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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #16-00 Legal Repression: A Look at Anti-Democratic Measures
April 19, 2000

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2000/0016.html

Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact....

David Cole: You've go a procedure in which the government says: we have the right to kick somebody out of this country or to lock somebody up by presenting evidence behind closed doors denying the alien or his attorney any access to that information.

Veronica Katovsky: (translated from Spanish) They've come up with a decree, like 150, that's against us and against tons of groups like immigrants, transvestites and all the people who are trying to organize and keep from being marginalized within this system.

Phillip Babich: Around the world, governments widely considered to be democratic often engage in repressive actions in response to political activity. These measures may be in the form of legislation or in the creation of special police forces.

On this program, we take a look at a few examples. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information.

In the early 1950s, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of secret evidence in cases involving immigrants suspected of crimes or political associations that posed a threat to national security. When President Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996, the use of secret evidence was further expanded to include cases involving alleged terrorists. But critics of such legislation say that the use of secret evidence allows federal officials to detain immigrants for years without filing criminal charges against them. Making Contact's Stephanie Welch has more.

Stephanie Welch: In 1997, Harpal Singh was arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. A well known figure in India, Mr. Singh is an outspoken advocate for Khalistan, an independent state within Indian territory sought by Sikhs in response to political and religious repression by the Indian government.

Mr. Singh fled India in 1989 after he was arrested and brutally tortured by Indian authorities for his political activities. During his detention there, he was subjected to electrocution. They also broke one of his legs with a wooden stick, broke it again a few weeks later, and subjected him to a mock execution.

U.S. government authorities had been aware of Mr. Singh's presence in the United States since 1989, but arrested him eight years later. They seek to deport him based on classified evidence from the early 1990s that he was a communication link during a kidnapping by Sikh militants of a Hungarian diplomat. Mr. Singh remains in detention after two years in Red Bluff, California. But the INS has filed no criminal charges against him. The INS says he is a threat to national security, a charge Mr. Singh denies. But, since the evidence against him is classified, he and his attorney cannot see it and defend against it. His wife, Rajvinder Kaur, has resided in the United States since 1993, and is also alleged to be a threat to national security, but she's not being detained.

Mr. Singh spoke by speaker phone from the INS detention center in Red Bluff. He said that he was taken by surprise when he was arrested.

Harpal Singh: I don't know why they changed their mind, you know. I don't know why they kept me and they detain me in the jail and they blame me that I am the U.S. security threat, you know. For four or five years I always pay my U.S. tax. I never take any benefit from the American government, you know. So now I am, you know, from that twenty five month in the jail. I have no house to keep my wife. Outside. My wife is living over here with my friends, sometime two months over there, two months over there, you know. I want to go outside and I want to take in my family, you know. I am not a U.S.government security threat.

Stephanie Welch: Mr. Singh's lawyer, Robert Jobe, held a press conference in February 2000 after the INS appealed a decision by a San Francisco immigration judge who blocked the deportation of Mr. Singh and his wife. Judge Dana Marks Keener went so far as to call the INS' allegation that Ms. Kaur was a national security threat "preposterous." And after viewing all the evidence, the judge ruled in favor of Mr. Singh, deciding that instead of aiding the kidnappers of the Hungarian diplomat, he was actually key in getting the man released. Robert Jobe says that if the authorities had any solid evidence against Mr. Singh, they would bring criminal charges against him.

Robert Jobe: If there were any substance to these charges, any real substance, and if the FBI could prove Mr. Singh's involvement in a court of law without relying on the sleazy secret evidence, they would bring criminal charge, I'm sure. And they would try to convict him in a court of law. But they haven't tried to do that. Instead they've tried this underhanded method of getting at Mr. Singh by trying to remove him from the United States, in a setting in which they can use secret evidence. No criminal court would allow the use of secret evidence. But an immigration court does. And that's basically the point of our complaint here, is that this is completely unfair. It goes against everything that America supposedly stands for. It's unconstitutional, but it's inherently unfair. It doesn't allow a person to present his case, it doesn't allow a person to cross examine witnesses, to examine the evidence against him. You can't win a case when you can't see the evidence against you.

