Sometimes despair looks tempting
Aug. 27th, 2006 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumMany years ago I read a book, by (IIRC) Edward Everett Hale: Man Without a Country, in which a man convicted of treason was denied the right to enter the US, and not allowed to go anyplace else.
It had a certain sense of justice, though one felt more sorry for him than revulsed (or at least I did, at the age of 10-11).
Right now the Federal Gov't is imposing this sentence, sort of, on a pair of citizens. Think Tom Hanks in "The Terminal."
The story goes like this, they were in Pakistan, and when they started to come home, they were told (because they had one relative convicted of supporting terrorism, despite a few questions about the strength of the case LA Times Magazine) the FBI wanted to talk to them.
So they did. The FBI decided they needed to talk to the younger one again, and insisted on a pollygraph. He declined the latter, and said he was willing to do the former, but only if he had a lawyer present.
So the Gov't put them on the no-fly list and forbade them re-entry to the country they live, unless they agree to forgo their constitutional rights.
Which puts them in a strange place. They are now, "stateless persons", and so living in the state of limbo.
They have not been charged with a crime, but they are being punished for insisting on their rights. At the very least they are out the cost of plane tickets back to Pakistan. Give it time and they will be out of jobs, (the younger one is only 18, so he may be losing his place at university), house; home if they have a mortgage, and deprived of contact with family.
Guilt, and summary reaction, becuase someone believes they might know something. Given the track record of the DoJ under this administration, I am less than sanguine about the truth of that. Even if I were more willing to accept their claims of the men knowing somthing than I am, there's no way the treatment they are being given is acceptable.
If they are thought to have committed a crime, then they need to be charged. If they aren't charged, there's no reason to punish them. What, one wonders, is the benefit of stripping someone, in practical terms, of citizenship, because they won't talk without a lawyer?
When will they decide it's me, or thee, instead of "them,"?
It had a certain sense of justice, though one felt more sorry for him than revulsed (or at least I did, at the age of 10-11).
Right now the Federal Gov't is imposing this sentence, sort of, on a pair of citizens. Think Tom Hanks in "The Terminal."
The story goes like this, they were in Pakistan, and when they started to come home, they were told (because they had one relative convicted of supporting terrorism, despite a few questions about the strength of the case LA Times Magazine) the FBI wanted to talk to them.
So they did. The FBI decided they needed to talk to the younger one again, and insisted on a pollygraph. He declined the latter, and said he was willing to do the former, but only if he had a lawyer present.
So the Gov't put them on the no-fly list and forbade them re-entry to the country they live, unless they agree to forgo their constitutional rights.
Which puts them in a strange place. They are now, "stateless persons", and so living in the state of limbo.
They have not been charged with a crime, but they are being punished for insisting on their rights. At the very least they are out the cost of plane tickets back to Pakistan. Give it time and they will be out of jobs, (the younger one is only 18, so he may be losing his place at university), house; home if they have a mortgage, and deprived of contact with family.
Guilt, and summary reaction, becuase someone believes they might know something. Given the track record of the DoJ under this administration, I am less than sanguine about the truth of that. Even if I were more willing to accept their claims of the men knowing somthing than I am, there's no way the treatment they are being given is acceptable.
If they are thought to have committed a crime, then they need to be charged. If they aren't charged, there's no reason to punish them. What, one wonders, is the benefit of stripping someone, in practical terms, of citizenship, because they won't talk without a lawyer?
When will they decide it's me, or thee, instead of "them,"?
