating a significant victory. Effective December 14, immigrant women and girls will no longer be forced to get Gardasil, a vaccine developed by Merck and Company to prevent transmission of the strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) linked to cervical cancer. This marks the reversal of a harmful and discriminatory rule originally put in place in July 2008 by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that took away the ability of immigrant women and girls to make informed choices of whether or not to get the Gardasil injection.
The regimen of shots for HPV, which is sexually transmitted, costs $360, creating additional financial and legal barriers for green card applicants. Also,
…progressive groups acknowledged that the mandatory use of a medical procedure on a targeted population when it is not required of the general population is discriminatory. Like their U.S. citizen counterparts, all prospective immigrant women should have the opportunity to make an informed decision about their use of the HPV vaccine, weighing both the potential costs and health benefits of using the vaccine.
The vaccine is recommended but not required for the general population.
Due to the frequency of street violence against those identified as South Asians and Muslims in Italy, we need to create a new tag here at Talk Islam to categorize them since there are so many attacks. I haven’t been blogging them all, but I think it’s time to start. Any suggestions on a good short tag that describes the problem and/or might resemble the Google search of anyone trying to do research or reporting?
Anyway, here’s the latest:
Italy: Bangladeshi immigrant severely beaten on the outskirts of Rome, 30 arrested.
The attackers were reportedly aged between 15 and 20 years of age. They were at a cafe across the street from the park when they spotted the migrants.
A witness quoted by the Italian daily Il Messaggero heard them say “We must make these niggers disappear. We can’t allow these niggers to roam around Acilia any longer.”
At that point the young men approached four Bangladeshi migrants who were sitting at a park bench.
“You are a bunch of dirty people, we do not want you here in Acilia, you must all leave,” one of the young men reportedly shouted. “You dirty niggers we will show you that you have to do what we say,” said another one.
Three of the immigrants reportedly ran away after being kicked and punched. One of the Bangladeshi migrants, Mohammed P. however, did not escape and was brutally beaten by the youths who surrounded him while shouting “Leave here you dirty nigger.”
A witness called the police and the victim was quickly taken to hospital where doctors treated him for head trauma and a nose fracture.
…his argument — that we shouldn’t be counting people who can’t vote — doesn’t merely cut against the undocumented. It cuts against all immigrants — who, by definition, are also already non-citizens.
Moreover, the Census Bureau isn’t charged with accurately counting the number of citizens living within the United States — it’s charged with counting the entire population.
….Beck would have the Census omit not just unauthorized migrants, but also lawful permanent residents, humanitarian migrants, and foreign-born residents here legally.
Of course, he’s arguing for this because he believes counting the undocumented will give the eeeeevil SEIU more power in its quest for total global domination or something like that. You have to watch the video to get it all, and even then it never quite holds together, much less make sense.
Video at link above.
A story that is appearing here and there in the foreign media (I’m in the US) about an “honour killing” in northern Italy.
A Moroccan man is facing murder charges after allegedly stabbing his 18-year-old daughter to death for falling in love with an older man in a small northern Italian town. Sanaa Dafani was stabbed in the throat while she was sitting in a car with her 31-year-old boyfriend in Montereale Valcellina, northwest of Trieste, late Tuesday.
….There is also widespread speculation that El Ketawi Dafani, believed to be a Muslim, objected to religious differences between his daughter and her boyfriend and their plans to live together.
And then from this South African publication, a report of an Italian government minister describing it as an act of “absurd religious war,” and calling to kick out immigrants who don’t integrate.
“Terrible events as this one invite us to continue to integrate immigrants according to the Italian model, where each person is free to practice their own faith but where they can only stay in the country if they accept the laws, including respect of human rights, including those of women,” she said.
The second story notes that the prosecutor “refused to confirm whether the murder had religious motives.”
CNN prime time anchor Lou Dobbs is scheduled to appear at a rally by an anti-immigrant organization, FAIR, that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
From Media Matters:
FAIR, an organization that has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and that has been sharply criticized for its racially-tinged ads, was founded by John Tanton, who has a long history of making racist statements and espousing racist beliefs.
A FAIR press release announced that Dobbs will broadcast his show from the rally and will be joined by 47 conservative talk radio hosts.
This is not the first time Mr. Dobbs has pushed racist conspiracy theories or defamatory falsehoods about immigrants. We wrote you in 2007 to bring to your attention his utterly false claim that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had appeared in the United States in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. (The real number, according to official statistics, was about 400. Mr. Dobbs took his spurious information from the late right-wing extremist, Madeleine Cosman.) In addition, Mr. Dobbs has reported as fact the so-called Aztlan conspiracy, which claims that undocumented Mexican immigrants are part of a plot to “reconquer” the American Southwest. He has suggested there is something to a related conspiracy theory that claims the governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada are secretly planning to merge into the “North American Union.” He has falsely claimed that “illegal aliens” fill one third of American prison and jail cells. And Mr. Dobbs has routinely disparaged, on CNN’s air, those who have had the integrity to point out the falsity of these and similar claims.
Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It’s time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.
In its zeal to crack down on illegal immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is detaining and deporting American citizens.
Associated press expose on the explosive growth of the US population of immigrants in detention – many of whom are not here illegally and have no criminal issues. There were 32,000 in detention as of January 25. Looks at the stories of a 20-year-old Bangladeshi honor student who was locked up for 20 months before being deported back “home.” She has lived in the US since age 5 and only speaks English. Also an Algerian imam with US born children who has been here 11 years, and an Iraqi who was actually begging ICE to “do their job” and deport him already.
Immigrant advocates say ICE prefers incarceration for non-criminal immigrants, even though alternatives are available, for one major reason: to strong-arm people.
“When you’re there for weeks and weeks or months or months, your determination to fight your charges is reduced,” said Judy Green, a policy analyst with Justice Strategies, a nonpartisan think tank on incarceration issues. The goal is “to keep intense pressure on detainees to agree to removal and not to fight on whatever grounds they have for relief.”