In this particular case, it's a miraculous thing, but Mr. Singh prevailed, despite the use of their classified evidence. He convinced the immigration judge that those allegations had no merit, that he was not a danger to the security of the United States. And despite the fact that he prevailed, even though he didn't see the classified evidence, he was able to rebut it. The immigration service is continuing to press this classified evidence and it's appeal. We find that to be just despicable, frankly. Given the circumstances of this case, when a man's life is at stake, the only way that I could describe their tactics in this case, and in the twenty or so other cases in which they're using this secret evidence, is, it's despicable.

Stephanie Welch: According to the INS, there are currently twelve cases pending that involve secret evidence. In many of the cases, criminal charges have not been filed against these individuals. INS spokesperson Russell Bergeron.

Russell Bergeron: This isn't an issue of criminal activity. This is an issue of whether or not an individual poses a threat to the American public because of their relationship, or membership in a terrorist organization that poses an threat to the United States. Under U.S. law as established by the people who speak for the American people, Congress, such affiliation is a deportable offence.

Stephanie Welch: David Cole, a constitutional lawyer at Georgetown University, has represented a number of people who faced detention based on secret evidence. He says that in his experience the U.S. government uses this tactic against people who are not in any real sense a threat to national security.

David Cole: I've represented, over the last decade or so, thirteen people, against whom the government has sought to use secret evidence. The government alleged that all thirteen were threats to national security and should be detained and deported for that reason. Yet, twelve of the thirteen are out, living free, without any undermining of national security. None of those twelve were even alleged by the government to have actually engaged in any criminal conduct. And what it ultimately came down to in almost every case, was that the government said: these people are a threat to national security, not for what they did, but for the organizations with which they are affiliated or associated. Not that they did anything bad, but that the groups have done something bad and we want to attribute the acts of the group to the individual where we have no evidence whatsoever, that the individual's actually furthered any illegal or terrorist activity. And that's obviously a power that makes the FBI's job easier, in a sense. They don't have to, you know, do the hard work to figure out if someone is engaged in criminal activity if they just establish that the person has the, affiliates with the wrong people, they can turn the matter over to the INS and seek to deport the person.

Stephanie Welch: And along with the matter comes the classified evidence. INS spokesperson Bergeron says it's the agency's obligation to present this evidence to the court.

Russell Bergeron: The fact of the matter is, is that the use of classified evidence is a process that has been upheld by the Supreme court of the United States, since the 1950s. And it is the use of such evidence that has allowed the United States to survive and weather the threat of terrorism in the last fifty years. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has no alternative in cases like this. In these rare instances where pertinent, important classified evidence is presented to us by outside agencies, this is the only mechanism currently provided to us, under the law to present this important evidence, this admissible evidence, to the courts.

Stephanie Welch: But, the constitutionality of the use of secret evidence in cases involving immigrants has faced serious challenges. Over the last ten years the issue has come before federal courts three times, and in all three cases judges have consistently declared its use unconstitutional. Attorney David Cole says the government's national security argument is unfounded.

David Cole: You look at the criminal side of things. In criminal cases it is a absolute rule, without exception that the government cannot bring a criminal trial against somebody on the basis of secret evidence. That it must put its evidence on the table. That applies to the most serious crimes. It applies to espionage crimes. It applies to treason. It applies to terrorism. And we have survived as a nation for over two hundred years, respecting that basic, bottom line principle. So it doesn't seem to me that there's a showing that it's necessary to do this.

Stephanie Welch: Cole adds that it's also counterproductive, because the authorization of secret proceedings creates cynicism and distrust about the government, especially in Arab and Muslim communities here in the United States.

David Cole: They feel like they've been singled out. All the secret evidence cases, virtually all the secret evidence cases are against Arabs or Muslims. And they, because the proceedings are in secret, they have no way of assessing whether or not the government is really going after people who are true threats or simply going after people because of their political affiliations and associations. And as a result there are many in the Arab community who, I think justifiably, are very suspicious of the FBI, very suspicious of INS, and that makes it more difficult for the FBI and the INS to really figure out who the bad actors are. Because if the entire community considers the INS and the FBI to be the enemy they're really not going to be -- they're not going to talk with them, they're not going to provide leads, they're not going to work with them. And the FBI and the INS's ability to identify true terrorists, or true threats is going to be significantly undermined.

