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'Resentment mounting in U.S. over Patriot Act'

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Sept. 27. There is growing public anger and concern in the United States over the ways and means adopted by the present administration in its war against terrorism, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Burleigh, has said.

``The public mood is such that there may soon be a Congressional review of the U.S. Patriot Act passed in September 2001. The U.S. Government may be asked to substantiate how the provisions of this Act have proved useful in fighting and containing terrorism. The U.S. Congress may also insist on judicial review of the executive's powers and privileges that have been invoked to fight terror,'' he said while was speaking on `Balancing National Security and Civil Liberties in Democracies' at a function organised at the Thiruvananthapuram Press Club today by the Office of Public Affairs, the U.S. Consulate General for South India, the regional Chapter of the Indian Institute of Public Administration and South India American Studies Network.

Perhaps for the first time in the U.S. political history, the liberal voices, which had traditionally been concerned with civil liberties, and the conservative sections of the American public who had been ideologically committed to keeping the Government away from the individual, had now come together to question the Government on the Patriot Act, he said.

The symbolic importance of Alaska, a traditionally Republican State, passing a law forbidding its law enforcement agencies from implementing any portion of the Act in the State, was really important, he said.

Mr. Burleigh said that to date, 150 cities, municipal corporations and three State Governments in the U.S. had passed either laws or resolutions critical of the Act. The fact that the law enforcement agencies now could, without judicial sanction, search homes and offices, had access to personal computers and credit card-related information of the U.S. citizens, was extremely worrying the people, Mr. Burleigh said.

Equally worrying was the question of racial profiling of people of certain origins and those with certain religious affiliations. Some police agencies were arguing that racial profiling would be a smart away to optimise limited resources in the fight against terrorism. If, for the past two to three decades, black Americans had been the targets of profiling, the focus had now shifted to those with Arab origins, Mr. Burleigh said.

Pressure would be put on the U.S. Government to enact a temporary preventive detention law, Mr.. Burleigh said.

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