Many of you are familiar with the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria who later emigrated to Canada. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in computer engineering, Arar worked in Ottawa as a telecommunications engineer. On a stopover in New York as he was returning to Montreal, Canada from a vacation in Tunisia in September 2002, U.S. officials detained Arar, claiming he had links to al-Qaeda, and deported him to Syria, even though he was the holder of a Canadian passport.
There is evidence that the United States may have been acting on misleading information from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in seizing Arar. Arar’s removal was initially described as a deportation. However, his removal was not validated by the United States department of Homeland Security and hence his removal was more in the nature of an extraordinary rendition, a United States extrajudicial method involving the removal of suspected criminals or terrorists to third countries to undergo what are often abusive interrogation techniques. Arar is not the only person to have been subjected to this process. Another well-known case is that of Khalid El-Masri, a German born in Kuwait to Lebanese parents. El-Masri was detained by Macedonian officials at the border when he sought to enter on a vacation trip. He was handed over to American security officials and flown to Afghanistan where he underwent abusive interrogation techniques. No charges were ever brought.When Arar returned to Canada more than a year after being seized, he, too, indicated that he had been tortured during his incarceration and accused American officials of sending him to Syria knowing that torture would be practiced. Click here to listen to Arar telling his own story.
On January 26, 2007 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology to Arar on behalf of the Canadian government and announced that Arar would receive a total of 12.5 million dollars to settle his claim. In the United States, United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy has indicated that he will hold hearings into Mr. Arar's case. Senator Patrick Leahy has called the United State's removal of Mr. Arar to Syria absurd and outrageous, noting that instead of sending Mr. Arar a "couple of hundred miles to Canada and turned over to the Canadian authorities, . . . he was sent thousands of miles away to Syria."
Is this a case of impermissible racial or ethnic profiling? Some have argued that in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, discrimination against people of apparent Middle Eastern background has become commonplace throughout much of the West. In the first few years after the attacks, any person from the Middle-East had to be fingerprinted and photographed before gaining entrance into the United States. It has been reported that of all the people searched or otherwise stopped at the security checkpoints, people with passports from a Middle- Eastern country or a specific stereotypical “Middle-Eastern” look made up the largest percent. In response to the criticism of this increased scrutiny, some have argued that a failure to look closely at those appearing "Middle-Eastern" would be a bow to political correctness and would endanger the public.
For the most part, prior to September 11, 2001 those profiled as criminals in Western countries, especially the United States, were typically of African or Latin ancestry. Phrases such as “driving while black or brown” (a DWB), and “walking while black” became part of the lexicon as persons of color were far more often stopped, questioned and searched while in motor vehicles or on foot than their white counterparts. Prior to September 11, the principal crime concern in the airports of the West was illicit drugs, and very often African and Latin-ancestored women and men were questioned , harassed, and even strip searched by airport security officials in search of drugs.
Subsequent to September 11, as race and ethnicity based security profiling broadened to include those of apparent Middle-Eastern descent, many blacks and Latinos engaged in sarcastic jokes whose punch lines centered on the fact that they enjoyed new “company” in racial and ethnic security scrutiny. Middle-Easterners had, up to September 11, enjoyed the status of honorary white in some Western venues; or at least, it was clear that they were not to be feared in the same way that blacks or other racial minorities were. However, in a post September 11 world, “flying while Muslim” (based on the obviously erroneous assumption that every Middle Easterner is a Muslim) has joined the panoply of imagined offenses of the members of the “Other Brotherhood”.
What do you think?