Stephanie Welch: For Making Contact, I'm Stephanie Welch.

Shereen Meraji: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, please give us a call. It's toll free at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tape and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736

Phillip Babich: In Argentina, where some thirty thousand leftists were murdered and disappeared during the violent repression of 1976-1983, known as the Dirty War, the activist community appears surprisingly strong after suffering such devastating setbacks. But a closer look at the situation reveals the new democratic government there is less open to voices of dissent than most of the public realizes. Correspondent Travis Lea reports from Buenos Aires.

Travis Lea: In April, 1995, when the human rights group Hijos was formed in Argentina, there were already several organizations working to bring the leaders of the last dictatorship to justice. The groups known as The Mothers and Grandmothers of Placa De Mayo had already begun the struggle to account for their missing family members back in 1976, when they defiantly staged weekly marches in front of the military government's headquarters in Buenos Aires. But as the children of the disappeared grew up and became active members of society, they decided they needed a more aggressive organization, calling for not only justice for the crimes of the dictatorship, but a restructuring of the entire political system, still drenched with influence from the defacto government. They formed Hijos, which means children Spanish. It's also an acronym which means: "children fighting for identity against repression and the omission of history." Hijos members are famous for a kind of demonstration they pioneered called escratche. Escratche roughly means to reveal or expose someone. And that's what the firey young activists do on their trademark marches. Bring the people to the very house of an ex-military leader, publicly accusing him of a crime. Escratches have proven very effective in capturing public attention and are like a scarlet letter for ex-oppressors. Argentina's leaders decided that the rowdy demonstrators were not to their liking and very soon after Escratches began, intimidation and legislative attacks followed.

Veronica Katovsky is an organizer and legal director with Hijos.

Veronica Katovsky(translated from Spanish): There were four or five escratches where, before we did the escratche, the repressors neighbors or even sometimes the repressors themselves presented a legal resolution where a judge orders that nothing disturbs or effects the rights of the people who are affected by this demonstration. They forbid you from disturbing the order in the neighborhood or on the block. The judge's order requires the police to protect the property of the military officers and their neighbors. That mixes with the results of the escratche. They claim there's some kind of disturbance, because generally people infiltrate the march or the escratche. Police or soldiers dressed as civilians. Or skin heads which is a Nazi group that works with the police and that has been more visible in recent years, at least in the capitol. So the provocateurs are among the group and they start to raise hell. Then, with the excuse of the disturbances, the police repress us with tear gas and clubs and they arrest people. Later they bring law suits against us for resisting authority, for material damages, injuries, inventing things. If they didn't have the excuse of decree 150 they'd find other ways to box us in.

Travis Lea: Decree 150 is a presidential order made last year by the former Argentine head of State Carlos Menen. It includes a slew of changes to policing guidelines that allows broad new powers to stop, search and arrest people for doing any number of things in public, from cross dressing to hanging out on a street corner with no defined reason. It's a starling piece of legislation that was spurred by fear of car thieves, prostitutes and immigrants, but it contains one element that was custom written to make escratches illegal. Menen's minister of internal security, Miguel-Angel Toma argues the decree is completely democratic.

Miguel-Angel Toma (translated from Spanish): What the decree says is that you can't carry out public acts which include aggression toward someone, which insult a person or which cause damage to public or private property at any time you are expressing points of view. It's not prohibited at any time to protest within the law as long as those actions don't affect public or private property or the public order or morale. So the criticism being presented is totally slanted. There is no limit to the extent which people can continue expressing themselves, exercising their constitutional right.

Travis Lea: Human rights groups disagree. And so does Simon Lazara a former socialist member of Congress who now heads the permanent assembly on human rights which reports to the United Nations. He wrote a law limiting police powers and bringing more accountability to the force, the very law that decree 150 alters.

Simon Lazara (translated from Spanish): I would not like Buenos Aires to end up like New York where three or four thousand crimes have reportedly been committed by the police. Because in the long run the lack of safety due to crime is replaced by the lack of safety due to course and the use of force by the state, which is carried out without oversight. There is nothing which is more dangerous to a society than that. It is much more dangerous than individual crimes, much more dangerous than transvestites or prostitutes. The fact that the state exercises its force without control, without limits, and without respect to the law.

