Most were professionals with secure jobs and stable lives. They were all African Americans of Somali origin, who had arrived in the United States as babies or children. Last week, a correspondent for the Times found 30 men and one woman camped in a squalid hotel in Mogadishu, in Somalia. What threat did I pose to the safety of the other passengers?" Why was I put in handcuffs? I am a fifty-year old housewife from the suburbs of London. "I felt like the guards were parading me in front of the passengers like their prize-catch. Then she was handcuffed and chained and marched through the departure lounge. How many languages did she speak? How long had she lived in Britain? They smashed the locks on her suitcases and took her fingerprints. The guards then started to interrogate her. She explained that she was British, not Pakistani, as her passport showed. They refused her request, but told her she could ring the Pakistani consulate if she wished. When the officers told her she would have to return to Britain, she accepted their decision but asked to speak to the British consul. She explained that she had been helping her sister, who was very ill, and had applied for an extension. At the end of January, she flew to JFK to visit her sister, who is suffering from cancer.Īt the airport, immigration officials found that on a previous visit she had overstayed her visa.
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I have just obtained a copy of a letter sent last week by a 50 year-old British Asian woman (who doesn't want to be named) to the US Immigration Service. His story will be familiar to hundreds of people of Asian or Middle Eastern origin. The officials asked him whether he had friends in the Middle East, or knew anyone who approved of the attacks on September 11. He was taken to a room and questioned for several hours. When his plane arrived at JFK airport in New York, he and his female friend were handcuffed. Yesterday's Guardian told the story of Adeel Akhtar, a British Asian man who flew to the United States for an acting audition. The racial profiling which has become the unacknowledged focus of America's new security policy is in danger of provoking the very clash of cultures its authors appear to perceive. But there is another danger, which we have tended to neglect: that of escalating hostilities WITHIN the nations waging this war. Now, as Tony Blair prepares the British people for an attack on Iraq, the conflict seems to be proliferating faster than most of us predicted. Those of us who opposed the bombing of Afghanistan warned that the war between nations would not stop there. It is an article looking at the issue of racism in light of the war on terror. The following is from British columnist and author, George Monbiot.