The Right to Assemble and the War on Terror

There are so many injustices these days around the world and at home. You and I complain but what do we protest publicly? Do we use this power effectively? As a community we are known to angrily protest cartoons in Denmark but not the treatment of Muslims in Guantanamo, or the slaughter of civilians in Darfur, Lebanon, and Iraq. As Americans, and as Muslims, do we use-- or will we lose-- these rights to assemble publicly?

The First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits the government from abridging "the right of the people peaceably to assemble." The right to assemble is rooted in Magna Carta protections of the right to petition the government. It has been called “a privilege” of citizens that “must be exercised in subordination to the general comfort and convenience”—and national security—but the prevailing “due process” view has been that it is a human right extending to “aliens” and people of all classes and backgrounds.

This basic freedom has protected striking workers, civil rights advocates, anti-war demonstrators and even Ku Klux Klan marchers. There must a "clear and present danger" or an "imminent incitement of lawlessness" before government officials may restrict free-assembly rights. Supreme Court has even forbidden cities to charge a higher permit fee to groups whose march would likely require more police protection.

This is how it should be. However, these are troubling times. The government is regularly challenging these rights in the name of public order, increasingly using spies as well as mass arrests, even preventative arrests to prevent assembly. The New York Times reported last weekend that, “For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.”

Organizations reported on included a large range of faith-based peace groups; as well as the New York City AIDS Housing Network, the Arab Muslim American Foundation, Activists for the Liberation of Palestine, Queers for Peace and Justice and the 1199 Bread and Roses Cultural Project. Diverse people of social conscience and ideals!

“The police have no authority to spy on lawful political activity, and this wide-ranging N.Y.P.D. program was wrong and illegal,” said Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “In the coming weeks, the city will be required to disclose to us many more details about its pre-convention surveillance of groups and activists, and many will be shocked by the breadth of the Police Department’s political surveillance operation.”

The New York police department likes to claim that surveillance of domestic political activities is essential to fighting terrorism. An investigation by their Intelligence Division led to the arrest —three days before the convention — of a man who had spoken earlier with a police informer about a hypothetical bombing of the Herald Square subway station. This somewhat unconvincing case was fed to the media to justify the expansion of police powers; in the same way that the threat of terrorism has been used to expand the police powers of the Bush Administration. We must be wary of the misuse of power.

With increasing surveillance, the chilling effect on free speech is not hard to imagine. And troublingly, our actions affect the rights of others in other countries. Our American “War on Terror” is used to justify a brutal crackdown on dissent in Egypt, Pakistan, and the former Soviet Union, and many other places. This week the Times reported the increasing crackdown on dissent in Russia: “About 10 elderly people yelling “Fascists! Fascists!” pressed their backs against the shields of a second wave of police officers but were knocked to the ground…This has become the typical government response to the so-called Dissenters’ Marches put on by The Other Russia, an uneasy coalition of liberals and radicals led by the former chess champion Garry Kasparov…Officers repeatedly stopped young men, checking documents and searching bags. Asked about the searches, an officer who refused to be identified said, “When I was in New York around Sept. 11, I was also stopped six times,” seemingly equating the expected march with the terrorist attacks.”

In the name of fighting terror, thousands of riot police prevented even a small protest in Russia last week. Newspapers have been confiscated for “evidence of extremism” universities and homes visited by police and roadblocks set up.

In Pakistan last week, police have detained over two thousand political opposition members in order to thwart nationwide protests to denounce Gen. Musharraf’s suspension of the Chief Justice Chaudhry. From exile, former Prime Ministers Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party and Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League announced that their party members would join hands nevertheless. Somewhat provocatively, Musharraf has appointed a Hindu as Chief Justice to try Mr. Chaudhry and more protests are expected.

Governments become paranoid as their legitimacy is called into question. In Egypt, the Mubarak regime promoted a new set of laws that would end judicial oversight of elections and essentially overriding all basic rights enshrined in its Article 41. Amnesty International has called this the "greatest erosion of human rights" since Egypt's emergency laws were put into place in 1981.

The Times reported last week, “Polling stations in the capital, Cairo, were virtually deserted hours after voting began, except for one in the suburb of Helwan where the government had used four buses to bring workers from a state factory. ''I swear to God, I don't know what I'm voting for,'' said Hassan abdel Salaam, a house painter. ''If I didn't vote, maybe I would get into trouble. I have five children and we live in one room.” Another worker, Magdy Fadail, refused to oblige and tore up his voting card. ''What should I vote for?'' he asked. ''We are not human beings. They ship us like animals in cars so we get in and say yes.''

Authoritarian culture is not merely an American export. But our agents are helping to spread repression in the name of security. For many years, the School of the Americas provided counter insurgency training to repressive regimes. But now there are many such partnerships with intelligence services around the world.

Most recently, according to the Independent, at least 150 people arrested in Kenya after fleeing violence in Somalia have been secretly flown to Somalia and Ethiopia, where they are being held incommunicado in underground prisons and interrogated by the FBI. "The Americans had direct access to the prisoners, one on one," said Al-Amin Kimathi of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, adding that US diplomatic vehicles carried the suspects.

Reader, we need to hear your voice at the upcoming rallies for freedom, immigrants rights, civil rights and due process. Sure, we may be under surveillance. So what? We have the right. If we do not use it, we lose it. And as Muslims and as Americans we also have a sacred responsibility to speak out against injustice. What do you think? And will you say?