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by Dwight Gordon

Greetings, I’m constantly hearing people rant on about immigrants here, particularly the racialized ones. Whether it is about them supposedly bringing their untidiness, their rudeness, or catering to their own kind, or making cities like Toronto more dangerous. I heard a comment about how immigrants here must assimilate. But assimilate into what ? Is that referring to the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant way of life? And if so, does that mean that the aboriginal people don’t mean much? I’m Canadian of Jamaican parentage. So many people see me as being Jamaican just because I talk about Jamaica. I once had to tell a man three times that I was born in Canada. Yet he was quick to remember issues about me that could put me in a negative light. Mere coincidence ? In the meantime, I’ve been told to go back to the country where I supposedly came from. Another person had a hard time believing I was born here because of my black complexion. I keep hearing people rant on about Jamaicans, and blacks, making regions like Toronto more dangerous. So am I supposed to believe that in every case when a person is quick to see me as being from Jamaica, it’s an honest mistake ? In the meantime, Rob Ford interestingly made a comment a long time ago, saying that the Chinese work like dogs and that they’re taking over. And a man who was a company executive who was supposed to become some kind of federal commissioner, had to change his mind when he said something around the line of Jamaicans being a threat to Toronto’s safety. Some federal cabinet ministers ranted on saying that this executive was willing to work for just $1.00. I could swear one of those ranters was the current immigration minister. Thank you

 

Dwight Gordon — I am a Canadian of Jamaican descent from Toronto, living in Scarborough particularly.  I’m very active in the black and Jamaican communities, and I also participate in causes dealing with racialized communities, poverty, health and disabilities. As I became a teenager, I got some very eye-opening lessons of the problems in society and the world we live in. And the eye-opening lessons never did stop. Me being black of Jamaican heritage definitely indirectly contributed to those lessons. Hence, my activism. Thank you

Obama ‘encouraged’ by signs of progress on Senate immigration reform

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Senators plan to unveil bill as early as next week but conservatives are wary of citizenship for undocumented migrants

guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 April 2013

Marco Rubio has given the Republican response speech

Over the weekend, Marco Rubio took a markedly less upbeat position than his fellow members of the ‘gang of eight’. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

 

The Obama administration said on Monday that it was encouraged by signs of progress towards a comprehensive package of immigration reforms that would extend a route to citizenship to the country’s 11 million undocumented migrants.

As cross-party negotiations enter their crucial final stages ahead of the unveiling of an immigration bill in the US Senate as early as next week, the White House is pressing senior congressional leaders to forge ahead with a robust bill that would provide a clear pathway to citizenship. President Obama’s spokesman said that “we are encouraged by the continuing signs of progress”, though he refused to be drawn on the details of the package that are still being thrashed out.

The most politically charged aspect of the draft bill is likely to be the precise terms of a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million. One of Obama’s core principles contained in his blueprint for immigration reform was that undocumented immigrants should be granted a real chance of becoming full US citizens.

But this is seen as a red rag to many Republicans, who interpret it as a form of amnesty that rewards illegal behaviour. Advocates of the reform, including the four Republican and four Democratic senators who make up the bipartisan – dubbed the “gang of eight” – who are framing the legislation, are all too aware that conservative anxieties have to be assuaged if the bill is to have any chance of achieving congressional approval.

That sensitivity helps explain the wobble over the weekend shown by Marco Rubio, the Tea Party-backed senator from Florida and a possible Republican hopeful in 2016. He took a markedly less upbeat position than his fellow members of the Senate group, stressing that the final terms of the bill had yet to be agreed and that it should not be rushed.

Rubio’s ambiguous stance, carefully pitched to address the scepticism of many Republicans while keeping one foot in the reformist camp, was applauded by leading conservatives on Monday. Jeff Sessions, a senior member of the senate judiciary committee from Alabama, said Rubio had underlined that “never again can Congress pass a far-reaching proposal only for the American people to find out what’s in it later. What we need, and must have, is a full and thorough national discussion over every component of this bill.”

Carney said that White House staffers were engaged with the group of eight senators over drafting the legislation and denied that Obama was keeping in the background to avoid giving Republican opponents of the bill a target. But he refused to answer questions about how difficult the president was willing to make the pathway to citizenship in order to overcome conservative resistance to reform.

Details of the proposals that have been floated in the media include a possible minimum wait time for citizenship for any currently undocumented immigrant that could extend to as long as 13 years. Though individuals would be allowed to “come out of the shadows” relatively quickly and easily, by registering for a work permit, the prolonged delay in processing their claims for full citizenship, combined with possibly steep fines for the illegality of their previous status, could dissuade many from even embarking down the citizenship road.

Groups campaigning for a comprehensive deal that will extend to most if not all of the 11 million undocumented individuals are fearful that if that too many concessions are granted to the Republicans in these last few days of negotiations, then the resulting bill will fail to repair the current broken immigration system. Fred Tsao, policy director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said that many people had already been in the US for many years.

“We hope that there will be a path to citizenship that will be welcoming for the vast majority of individuals who need it. If the gang of eight don’t craft something that is accessible, then a substantial number of people won’t be eligible and they’ll continue to be vulnerable to family separation and exploitation, and is that what we really want in America today?”

