RNA - Fear of imprisonment, torture, death, poverty, isolation, and deportation, or fear of losing jobs, friends, family, and property. Starting from day one in office, President Trump has been using the fear factor (Islamophobia and scapegoating of Muslims) to hold his grip on power. Fear, however, doesn't shut people down; it wakes them up:
A Gallup poll released Saturday says the public is not in support of the executive actions Trump has taken thus far, as he reached a majority disapproval in record little time. Millions of people of goodwill have taken to the streets across the United States and Europe to protest at Trump's shameful Muslim ban and Syrian refugee restrictions. They stand in solidarity with all the world’s Muslims who the president has insulted and all the desperate Syrian refugees that he would spurn. The demonstrators and critics describe the prejudiced ban as Islamophobic, calling on all peace-loving nations to stand firm and oppose all racist and xenophobic action.
Trump claims the ban is a necessary precaution to protect US citizens from what he calls “Islamic terrorism.” This is rubbish. He has turned the United States into a fascist dictatorship. Many American courts have issued emergency stays limiting the order's power. But Trump is defiant. He has fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she ordered Justice Department lawyers to stop defending his controversial immigration orders.
Nor is that all. Trump’s rogue agents with the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol continue to defy the judiciary and International Humanitarian Law, and enforce Muslim ban, despite immigration lawyers, the Attorney General, and even Members of Congress pleading with them to enforce the federal courts' decision.
According to International Refugee Assistance Project director Becca Heller, "A lot of people have been handcuffed, a lot of people who don't speak English are being coerced into taking involuntary departures." They have been straight-up bullied into having their green cards taken away. Lawyers face border patrol's noncompliance and chaos at airports, thus, being denied their rights to an attorney. Further still, no lawyers are allowed to speak to any detainees. Trump’s rogue agents even turn away Members of Congress who ask them at the airports to enforce the federal court order.
It’s a breathtaking violation of human rights - never seen in a hundred years. The situation is as dumb as it gets. It reveals to the international civil society, more than all the US-led wars in the Middle East, the gross injustice and cruelty to which Muslim immigrants and refugees are the constant victims. To them, the American dream, justice, and human rights is a sham. It’s anything but dreamy. Their boasted liberty and protection are empty and heartless; their refugee status mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up America’s war crimes in the heartlands of the Muslim world.
As it turned out, Trump's Muslim ban is a giant insult to the world and the ideals of International Humanitarian Law. It is illogical. It targets people in seven countries - Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran. It invokes the attacks of 9/11 as a rationale. Yet it exempts the regimes (Trump’s business partners) directly connected to 9/11, or to terrorism financing, terrorist-recruitment and training, or nationals and actual terrorists who carry out attacks: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.
The order is counter-productive in the ongoing War on Terror too. Without Iran, Syria and Iraq, America’s war against ISIL and Al-Qaeda is unwinnable. Iranians and Iraqis are not taking the contradiction quietly. The order is a terrorist recruitment marketer’s dream. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif correctly says “it’s a gift to terrorists.”
For all this, there has been near-monolithic silence from the United Nations. Its new chief is yet to speak out – not that he will ever call it bigoted, shameful, and inhumane, though it is all of that. Many UN member states are also complicit in silence. It’s a familiar mode. They were silent when Bush attacked Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). They were silent when Obama decided to turn Libya, Syria, and Yemen into failed states. And they were silent when Trump signed an order for a total ban on Muslims and Syrian refugees entering the United States.
In the prevailing environment, expect more recklessness and infamy from the new president of the United States. He is more than excited and willing to deliver on his campaign promises and threats, including, but not limited to, building a wall along the Mexican border, rooting out illegal immigrants and unwanted people, establishing no-fly zones over Syria (without UN and Syrian consent), and escalating the dirty wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya under the guise of fighting ISIL.
But he can do much, much more besides. Trump – unshackled and unbound – is public number one enemy, oblivious to the environment, hostile to migrants and global peace, snarling towards Muslims, and seeking to roll back human rights that took decades for the international civil society to secure. People of goodwill must stop Trump’s horror show; before he torches humanity. It certainly feels that way.
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