CAPSA Symposium Mulls Over Issues Raised By "PATRIOT" Bill
By Gil Asakawa
November 7, 2001

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States sparked a flurry of activity amongst the country's lawmakers to help the nation's law enforcement efforts battle the threat of more attacks.

Among the most comprehensive and wide-ranging laws enacted in the days since the attacks, is the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act of 2001, or HR 3162, which stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." Even before this controversial legislation was signed into law by President George W. Bush, the Colorado Asian Pacific Student Alliance (CAPSA) had organized a Symposium to discuss the myths, realities and ramifications of the bill.

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The Symposium, "Acts of P.A.T.R.I.O.T.ism: Privacy or Protection," held Nov. 2 at Phipps Tennis Pavilion, featured Greg Diamond of Democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette's office, as well as Sue Armstrong of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Japanese American Flo Miyahara, who was interned during WWII, and African American attorney Wazeer Ali Mohammed Al-Haqq, a Muslim. A representative of Republican Tom Tancredo's office wasn't able to make a scheduled appearance on the keynote panel.

Some highlights of the 187-page USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 include expanded powers that allow:

• Roving wiretaps by law enforcement on terrorism suspects
• Increased penalties and specific crime statutes for crimes against mass transportation, conspiracy and possession on biological weapons
• The ability of law enforcement to subpoena e-mails and e-mail addresses of recipients of those communications
• Easier and more open sharing of information between various law enforcement agencies
• Triple the number of border patrol officers along the Canadian border and improvements to border security
• The authority to detain illegal aliens who are certified to be terrorism suspects for up to seven days without charging them with either criminal or immigration violations
• Pressuring of foreign governments by the US Treasury Dept. to provide information on depositors in a terrorism investigation.

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CAPSA president Hanh Phi led off the symposium by touching on the bill's highlights and introducing CAPSA, an organization formed by area Asian students in the wake of a 1998 Halloween shooting of an Asian student. Symposium co-chair Jonathan Li helped introduce the speakers, starting with Greg Diamond of Rep. DeGette's office.

Diamond noted that DeGette voted against the bill because of questions about the potential abuse of civil rights, and "because it had not been reviewed by sizable numbers of members of Congress.

"Leaders in this country don't want to appear soft on terrorism," he said, which is why this law sailed through Congress so quickly, without the usual reviews and checks of such wide-ranging legislation.

"I'm not trying to be partisan here," he added. "This is what happened."

Pointing to the name of the bill and how it would be unpatriotic to even question it, Diamond said, "You have to wonder if these catchy phrases will help us win the war on terrorism."

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The ACLU's Sue Armstrong focused on the PATRIOT bill's potential abuse of civil rights, including how the bill may put students' privacy at risk; how the bill casts aspersions on anyone involved in "associated activities" with groups found to be terrorist organizations; the danger of converting "dissent" and protest into terrorist acts; and the immigration crackdown on visa violations.

The act, Armstrong warned, "gives enormous unchecked powers to the Executive Branch."

Flo Miyahara's presentation was less academic and legal, and more personal. As a survivor of the wartime Internment of Japanese Americans simply for their ethnic heritage (120,000 people of Japanese heritage, most of whom were US citizens, including elderly and children, were put in concentration camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor because of their potential "threat" against national security).

Miyahara recalled her first thoughts when she heard about the attack against Pearl Harbor: "What the hell is wrong with those Japanese, picking on us? I thought of myself as an American, but shortly after that I found I wasn't an American, I was an Enemy Alien."

She told of her family's uprooting, how they had two days to gather their belongings, and how they lived in a converted racetrack until, they were sent to a "relocation camp."

I didn't do anything but be born with a yellow face and black hair," she said, and likened the experience to the harassment of Muslim Americans in the wake of the attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Dr. Al-Haqq first introduced himself as a Muslim, then spoke from the perspective that presumably would have been shared by Rep. Tancredo's office, that "circumstances justify the actions of the government." He shared a childhood experience of his own, of being caught after curfew during the Watts race riots of 1965 in Los Angeles. He says the police detained him, but after they decided he was harmless, they let him go.

"In the effort to respond [to a national crisis], might there be some errors? Yes. And, will there be some remedies to us as citizens? Yes."

Al-Haqq pointed out that even Japanese Americans who were interned received justice in the end, though he acknowledged it took "a long time" (over 40 years, when many of those interned had already died).

The symposium continued through the day with a Student Reaction Panel, a Q&A Session, a Working Lunch and a Report Back to the Group. CAPSA pulled together a powerful presentation that was timely in its focus. The audience was smaller than hoped for, but those in attendance were treated to thoughtful, balanced discussion on an issue with profound implications for Asians in America.

The full text of the PATRIOT Act (HR 3162) is online at:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

You can read more about the ACLU's position on the bill at:

http://www.aclu.org/features/f110101b.html.