Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1999, pages 121-122

Human Rights

Reps. Bonior and Campbell Introduce Secret Evidence Repeal Act

On May 19, House Democratic Whip David E. Bonior (D-MI) and Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) held a Capitol Hill press conference to discuss the introduction of the Secret Evidence Repeal Act of 1999, a bill to abolish the use of secret evidence in Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) hearings. The bill is also sponsored by Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and is supported by Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV).

According to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the INS can arrest, detain and deport non-citizens on the basis of secret evidence, or evidence whose source and substance is neither revealed to the accused nor their attorneys. “This law is clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional,” stated Rep. Bonior, as he pointed out that virtually all cases based on secret evidence are against Muslims and Arabs.

Bonior called the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act a violation of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the accused the right to a speedy and public trial. Rep. Campbell added that the law also violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Greg Nojeim, civil director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), also spoke at the press conference. He denounced the use of secret evidence, emphasizing that it is impossible to fight charges when you do not know the nature of them. “We will not rest until aliens are afforded the same rights as everyone else,” he said.

Nahla Al-Arian gave a personal testimony to the unconstitutionality of secret evidence. She is the sister of Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian-American who has spent the past two years in a Florida jail due to secret evidence against him. Since his arrival to the United States in 1981, Al-Najjar has been a model citizen and family man, Bonior said. Al-Najjar has been a professor, a marriage counselor at a local mosque, and has had no run-ins with the law.

“My brother is in prison because he is Muslim and Palestinian,” Ms. Al-Arian asserted. “Guilt by association has no place in America.” She said that when the children in her family play, they pretend to be the FBI, forcefully invading and searching houses. “What is this atmosphere of fear and suspicion that the American government is creating for Muslims?” she asked. Americans preach justice, yet sometimes fail to practice it. Al-Arian urged congressmen to support the Secret Evidence Repeal Act. “God bless the efforts of those who work for justice,” she concluded.

—Samia El-Mahdi

Radio Free Iraq Director Speaks at MEI

Radio Free Iraq (RFI) director David Newton was the featured speaker at the Middle East Institute June 1 in Washington, DC. Newton, a career foreign service officer and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and to Yemen, said the goal of RFI’s daily Arabic-language radio broadcast is “To provide balanced and accurate information to Iraqis and to promote freedom of expression and democracy.” Newton notes that RFI attempts to reach Iraqis inside and outside Iraq with cultural programming, news from inside Iraq and international news, all to counter whatever slant is put on news offered by the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussain.

RFI’s staff comprises mostly of print journalists, including 7 broadcasters, 11 part-time correspondents (of whom 3 are based in Iraqi Kurdistan), and 3 administrators.

Currently based in Prague, and using Radio Free Europe’s facilities to transmit, RFI was started with a $5 million grant from the U.S. Congress. RFI, which has a separate budget from Radio Free Europe and has been in operation since October 30, 1998, broadcasts in the morning and evening over shortwave radio frequencies from airborne and mountaintop transmitters. On April 2, it increased its daily airtime from one to two hours. RFI also broadcasts over the Internet in RealAudio© format. RFI hopes to increase its airtime soon to three hours daily, and to be able to broadcast over medium-wave frequencies.

Explaining RFI’s broadcast of cultural as well as political news, Newton said, “We’re trying to get them [Iraqis] back to their culture…They’ve been subjected to North Korean-style propaganda for so long that they’ve lost touch with their culture.”

Commenting on the Iraqi government’s response to RFI’s broadcasts, Newton said, “The regime has had to loosen up a bit. We’ve even heard people discuss this outside. They [Iraqi government officials] haven’t tried to jam the signal, but we’ve heard some nasty things about us.”

In response to audience assertions that RFI cannot offer truly objective reporting by only covering the perspective of the opposition to the current Iraqi government, Newton countered, “You have to remember that there are differing opinions even within the opposition. As well, not everyone we cover is opposition. The Iraqi government won’t talk to us, and even the opposition gets unhappy when we refer to Saddam Hussain as ‘President.’

“Our perspective is that we’re willing to talk to anyone,” Newton concluded.

—Rob Swanson

Orthodox Christians’ Task Force Opposes Sale of Church Land

The Task Force to Support Orthodox Christians in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem held its fifth international conference from May 12 to 16 at the National Sheraton Hotel in Arlington, VA. The conference, hosted by the Greater Washington Chapter of the Task Force, focused on several issues critical to the native Arab majority community of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.

The Task Force, a grassroots support movement founded in 1994, has been exposing discrimination against more than 250,000 Arabs in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem by non-indigenous hierarchs. Among other critical issues, the Task Force also is protesting the sale or transfer of church land to the Israeli government, especially to Israeli settlement companies.

George Madanat, international chairman of the Task Force, argues that the issue is not “Arabs against Greeks” but is “the faithful against their corrupt leadership. We see the problem in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem as a violation of the human and religious rights of 250,000 Arab Orthodox who live in that area,” he said.

By elevating awareness of the problem, the Task Force raised the dispute from the local level between the church and its leaders to a regional and international level. “We have seen a growing interest in the issue from political leaderships in both Palestine and Jordan,” Dr. Madanat said.

He charged that the Israeli government has been supportive of the continued domination of the largely Greek Patriarchate over the Orthodox Church and the discrimination against Arab Christians. “The Ministry of Religious Affairs in Israel has been exerting pressure on the courts where there are several lawsuits raised by the community against the Patriarchate in regard to the sale of land and ownership of churches,” he said. “The Patriarchate has been selling the church’s land to outsiders who use it to establish Israeli settlements.”

Dr. Kamel Abu-Jaber, former Jordanian foreign minister and president of the Diplomatic Institute in Amman, said he has asked the Patriarch to appoint Arab bishops in Arab communities such as Nazareth, Bethlehem and Amman. He charged that the Patriarch was never responsive to this request. “This is what they do all the time,” Dr. Madanat said. “It is deception, delay and empty promises.”

Among the speakers who came from Jordan, Palestine and North America, in all of which the Task Force has active chapters, was Metropolitan Philip Saliba, Primate of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. The Task Force, headquartered in California, has held its previous conferences in Pennsylvania, Michigan, California and Chicago.

—Raja’ M. Abu-Jabr

SIDEBAR

According to the Orthodox Christians Task Force, the following are facts of discrimination against the Arab majority community in Palestine and Jordan:

• Foreign domination of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem has consigned the Arab majority to inferior status and shut Arab priests out of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

• The Church’s leadership has recklessly and unconscionably disposed of prime church property, including land sales to Israel for the building of Jewish settlements. The leadership has acted with no accountability to or acquiescence by the community.

• The Hierarchy has neglected the material and spiritual needs of the community. It has failed to repair old churches or build new ones and refuses to build low-income housing for the homeless and the poor in its jurisdiction. It has failed as well to provide proper theological training for Arab priests and establish viable youth organizations.

• Disregard for the well-being of the Arab Orthodox majority has caused defections to non-Orthodox churches. In the Church of Jerusalem’s jurisdiction, the number of Orthodox Christians in comparison to the total number of Christians dropped from 67 percent in 1948 to below 25 percent at present.

• By their arbitrary actions, the non-indigenous hierarchs have betrayed the trust vested in them as stewards of the Church of Jerusalem and violated the teachings of the Orthodox Church.