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In the wake of
attacks on the US cities the racist forces have come out in the open and have
attacked "foreigners" in the US and Britain. These attacks on Muslim and
other immigrants got encouragement from statements coming out of the White House
and the White Hall. The imperialist media in the US and UK has swelled to
greater levels than the Gulf War. The cries of "war of the civilized world
against the rest", the "crusade", the "the war against nations
that harbour terrorism", the propaganda around FBI investigations, and the
continuous projection of Osama bin Laden as a suspect occupies every corner of
the print media. Continuous replaying of the attacks and the destroyed
structures over TVs with anger and vengeful commentaries has played with the
sentiments of the people. Every accusing finger is pointed towards the persons
belonging to the Middle East and Muslim countries being behind the airplane
crash-bombings.
The neo-Nazi
organisations like Nazi National Alliance and other underground groups have
become active to exploit the situation. Billy Roper of the neo-Nazi National
Alliance has posted a message on his website saying: "the enemy of our enemy
is, far now at least, our friend…we may not want them in our societies, just as
they would not want us in theirs. But anyone willing to drive a plane into a
building to kill Jews is alright by me…" These extreme right organisations
are those which Timothy McVeigh supported. Timothy had bombed the Oklahoma city
center in 1995 in which 168 people had died.
On the same day of
the attacks on New York and Washington, attacks on Muslim men and women started
in many cities of the US. In the first one week nearly four hundred attacks were
reported. Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh, Ali Almansoop from Yemen and Waqar Hasan
from Pakistan were killed among many shot and wounded in various parts of the
USA in these attacks. A 21-year-old Creek (indigenous Indian American) woman,
Kimberly Lowe was killed in Oklahoma by white racists who yelled at her, "Go
back to your country." Now the fact is, she was the descendent of the real
inhabitants of Americas while the killers’ forefathers had migrated from distant
lands.
The writing on the
wall was, "all foreigners and Arabs, better watch out!" The racist and
anti-Muslim terminology and propaganda being prevalent in the Western press, and
due to the continuous imperialist newspeak against the movements in the Middle
East and other oppressed countries of the ‘uncivilized’ world, the racial
hatred was further fanned up. An Indian who has been a naturalised American for
the last twenty years says, "no one told me when I naturalised 20 years ago
that I was being granted a second class citizenship." He has strongly made
the point that though he does not object to a thorough searching of himself and
questioning during travel "but when we hear of FBI agents questioning
ordinary people about their political views, and Arab, Indian and Pakistani
Americans being asked to leave planes they had already boarded, because other
passengers didn’t feel comfortable with them, I think it is time for us to say
enough is enough!"
When the Japanese had
struck Pearl Harbour during the WW2 nearly one and a half lakh Japanese
Americans in the US were imprisoned, their properties confiscated and were
tortured by the US police. Now all Arabs, Muslims and Asians are being
suspected.
Similar hate
campaigns are being carried out in Britain, which is No.2 in the US "coalition
against terrorism", and also in Europe.
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