Civil rights and media latest casualties of our times
By Brenda Norrell Lakota Journal Correspondent
RAPID CITY, S.D. -- American Indians say the new regulations aimed at fighting terrorism limit civil rights while giving the National Security Administration advanced powers to monitor e-mail and cell phone calls, places Indigenous peoples at risk of being detained on suspicion and makes it a criminal offense to wear face paint or bandanas in public forums.
The 125-clause anti-terrorism bill, expected to be in effect by Christmas, makes it a criminal offence to refuse a police officer's request to remove hand and face coverings, such as masks and face paint, in certain situations.
Native people involved in the human rights struggle of Zapatistas and other Indigenous peoples worldwide are equally alarmed by President Bush's plan to establish military tribunals to prosecute foreigners, in lieu of United States courts, on charges of terrorism. The military tribunal could hand down death sentences.
Eulynda Toledo-Benalli, Dine' founder of First Nations North and South, said the United States was founded on the terrorism and bioterrorism of Indigenous peoples.
Benalli said the most recent limitations on civil liberties are alarming in the context of history, including the genocidial spread of smallpox to Indian people.
"How can a nation state, like the United States, an imperialist state, take such actions when their very principles of 'democracy' were founded on terrorism and bioterrorism.
"As far as I'm concerned, they need to clean up their acts, face the truths, and realize their roots of terrorism committed against the first sufferers and survivors of their terrorist acts before they accuse anyone else -- maybe then I will believe their 'truths.'
"It's really ironic to hear the myth of 'freedom' perpetuated in the U.S."
Benalli said Indigenous peoples have become prisoners of democracy.
"First of all, as an Indigenous person, having been colonized and in the colonizer's minds 'conquered,' we continue to be what one of my friends calls 'prisoners of democracy.'
"We cannot make our decisions towards self-determination without negotiating and getting a seal or stamp, or an okay by the great white father in Washington."
Meanwhile, critics say the media is the latest casualty of the times. They charge the mainstream media produces parrot-like repetitions of federal press releases, bows to government-imposed censorship and reports the war in Afghanistan as cheerleaders for the Bush administration.
In Albuquerque, Benalli said the effect of corporate takeovers of the media are obvious in the layoff of a longtime investigative television reporter from Acoma Pueblo, Conroy Chino, by KOB-TV.
"Rather than seeing Conroy as necessary to our rightful place as Indigenous peoples in media as a first and foremost reason to keep him in the media, the corporation decides 'they cannot afford him.'"
Benalli, founder of First Nations North and South uniting the struggles of Indian people in the Americas, has organized Navajo and Lakota support for Indians in Chiapas, offering exchanges for culture, agriculture and weaving. She said Indigenous peoples in other countries face the same restrictions on their voices and human rights as in the United States.
"The imperialist nations, especially the European nations continue to silence and marginalize the voices of Indigenous peoples."
In an open letter to President Bush, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu Tum of Guatemala, said it is time for Indian people to stop dying in other peoples' wars.
Menchu Tum said President Bush, in summoning the peoples of the world to war, voiced fear in a nation which fails to recognize the genocide of Indigenous peoples.
"In the name of progress, pluralism, tolerance and liberty, you leave no choice to those of us who are not fortunate enough to share this sense of liberty and the benefits of the civilization you wish to defend for your people, we who never had sympathy for terrorism since we were its victims.
"We, who are proud expressions of other civilizations; who live day to day with the hope of turning discrimination and plunder into recognition and respect; who carry in our souls the pain of the genocide perpetrated against our peoples; finally, we who are fed up with providing the dead for wars that are not ours: we cannot share the arrogance of your infallibility nor the single road onto which you want to push us when you declare that 'Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.'"
Benalli said an ironic excuse for reducing civil liberties in the United States is the attacks by terrorists.
"The first terrorists that entered our homelands were the Europeans. Never forget that in 1637, 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe gathered for their annual Green Corn Dance in an area now known as Groton, Connecticut."
There, English and Dutch terrorists massacred the 700 Pequots. The next day the Governor of Massachusetts Bay colony declared a day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they eliminated over 700 Pequots, she said.
"For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day, ordained by a Governor or President, was to honor that victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.
"There after, genocide continued to the extent of bio-terrorism in the form of smallpox blankets to wipe out another group of Indigenous peoples."
Meanwhile, the monitoring of e-mail messages and cell phone conversations by the federal government has many Indian people alarmed and suspicious of the motives.
Time magazine reports the National Security Administration now has advanced measures to monitor e-mail and cell phone calls. The article, "When Terror Hides Online," says investigators are searching for hidden images of terrorists plots, but the broad search powers alarm those concerned with the protection of civil rights.
"Law enforcement is increasingly targeting terrorists' technology," Time reports. "After the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI reportedly installed additional Carnivores, devices it has been using to surreptitiously read e-mail, on Internet service providers.
"The National Security Agency uses Echelon, a top-secret wiretapping device, to monitor e-mail, cell phones and faxes worldwide. And the antiterrorism law passed last month broadened law enforcement's powers to grab Internet communications," Adam Cohen writes in Time's edition on Nov. 14.
Now, the anti-terrorism bills includes a provision for Internet providers to maintain billing records for criminal investigations.
The anti-mask and face paint law is especially troubling to American Indians and peace demonstrators who could face one month in jail under the new law for wearing face paint, bandanas or masks.
They say Congress passed the anti-terrorism law and Bush signed it into law while America and the media were not paying attention.
In November, demonstrators outside CNN in Atlanta, protesting the lack of coverage of Afghanistans facing starvation, were arrested on charges of violating an anti-mask law for wearing bandanas. The law dates back to times of arrests of members of the Ku Klux Klan.
The three arrested on anti-mask law violations and other charges occurred while about 200 protesters chanted, "CNN, half the story, all the time," at CNN Center Nov. 11.
Meanwhile, on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-WI, tried to repel the anti-terrorism legislation as an attack on the Constitution.
"It is crucial that civil liberties in this country be preserved. Otherwise, I'm afraid terror will win this battle without firing a shot."
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