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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2008, pages 55-56 Human Rights Freedom Walk for all Americans
THE TENTH ANNUAL Cherry Blossom Freedom Walk began with an opening ceremony at the National Japanese American Memorial near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on April 5. The walk’s purpose was summed up in the program: “We continue in our mission to remind people that despite the [U.S.] Constitution’s pledge for the inalienable rights of freedom and justice for all, the prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes that put the Japanese Americans into the internment camps over 60 years ago still exist today, and that it is contingent upon us to be constantly vigilant so that future generations of Americans may truly enjoy the promise of our Constitution.” Former congressman and transportation secretary Norman Mineta said he saw his father cry three times in his lifetime: once when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese forces in 1941 (“He couldn’t understand why the country of his birth could attack the country of his heart,” Mineta said.), second when Mineta’s mother died, and finally when the whole family was loaded into a cattle car to be taken to an internment camp. “They didn’t have the decency to at least load us at the passenger depot,” Mineta recalled. “They took us to where they load freight.” In the words of the event’s keynote speaker, Columbia University Professor Gary Y. Okihiro, the Manzanar internment camp in California’s Owens Valley “…with its littered remains of my ancestors, was a place of degradation, shame and humiliation” (see p. 24). The memorial surrounding him, Okihiro said, symbolized the fortitude of patriotism, perseverance and posterity. “That spirit of determined struggle is the only assurance that the violation will never again be endured by any American,“ he stated. “Racism or sexism or homophobia or nativism or religious bigotry will never again shape and justify government policy.” Okihiro reminded the crowd that today they must be ever watchful for their and others’ rights. Since 9/11, he noted, thousands of Arab and West, Central and South Asian Americans have experienced racial harassment and intimidation, and their homes, businesses and mosques have been vandalized. The U.S. Justice Department has enacted “special registration” programs in which male foreigners, depending on nationality-based criteria, are required to be fingerprinted and photographed. On Jan. 24, 2006, he continued, Halliburton announced that it had secured a $385 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security to build detention centers for “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs” in the event of a crisis. “As the government’s own agency [Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice] reported in 2003,” Okihiro added, “The roundup of more than 700 Muslim and Arab non-citizens after 9/11 on the pretext of immigration violations was religious and racial profiling without any evidence that they posed a danger, and a second report detailed the physical, verbal, and psychological abuse inflicted upon them and the inhuman conditions of the confinement.” Okihiro concluded by describing the memorial as a reminder to the country and to those who come after not to forget the injustice that has occurred and may yet occur. “Our democracy depends on that remembrance and resolve,” Okihiro explained, “because this story, this memorial is about us all.” “Japanese Americans understand the connection between them and us,” long-time Arab-American activist Ruth Ann Skaff told this reporter at the event. —Jamal Najjab |
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