Travis Lea: Anyone who comes across an escratche immediately senses the intensity and the militancy of the march as it clogs the streets with noisy demonstrators singing and waving signs.

"Ole, Ole" begins the escratche song. It will happen to them just like it did to the Nazis. Wherever they go, we'll come find them. At this escratche on May Day 1999 nearly five thousand demonstrators were out to denounce political backing of the former military leaders, and to reveal the destructive economic policies of Jose Alfredo Martinez Deoz. He was an economy minister during the Dirty War who allowed Argentina's foreign debt skyrocket while military leaders and their cronies filled their pockets in back room deals. At the escratche the energy is high with determined marchers scaling light posts to put up fake road signs that read: "Warning: oppressors ahead," and "Now entering the impunity zone." The march eventually arrives at Martinez Deoz house. The front is protected by hundreds of riot police, with tanks, helicopters and heavy artillery standing by. Comrade Walter of Hijos takes the mike and accuses Martinez Deoz of carrying out repression in the name of an economic policy.

Comrade Walter (translated from Spanish) They kidnapped, tortured, assassinated, imprisoned, pursued and exiled our parents and their comrades. For this economic plan they kidnapped our brothers and sisters born in captivity. Martinez Deoz carried out this plan of surrender, destroying national industry, appropriating companies on the brink of bankruptcy, stealing the national patrimony. All resulting in the foreign debt of forty billion dollars.

Travis Lea: Since it's early days Hijos has been closely monitored by the Argentine government. Again, Veronica Katovsky, of Hijos:

Veronica Katovsky: Beginning on March 24th of 1996, when Hijos began to have more notoriety in the society, when we did a big march to mark twenty years since the coup de tat, there were several months when almost all the members of Hijos were threatened over the telephone and we were followed.

Travis Lea: Federico Carlavelo is also a member of Hijos.

Federico Carlavelo (translated from Spanish) Even from the government itself, we've been threatened. Two years ago the interior minister, Carlos (?),came out shamelessly in public and said that the members of Hijos were offspring of subversives. And he told his entire party faithful that there were not going to be more mothers of the Placa de Mayo. That was an open threat that was made publicly to the media and the entire population.

Travis Lea: Victoria Dileo:

Victoria Dileo (translated from Spanish): The police tell them that the same thing that happened to their parent is going to happen to them. They told girls that they were going to rape them just like they had their mothers and things like that. With no hesitation.

Travis Lea: The end of dictatorship in Argentina promised democracy, but Dileo points out that not much has really changed in Argentina's halls of power since the transition to democratic rule, sixteen years ago.

Victoria Dileo : The thing is, which is what we began to say, the repressive apparatus has not been dismantled in the least. We still have the same guys running armed forces here. The government drops its pants every time these guys want something. So, that's why we get threatened. Because by saying that these people committed crimes and they're not in jail, that they perpetrated genocide and they're still committing genocide, because children die of hunger in the provinces here. You're being a real thorn in their side, so obviously they don't want you to talk.

Travis Lea: Dileo stresses that the group is fighting for justice and a new legal order.

Victoria Dileo : There's no framework of legality more significant than what we are seeking. And that's prison for perpetrators of genocide. That is, it appears to me, that we are very much rooted in legality. That what we're looking for is justice and that we're not just looking for justice that has to do with prison for those involved in the genocide, but we also remember that the struggle that existed in this country and the struggle that the military has tried to shut up is a struggle for a just society. An egalitarian and a just society.

Travis Lea: For Making Contact, I'm Travis Lea in Buenos Aires.

Phillip Babich: In 1999, the Federal Preventive Police was established in Mexico to help reportedly fight the so-called "War on Drugs." But its critics view it as more of a political police force, breaking strikes and taking part in counter-insurgency operations. Correspondent Kent Paterson reports from Acapulco.

