http://www.newint.org/features/2009/11/01/true-tales/
YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP
True tales from the outer fringes of planet terror.
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Queer threat
Tiumen, Siberia, 2008: the head of Rainbow House, an organization campaigning
for LGBT rights, is put through the wringer under the Law to Combat Extremism.
The organization had been repeatedly denied registration (which means they
couldn’t even open a bank account). Why? Because the authorities felt that
reducing the population of the Russian Federation was one of its aims and this
was a threat to national security.
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False notes
When 9 children (aged between 12 and 17) of the Diyarbakir Yenişehir
Municipality Children’s Choir sang their hearts out at the San Francisco World
Music Festival in 2007, little did they know that they were transgressing Article
7/2 of Turkey’s Anti-Terrorism Law. How? They had performed a Kurdish
anthem. No matter that they had sung in nine different languages and included
a Turkish patriotic song in their performance. The charges were dropped at their
trials, but an arrest warrant remained active for the choir leader Duygu Özge
Bayar, who stayed behind in the US to study English.
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A word in Straw’s ear
Scene: the British (‘New’) Labour Party’s 2005 conference. Then-Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw is pronouncing pieties about how the British are in Iraq to
help the Iraqi Government build a stable democracy. It all gets a bit too much
for party member and peace activist Walter Wolfgang, who shouts out:
‘Nonsense!’ With television cameras rolling, conference stewards step in to eject
forcibly the 82-year-old from the hall. Later that day, when he tried to return to
the conference, Wolfgang was held by the police under Section 44 of the
Terrorism Act 2000, which gives the police the power to stop and search people
even if they don’t have ‘reasonable suspicion’.
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Looking like the back end of a bus
It was no April Fool’s prank this year when two members of the London Police
exercised their anti-terrorist powers and forced Austrian tourist Klaus Matzka and
his 15-year-old son Loris to delete all images of London buses and the
ultra-modern Vauxhall bus station from their cameras. The two were informed
that photographing anything to do with transport was ‘strictly forbidden’ and had
to give their passport details and hotel addresses. Klaus Matzka complained that
he’d never experienced anything like it, ‘not even in Communist countries’. More
to the point, such images are freely available in print and on the web.
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More bang for your buck
Welcome to the world of terror tourism. An enterprising operation called Caliber 3
Company near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Efrat normally specializes in
counterterrorism training for private security firms and the Israeli Defence Forces.
But now their product line also includes a two-hour course for tourists, and these
visitors from the US are all ears.
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The transparent man
Hasan Elahi got the scare of his life when FBI agents stopped him at Detroit
airport in 2002 and questioned him about his whereabouts around 11 September
2001. He had mistakenly landed on their terrorist watch list. After extensive
questioning and nine lie detector tests he was let go, but didn’t get FBI clearance.
After this he began to report his whereabouts to the FBI with a vengeance and
decided to do their surveillance for them by making his location at any given
moment constantly available to the world via a website. The website, which has
over 20,000 images, also lists all his financial transactions over a period of years
and snaps of every toilet he has used; it is an artwork which has brought him
considerable fame. He is one of the few people to have been taken off the ‘no fly’
list: a secret US Government list of people forbidden to fly into or out of the
States, which currently boasts over a million names.
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Catch ’em young
In these financially beleagured times there’s a ray of hope – security is still a
growth industry. Since 11 September 2001, over 300 US colleges and universities
have started awarding certificates and degrees in security-related areas of study.
Now high schools are catching up, with two in Maryland already offering homeland
security courses. Meade High School is fortunately located, just outside Fort
George G Meade, which employs 35,000 people and houses the National Security
Agency (which listens in on global communications). Those choosing the course
can expect some unexpected connections. As Bill Sheppard, who co-ordinates it,
told The Baltimore Sun: ‘There’s a lot of homeland security issues in Romeo and
Juliet. Like, how do you deal with infiltration in your own family?’
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