Associated Press
Published in the Washington Post, Sunday, January 22, 2006
NEW YORK, Jan. 21 — Entertainer Harry
Belafonte, one of the Bush administration’s harshest critics, compared
the Homeland Security Department to the Nazi Gestapo on Saturday and
attacked the president as a liar.
“We’ve come to this dark time in which the
new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having
their rights suspended,” Belafonte said in a speech to the annual
conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
“You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel,” said Belafonte.
Messages seeking comments from Homeland Security and White House officials were not immediately returned.
Belafonte’s remarks on Saturday — part of a
45-minute speech on the role of the arts in a politically changing
world — drew a standing ovation from an audience that included singer
Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, and members of the
arts community from several dozen countries.
Belafonte acknowledged that the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks demanded a reaction by the United States, but
said the policies of the Bush administration were not the right
response.
President Bush, he said, rose to power
“somewhat dubiously and . . . then lies to the people of this nation,
misleads them, misinstructs, and then sends off hundreds of thousands
of our own boys and girls to a foreign land that has not aggressed
against us.”
Two weeks ago, during a visit to Venezuela, Belafonte called Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world.”
The Harlem-born Belafonte, who was raised in
Jamaica, said his activism was inspired by an impoverished mother “who
imbued in me that we should never capitulate to oppression.”
© 2006 The Washington Post Company