Kent Paterson: At a rally in Acapulco, hundreds of people protested the forced transfer of six prisoners last November from the local prison to a faraway maximum security facility. Known as the Acapulco Six, these prisoners are leaders of prominent social movements in the Southern state of Guerrero. Their supporters say they are being incarcerated for political reasons. Vincente Guzman's father, Begnino Guzman is one of the Acapulco Six.

Begnino Guzman: My mom went to visit the prisoners on Saturday. It was about 11:00 in the morning when the guards took them away from where the visit was taking place. They later transferred the prisoners to the state of Jalisco. We were never informed that there was going to be a transfer. The prison authorities did it in a violent manner and there were family members who saw how the prisoners were taken away. In order to transfer the prisoners the authorities carried out an excessive action that involved armed judicial police.

Kent Paterson: In a statement later released to the media, (?) Montez another member of the Acapulco Six described how the federal police and soldiers tortured the prisoners as they traveled by airplane to the new prison. Montez said police threatened to throw them out of the airplane. She also said in her statement that the warden of the jail in Jalisco threatened the prisoners with isolation if they made the incident public. Montez added, that members of the new Mexican Federal Preventive Police, PFP, were among the torturers. Established in 1999, the PFP has 5000 soldiers in its ranks. The new force was praised last year by U.S. president Bill Clinton during his visit to Mexico. Clinton said the PFP represented Mexico's fight against drug trafficking and crime. And he offered the assistance of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to train the force. But Mexican critics contend that the drug war justification is simply a cover. They charge that the PFP is Mexico's new political police. The PFP has been involved in much more than abusing the Acapulco Six, according to Jose Sanches, a lawyer for the Acapulco Six. He says the PFP helped to break the long running student strike in February at Mexico City's National University.

Jose Sanchez (translated from Spanish): I think the government is throwing more gasoline on the fire and fanning the flames of social conflict. The government has opted for resolving problems that exist in places like Chiapas and Guerrero with tanks and bayonets. The government doesn't respect the law or follow it like it should be followed. Instead the government applies the law selectively, as in the case of the political prisoners. Just as it incarcerates people who struggle for their political principles and ideals. Counting the thousand new prisoners who were taken in Mexico City, there are now more than 3000 political prisoners in Mexico. We would have thought that something like this could happened in Indonesia, Peru or in the Central or South America dictatorship in the epochs of Pinochet, (?) and Stosner. This is a very grave situation and not a very positive sign for the democratic transition at the beginning of the millennium.

Kent Paterson: Because the PFP was used as strike breakers, the new police force is becoming a major political issue during Mexico's presidential campaign. The PFP was initiated during the administration of Francisco Lavastida as head of Mexico's powerful interior ministry. Lavastida is a current candidate of the long ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, and could well become the next president of Mexico. (?) is a leader of the peasant organization of the Southern Sierra Madres, in the State of Guerero, Messino says she has been falsely accused of involvement in guerilla movements and targeted for surveillance by the state, even before the emergence of the PFP. She contends that the government is trying to wipe out opposition movements in anticipation of this years presidential transition.

Messino: The ruling party says they want a new PRI. But this new PRI is tainted with blood, repression and murder. We think the government shouldn't become (?) but rather a national disaster. I think the government is closing democratic and legal avenues for change. But that doesn't mean we're going to go the route of the armed struggle. We're not going to reject that movement which we respect. The state is the one who is to blame for the outbreak of armed movements, by not taking up the demands of the people and uplifting them from poverty. We're going to broaden our demands and move forward. We are going to continue our protests.

Kent Paterson: Meanwhile security ties between the United States and Mexico are growing. Only days before the PFP evicted and arrested students from the National University, Mexican defense secretary Enrique Cervantes visited Washington. And in the state of Guerrero, the FBI will begin training local and state police this Spring.

For Making Contact, I'm Kent Paterson in Acapulco.

Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact: an international look at anti-democratic measures. Thanks for listening. Special thanks this week to Robert Frazier for recorded portions.

Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Associate producer, Stephanie Welch. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Women's desk coordinator, Lisa Rudman. Prison desk coordinator, Eli Rosenblatt. Production assistant, Shereen Meraji. Archivist, Din Abdullah. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this weeks' program call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736.You can also go to our Web site at www.radioproject.org. That's www.radioproject.org. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. Bye for now.