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Gonzalez
claimed intelligence reports show that Muslim reverts become
“extremists and terrorists” when they returned to the country.
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By
Rexcel Sorza, IOL Correspondent
MANILA,
April 7, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – A controversial memorandum by the
Justice Department on monitoring Filipino workers returning from the
Middle East, students coming back from Pakistan and reverts to Islam
as an anti-terrorism measure, drew fire from the country’s Muslims
as well as migrants’ watchdogs.
“It
is profiling and discriminatory. It saddens us because once again the
Muslims, particularly the reverts, are being labeled as terrorists and
bombers”, Amirah Ali Lidasan of the Moro Christian People’s
Alliance told IslamOnline.net.
“Filipino
Muslims feel insulted with the issuance of the memorandum by Secretary
Raul Gonzalez. It teems with discrimination against us,” Lidasan
added, asserting that the directive is reinforcing the existing
anti-Muslim phobia.
She
charged that the memo speaks of the state policy of discriminating
against the believers of Islam.
On
March 30, Sec. Raul Gonzalez tasked the National Bureau of
Investigation (NBI) and Bureau of Immigration (BI) to monitor the
entry of Filipino workers coming from the Middle East, especially
Saudi Arabia, and even students from Islamic schools in Pakistan.
He
defended his memo as being “necessary because intelligence reports
show that some converts become Muslim extremists and terrorists when
they returned to the Philippines.”
Filipino
Muslims have complained of being wantonly tagged as “terrorists”
and criminals, particularly in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
They
say there is a brewing Islamophobia that has hit places around the
world including the Philippines, which has an estimated Muslim
population of 10 million.
During
the holy-fasting month of Ramadan, the country’s Muslims championed
a campaign to
wash
away misconceptions
about Islam and Muslims and distance their faith from terrorism.
Imitating
Washington
Migrante,
an organization of Filipinos working on foreign shores, assailed
Gonzalez’s order as “baseless, highly irrational, racist and
definitely anti-overseas Filipino worker.”
“We
condemn this government move to launch a witch-hunt on Muslim OFWs
[overseas Filipino workers] and scholars”, Migrante Chairperson
Connie Regalado said in a statement sent to IOL.
She
dismissed Gonzalez’s claims of intelligence reports as “totally
illogical and baseless.”
Regalado
accused the Department of Justice of “mimicking the illogical and
baseless tirades of the US government towards Muslims and other
nationalities.”
The
watchdog also contended that the memo “stinks of the United States
government’s concept of 'homeland security,' racial profiling and
terrorist branding and witch-hunting.”
A
May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded
that Arab Americans and the Muslim community in the US have taken the
brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
A
recent nation-wide poll, conducted by the Cornell University, showed
that at least 44 percent of the Americans backs
curbing
Muslims’ civil rights
and monitoring their places of worship.
Anti-Muslim
Migrante
further lambasted the memo that “has practically branded all OFWs
who believe in Islam as ‘potential terrorists.’”
Regalado
maintained that the government is “again sending the wrong message
to the public: that our Muslim brothers and sisters are a violent
people”.
“Now
they include our Muslim Filipino compatriots who were forced to work
and/or study in the Middle East due to the lack of opportunities here
in the country and the government’s war against Muslim communities
that have destroyed the madrasahs and even mosques time and again
since the 1970s. This is definitely anti-Muslim and anti-OFW,” she
said.
Migrante
branded the memo as “a witch-hunt on the very people who government
always claims as the country’s ‘new economic heroes’”.
Caring
Parents
Migrante
Youth, composed of children of Filipinos working abroad, echoed
the same position.
“It
is revolting that no less than our very own Justice Department is
profiling our OFWs as potential terrorists,” the organization’s
spokesman Mac Ramirez said in a separate statement sent to IOL.
“Our
overseas Filipino workers in the Middle East countries such as Saudi
Arabia and Iraq brave bullets, bombs and abductions everyday just to
provide decent lives to their families here in the Philippines.”
He
put at some 1.5 million the number of Filipinos working in the Middle
East, almost one million of them in Saudi Arabia.
Ramirez
said the justice department’s order is an insult, noting that
Filipinos in Saudi Arabia ranked second in dollar remittances to the
country.
“They
are not terrorists. They are ordinary fathers and mothers who are
forced to seek employment even in the most dangerous situations abroad
because of extreme poverty in the country and the Arroyo
administration's failure to provide gainful employment to its
people.”
