A reader of Newsday paper, irate over my criticisms of the Bush administration, e-mailed me a warning the other day. Pretty soon, he said, people won’t be allowed to write the kinds of things you are writing.
The way things are going, he could be right. This attitude — that you’d better not criticize the government, and if you do you’re unpatriotic and deserve to be shipped off to a country where they chop people’s hands off — is gaining currency here. It’s emboldened by the message that’s emanating from Washington to Americans and to other countries, and says: “We’re in charge now, and you’d better watch what you do and say.’’
This used to be the kind of behavior we deplored in undemocratic governments. But it’s growing here, and Sept. 11 and the war with Iraq are being used to justify it. One proof of this is the way peaceful anti-war protesters have been treated by the New York City Police Department, people like Carey Larsen and Daniel Ueda. In February, Ueda, a 26-year-old mechanical engineer from New Jersey, was arrested during an anti-war march on Fifth Avenue when he and others sat down in the street. He was arrested again in March after a similar sit-down demonstration following a peaceful march to Washington Square Park.
This month Larsen, 28, a domestic violence counselor, took part in a demonstration outside the offices of The Carlyle Group, a private investment house with holdings in the defense industry. After some protesters sat down on the sidewalk, Larsen, who says she was merely walking and holding a sign, was arrested as well.
At police headquarters both Ueda and Larsen were asked questions that seemed strange, considering the minor offenses with which they were charged. Questions like: How many protests had they participated in, what groups were they affiliated with, how they heard about the demonstrations, how — in Ueda’s case — he got into the city from New Jersey, how they felt about the war with Iraq and whether they thought the United States should have entered World War II. Yes, really. When they balked at answering the political questions, they were warned they’d be held longer if they didn’t cooperate. On one occasion, Ueda’s charges were later dismissed; the other time, he was charged with disorderly conduct and given a court date. Larsen was given a court date, but isn’t sure what she’s charged with.
A group of lawyers has protested to a federal judge that it’s unlawful and unconstitutional for police to ask these kinds of questions of people involved in peaceful demonstrations. A spokesman for the city’s corporation counsel’s office told a reporter that it is lawful since the demonstrators were arrested for crimes.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous!’’ Martin Stolar, one of the protesters’ lawyers, told me. He said this was the same kind of behavior the Police Department engaged in during the 1960s and 1970s, when it created dossiers on thousands of civil-rights activists and Vietnam War protesters.
Federal District Judge Charles Haight ruled in 1980 that this kind of police surveillance was illegal, but he relaxed the rules somewhat after Sept. 11. Now the Police Department is stretching the rules to make participating in a peaceful sit-in a crime that justifies prying into a person’s political beliefs.
Stolar faxed me a copy of the “demonstration debriefing form’’ that’s being used by New York police to question anti-war protesters. The form bears the seal of the Police Department’s intelligence division on one side, and on the other a seal I was unable to decipher, but which Stolar said reads “New York, New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, Executive Office of the President of the United States.’’
You tell me what war protesters have to do with drug trafficking and why the president needs to know their political views. “It’s one thing to protect people from danger,’’ Ueda told me. “It’s another to protect people from dissent.’’
This kind of interrogation of peaceful protesters is intimidation, pure and simple. It’s like a lot of other scary things that have been going on lately, and, as my irate reader warned me, your most humble columnist could be next.
- Arab NewsOpinion 24 April 2003
