148 Iluman Rights Watch interview with Sergeant Mike Goulet of the Mesa, Arizona police department, Augut 6, 2002.

149 Owen Moritz, "Local Victims Of Backlash Deny Accusations," Daily News (New York), September 14, 2001. 10 Human Rights Watch interview with Saffiya Shillo, director, Ethnic Affairs, Office of Illinois Lieutenant Governor, June 12, 2002.

151 Leti Volpp. Critical Race Studies: The Citizen and the Terrorist, 49 UCLA L. Rev. 1575, 1592 (2002).

152 Human Rights Watch interview with Raed Tayeh, director, American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, February 21. 2002; Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Deepa Iyer, South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, February 26, 2002.

spect they deserve."153 Less than a week after the September 11 attacks, President Bush made a highly visible visit to the Islamic Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., and in a speech there stated:

I've been told that some fear to leave; some don't want to go shopping for their families; some don't want to go about their ordinary daily routines because, by wearing cover, they're afraid they'll be intimidated. That should not and that will not stand in America.

Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.154

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Similar statements were made by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Ralph Boyd, and released to the press in public meetings with Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian community groups. Around the country, and in every city researched for this report, governors and mayors appeared publicly with victim communities to condemn backlash hate crimes and went on record as saying that perpetrators would be prosecuted." Leaders of affected community groups said the willingness of public officials to directly condemn hate crimes made those communities feel more secure during a time of significant fear and imparted an impor

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tant message to the public that backlash hate crimes were unacceptable and misguided.

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In addition to public statements from individual government officials, legislative bodies also condemned backlash crimes. The United States House of Representatives passed a resolution on September 15, 2001 condemning hate crimes against Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians. Similarly, the United States Senate, recognizing the disproportionate number of attacks against turbaned Sikhs, passed a resolution introduced by Senator Richard Durbin condemning hate crimes against Sikhs in the United States and calling for their prevention and prosecution. City entities acted as well. For example, the city of Seattle passed a resolution decrying hate crimes in Seattle. The resolution also called on citizens to report hate crime incidents to government authorities.

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Though the overwhelming majority of public figures in the United States condemned acts of bias after September 11, there were a few who expressed contempt for or bias against Arabs and Muslims. Just a week after September II, a member of Congress. John Cooksey, told a Louisiana radio station, "If I see someone [who] comes in that's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over." Similarly, while speaking to law enforcement officers in Georgia, Representative C. Saxby Chambliss stated: "just turn [the sheriff] loose and have him arrest every Muslim that crosses the state

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In addition, a few significant religious commentators publicly expressed distrust or anger against Muslims. Franklin Graham, son of the well-known Reverend Billy Graham, called Islam: "wicked, violent and not of the same God." Televangelist Pat Robertson, also speaking about Islam, said: "I have taken issue with our esteemed President in regard to his stand in saying Islam is a peaceful religion.... It's just not. In the same vein, former Southern Baptist President Jerry Vines told conventioneers at the June 2002 annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention that the Muslim prophet Muhammad was a "demon-possessed pedophile." Unlike Representatives Cooksey and Chambliss, these religious leaders have stood by their comments."

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Public messages were also used proactively as a tool to prevent future hate crimes. Two weeks before the September 11 one-year anniversary, the San Francisco district attorney's office embarked on a campaign promoting tolerance by placing anti-hate posters on city buses and bus stops. The poster includes the faces of four Arab or Muslims persons or persons who may be perceived as Arab or Muslim under the heading, "We Are Not the Enemy. The campaign was prompted by concerns the September 11 anniversary might rekindle backlash animos

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162 - awmaker Tries to Explain Remark; Rep. Chambliss, a Senate Hopeful, Commented on Muslims," Washington Post, November 21, 2001.

16 "Hall of Shame," Washington Post, November 22, 2002, Eh Sanders, "Understanding Turbans: Don't Link Them to Terrorism," Seattle Times, October 9, 2002.

Kevin Eckstrom, “Graham heir keeps stance on Islam talk." The Times Union (Albany, NY), November 24, 2001. 15 "Mr. Robertson's Incitement," Washington Post, February 24, 2002.

Kathy Shaidle, "Full Pews and Empty Gestures," Toronto Star, December 23. 2001; Richard N. Ostling, "Falwell labels Muhammad terrorist in TV interview," Chicago Tribune. October 4, 2002.

167 Anti-hate campaign begins in S.F. / Posters urge tolerance as Sept. 11 nears," San Francisco Chronicle, August 27, 2002.

ity and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence. According to San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, "With war heating up in the Middle East, we're launching a pre-emptive strike against any backlash against ArabAmericans and Muslims."169 Eight hundred posters were placed on the outside and inside of San Francisco buses. In addition to promoting a message of tolerance, they also encourage citizens to report hate crimes to the San Francisco district attorney's office.

Mixed Messages

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While acknowledging the importance of official condemnation of hate crimes and messages supporting tolerance, Arab and Muslim community leaders have expressed concern about federal government "mixed messages.' Official statements exhorting the public not to view Muslims or Arabs differently than anyone else were countered by measures taken as part of the antiterrorist campaign that cast a cloud of suspicion over all Arabs and Muslims in the United States. Those measures have included, for example, the detention of some 1,200 persons of almost exclusively Arab, Muslim, or South Asian heritage because of "possible" links to terrorism;' the FBI requests to interview over eight thousand men of Arab or Muslim heritage; and the decision that visitors to the United States from certain Middle Eastern countries would be fingerprinted. Activists believe these actions reinforce an image of Arabs and Muslims as potential terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. Referring to the effect of these policies on the perception of Muslims and Arabs in the general public, Joshua Salaam, of CAIR, said: "Most people are proba

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Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Terrence Hallinan. San Francisco district attorney. August 28, 2002.

