The recent trial of a Muslim man convicted of a bomb plot in
NYC reveals the broad surveillance, use of informers, and overall police state
measures used by the NYPD against entire Muslim, Arab, and South Asian
communities.
In places with large Muslim populations such as Bay Ridge in
Brooklyn, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division has
planted numerous informers and undercover detectives, attending mosque services
and cafes, as well as taking down license plate numbers. They attempt to learn people’s political views,
and some have accused the NYPD of entrapment attempts. Many people have grown used to ‘watching what
they say’ and some have stopped attending mosque or hanging out on street
corners or cafes for fear of surveillance.
Clearly, the work of the NYPD Intelligence Division and others like it
are not aimed mainly at ‘suspected terrorists’, but at whole communities.
“It’s like a police state here. We do not feel that we are living in the most
free country in the world,” said Omar Maged, 34, an assistant teacher at a
public high school.
Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil
Liberties Union, said, “This contrasts sharply with traditional law
enforcement work, which typically and rightly focuses on unlawful activity. You
don’t see the F.B.I. hanging out in churches and bookstores in Little Italy
hoping to run into the mob, yet that’s what the N.Y.P.D. is doing in Muslim
communities in its search for Muslim extremists.”
The broad net of suspicion cast on Muslims, Arabs, and South
Asians since 9/11 has led to mass round-ups, detentions, deportations, and
special registrations. Now we get a
glimpse of the kind of everyday police state that exists in these
communities. Allowing whole groups of
people to be demonized and cast under the watchful eyes of law enforcement in
the name of ‘protecting us’ is truly a deal with the devil, and it’s one that
many who lived through Nazi Germany look back on with grave regret.
The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!
(Sources: ‘Undercover Work Deepens Police-Muslim Tensions’,
NY Times, 5/27/06; ‘Trial Opens Window on Shadowing of Muslims’, NY Times,
5/28/06)