By Nandita Sharma

Bayer, Anthrax and the WTO are all familiar with the cowboy rhetoric of US President George Bush. The threat that anyone unsupportive of the US-led "war on terrorism" will be considered a "security threat", has sent a long, cold shudder through many communities who, following September 11th, have been consistently targeted by racist stereotypes of "criminality" and being "a danger to civilization" (Muslims and people of colour in general). It is the people within these communities who will be the most affected by racist profiling, by random police searches and by a greater tolerance for police brutality.

The fear of being labelled a "terrorist" has also deeply affected social activists long opposed to US-backed policies promoting instability and terror throughout much of the world. We understand very well that, sooner if not later, we will be caught up in the ever-widening net of suspicion being cast by security forces and corporate-owned media.

Already before September 11th, our most effective political dissention had been criminalized. Those of us active in preventing the WTO from meeting in Seattle in 1999, or attempting to stop the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, witnessed our activities being labelled "unlawful" by elected officials, media pundits and even some self-styled "reasonable protestors" in both the US and Canada. Yet, everyone knew these were the most effective protests seen in over a generation.

Now, since the declaration of a "war on terrorism", the very existence of certain, racialized communities is "reason" enough for increased criminalization. Security forces in Canada and the US are stepping up their harassment of individuals seemingly just for being here. This is currently most evident at the borders. Immigration and customs officials have been told by the government to engage in racist profiling. Many stories of people of colour being strip-searched while trying to cross borders are filtering through. In Ontario, "immigrants" - read: people of colour - are being severely harassed by police officers authorized to raid homes, work places and houses of worship, looking for the ever-elusive "illegal immigrant".

Social activists are also facing heat at the border. On October 10th, Hendrik Voss, a German citizen and volunteer for School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch), a group monitoring events at the School of the Americas - a US military training camp for would-be assassins, death squad members and military coup-leaders based in Georgia - was stopped from entering Canada. Hendrik was travelling with Eric LeCompte, SOA Watch Outreach Director. Both tried to enter Canada to give presentations on the situation in Colombia and to offer nonviolence training for SOA Watch groups in BC. Why were they prevented from doing so?

Eric was not admitted because authorities feared he would encourage people in Canada to protest. Hendrik, having been interrogated by a US Border Patrol Agent and US immigration official, was denied entry because of his opposition to the WTO.

On October 29th, Tariq Ali, an internationally acclaimed novelist and long standing anti-war activist, was arrested in Germany (The Independent, Oct.30, 2001). Aside from the colour of his skin, and the Middle-Eastern sound to his name, Tariq was carrying a recent gift: a copy of Karl Marx's On Suicide, still wrapped in cellophane. Ali states, "[the customs officials] really thought they had got someone. My passport and boarding card were taken from me, I was rudely instructed to re-pack my bag, minus the crucial "evidence"... and I was escorted out of the departure area and taken to the police headquarters at the airport." The arresting officer told him bluntly, "After 11 September, you can't travel with books like this."

What's more, the world-renown feminist organization, Women in Black, who for decades have peacefully opposed militarism of all types, have been labelled potential terrorists by the FBI and threatened with a grand jury investigation. What for? Advocating for peace. This apparently makes them "anti-American" and thereby a threat.

In this regard, as George Monbiot says in the Guardian (Oct. 16, 2001), Women in Black are in good company: "Earlier this year the director of the FBI named the chaotic but harmless organizations Reclaim the Streets and Carnival Against Capitalism in the statement on terrorism presented to the Senate. Now...the Senate's new terrorism bill, like Britain's Terrorism Act 2000, redefines the crime so broadly that members of Greenpeace are in danger of being treated like members of al-Qaida. The Bush doctrine - if you're not with us, you're against us - is already being applied."

What this means is becoming increasingly clearer: if you belong to or support organizations opposed to US-friendly dictatorships you will be targeted as a "terrorist".

You don't even have to be an activist to be targeted. Trustees of the City University of New York are planning formal denunciations of faculty members who criticized US foreign policy at a teach-in in the first week in October. Similar efforts to silence criticism and dissent have occurred at the University of Texas at Austin, MIT, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and elsewhere.

Over 800 people have so far been arrested in the US as "suspected terrorists", most of them men with Middle-Eastern names. The absolute secrecy surrounding these detentions is of serious concern. The Washington Post (Oct.15, 2001) reports they have been held in solitary confinement with no contact with their families and limited access to their lawyers. Their names appear on no federal jail log available to the public. No records can be found in New York court records showing why they are detained, who represents them or the status of their cases.

Welcome to the "war on terrorism" - the war on us.