Human Rights Watch interview with Pramila Jaypal, executive director. Hate Free Zone. July 31, 2002; Human Rights Watch interview with Raed Tayeh, director, American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, February 21, 2002; Human Rights Watch interview with Joshua Salaam, Civil Rights Coordinator. Council on American-Islamic Relations, February 21. 2002.

Human Rights Watch. "Presumption of Guilt: Human Rights Abuses of Post-September 11 Detamees." A Iluman Rights Watch Report, vol. 14, no. 4(G). August 2002.

bly asking. If government doesn't trust these people, why should I?'” 172

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The recent practice of government officials after the arrest of six Muslim men in suburban Buffalo, New York, points to ways in which the government may reconcile efforts to combat terrorism with its duty to prevent hate crimes. Soon after the arrests of the six men, who were accused of having attended an al-Qaeda-run training camp in Afghanistan, New York Governor George Pataki met with local Muslim leaders and stated during a press conference that the arrests should not be used as an excuse to commit hate crimes. Similarly, Peter Ahearn, special agent in charge of the FBI's Buffalo field office, publicly stated that hate crimes would not be tolerated.' The practice in Buffalo, where an announcement of an alleged terrorism investigation breakthrough was coupled with messages decrying bias, proved effective.

Policing

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16 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with William Haddad. President, Arab American Bar Association, June 17. 2002. Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Stephen Wessler, executive director, Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, August 27, 2002.

The pursuit for the creation of a "Rapid Response Plan" in Portland. Maine comes from a recommendation contained in a report published by the Center entitled, “After September 11: Under standing the Impact on Muslim Communities in Maine." retrieved on September 24, 2002, from http://www.cphy.usm.maine.edu/report.doc.

ties...If there is anything government can do to prepare, that will be a big step." Among the measures the center has discussed for possible incorporation into any rapid response plan are: 1) issuance of immediate public statements from government officials condemning discrimination immediately after an event that may trigger a backlash; 2) development of public service announcements urging tolerance before any backlash, which may be broadcast immediately in case of an emergency; 3) gathering intelligence on areas of the city especially vulnerable to backlash violence and creating a plan to rapidly deploy law enforcement officers in those areas in case of an emergency; and 4) creating a "buddy program" which would gather volunteers from non-Muslim communities to travel with Muslims, especially women who wear the hijab, who are afraid to travel alone during a backlash period.

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Although police departments in New York, Phoenix, and Los Angeles did not have strong pre-existing relationships with the Arab and Muslim community, after the September 11 attacks, these departments nonetheless dispatched police officers to protect primarily Muslim or Sikh places of worship and areas with high Arab, Muslim, Sikh, or South Asian concentrations. In Phoenix, the day after September 11, after consulting with concerned members of the Arab and Muslim communities, the police department established twenty-four hour patrols at area mosques.' The Phoenix Police Department's bias crime unit credited the department's Muslim community liaison for providing the department with information on the Muslim and Arab community in Phoenix gained through prior interaction with those communities before September 11. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations on September 11 notified the police department of vulnerable "hotspots,", such as mosques and Arab-owned convenience stores. As a result, police were dispatched to protect some of these vulnerable areas. In New York City, Sikh community leaders reported that after a gurdwara was vandalized on September 11, police officers patrolled the area around the gurdwara by foot during the next week. New York City police also provided protective escorts for busloads of Sikhs traveling from Queens to Manhattan for a Sikh community vigil on September 15, 2001, in

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Human Rights Watch interview with Imad Hamad, Midwest regional director. American Arab-AntiDiscrimination Committee. June 5, 2002, Human Rights Watch interview with Hassan Jaber, executive director, ACCESS, June 4, 2002; Human Rights Watch interview with Daniel Saab. Dearborn community police officer, June 1, 2002.

Initial Classification of Crimes

In some instances after September 11, the decisions of police officers not to classify crimes as possible hate crimes meant that no further investigation of possible bias motive was conducted. For example, Kripa Ubadhyay, program coordinator for the Anti-Discrimination and Hate Crimes Program of the South Asian Network (SAN), cited the case of two Bangladeshi Muslims who were held up at gun point while numerous ethnic epithets were yelled at them. For months, there was no investigation of possible bias motivation for the crime because the responding officers chose to classify the matter as a robbery. Only after SAN directly appealed to the Los Angeles County's bias crime investigator was the matter recorded and investigated as a possible hate crime.' Police departments in different cities had differing standards on the discretion available to responding police officers to classify a matter as a possible hate crime.

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In New York, if a responding police officer believed that a hate crime might have occurred, he or she was to report this to the duty captain in the police precinct. If the duty captain also believed the crime to be bias-motivated, the matter was referred to the police department's Hate Crimes Task Force for investigation as a possible hate crime. Linda Wancel, head of the Civil Rights Bureau within the Brooklyn district attorney's office, stated that whether a matter was investigated by police as a possible hate crime was "contingent on the duty captain calling it a hate crime... We disagree sometimes with the duty captain not classifying cases as a possible a hate crime.

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Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Prabhjot Singh, director, Sikh Coalition. August 16, 2002.

* Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Kripa Ubadhay. Anti-Discrimination and Hate Crimes Program Coordinator. South Asian Network, August 21, 2002.

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Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Adil Almontaser, American Muslim Law Enforcement Officers Association, August 27, 2002.