Academic funding and the public interest: The death of political science

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Defunding disciplines like political science means “losing research of value”, writes Kendzior.
Sarah Kendzior
 Sarah Kendzior is an anthropologist who recently received her PhD from Washington University in St Louis.

The Coburn amendment prohibits the National Science Foundation from funding political science research that does not explicitly promote “national security or the economic interests of the United States” [AP]
In October 2012, I criticised the academic paywall system, which requires that ordinary people pay exorbitant prices to access scholarly work. I predicted that this system would lead to a loss of funding for academic research:

In the United States, granting agencies like the National Science Foundation have come under attack by politicians who believe they fund projects irrelevant to public life. But by denying the public access to their work, academics do not allow taxpayers to see where their money is spent. By refusing to engage a broader audience about their research, academics ensure that few will defend them when funding for that research is cut.

My prediction came true. On March 20, 2013, the US Senate passed the Coburn amendment, an initiative which prohibits the National Science Foundation from funding political science research that does not explicitly promote “national security or the economic interests of the United States”.

As a result, the NSF – which currently funds 61 percent of American political science research – will retract nearly all its support. “It’s going to be hard for big political science to continue,” says John McIver, who ran NSF’s Political Science Program in the mid-1990s. Topics the NSF funded in the past included political participation, voting patterns and public culture. What political scientists would have been wise to examine is the culture of academia itself.

The loss of NSF funding is a loss for American political science and for Americans. But it is understandable that most Americans do not recognise the significance of this loss. Academia rewards social scientists who prohibit the spread of knowledge more than those who share it. From paywalls to jargon to a tacit moratorium on social media, academics build careers through public disengagement. They should not be surprised when the public then fails to see the relevance of their work.

Attack on political science funding

Despite its pleas for fiscal prudence, Congress’ attack on political science funding has little to do with money. The NSF Political Science Program costs $11m out of an annual NSF budget of $7.8bn, or less than 0.2 percent. Cutting it will hardly free up funds for the “next-generation robotic limbs” or “life-saving hurricane detection systems” that Senator Tom Coburn, the Republican who spearheaded the cuts, envisions replacing desultory political science rot.

What lies behind the attack on political science? Some have suggested that politicians are reluctant to become the objects of objective research. “Studies of Americans’ attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American’s life,” protests Coburn, a senator who regularly uses the filibuster.

Others have noted the anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party and Congress’ refusal to recognise work that does not produce immediate, positive change. (You know, like Congress does.) Supporters of the Coburn amendment argue that academic research is elitist and impractical. “After four years of desperately searching in vain for how my degree could make the world a better place, the lack of real-world impact convinced me to leave a PhD programme in political science,” writes Atlantic writer Greg Ferenstein, in a plea to defund his discipline.

“The paywall sends a signal to the public that their interest in scholarship is unwelcome, even though their money may have helped pay for it.”

Arguments over impact and relevance ignore academia’s complicity in its own demise. The biggest problem for academics is not that their work lacks value. It is that the public’s ability to determine the value of academic work is limited by academia itself.

In the aftermath of the Coburn amendment, political scientists took to the internet to translate NSF project descriptions from academese. “Do we really know what turns an impoverished young man into a criminal, a gang member, or a terrorist? Might we want to understand ways to head that off?” asks political scientist Seth Masket, deciphering an abstract which contained the words “neopsyhological” and “manualised”. Masket noted that political scientists have done a poor job explaining their discipline to public officials, the media, or society in general.

He is right. But academics struggling to stay employed are reluctant to relinquish the unwieldy jargon that is the source of so much mockery and misery. Shunning disciplinary norms could cost them in publishing or finding a job. Furthermore, writing in a style decipherable to the public opens one up to public scrutiny. “Bad writing,” argues political scientist Stephen Walt, is “a form of academic camouflage designed to shield the author from criticism.”

But bad writing also shields the author from interest and support – a serious problem when the denial of funding rests on assertions of irrelevance. That is assuming, of course, that the author’s works are accessible at all.

With the majority of academic literature hidden behind a paywall, there is no way for the public to determine whether claims of irrelevance are valid. Instead, they rely on slanted media coverage – “Feds pay $227,000 to study magazine photographs,” crowed the Washington Times – and politicians’ charges of elitism, which paywalls help validate. The paywall sends a signal to the public that their interest in scholarship is unwelcome, even though their money may have helped pay for it.

Exploiting stereotypes of academics

The week the Coburn amendment passed, I spoke at a workshop on Central Asian security issues in Washington, DC. The presenters were researchers; the audience largely policy officials. One of the goals of the workshop was to determine what risks Central Asia faces after NATO withdraws from Afghanistan in 2014.

This is a question of national security – a pragmatic question, the sort of which Senator Coburn approves. But what we found during the discussion is how heavily our knowledge of Central Asian relies on the in-depth, long-term studies of objective scholars. Academic analysis of Central Asia has shed light on Islamic practice, ethnic conflict and state repression – issues of complexity important to shaping policy, but best studied by trained social scientists without a political agenda. The work of academic researchers was often funded through government programmes – and now that the government has cut funding, knowledge of the region will decrease.

There is no doubt that defunding disciplines like political science means we will lose research of value. There is also no doubt the government will seize any opportunity it can to axe programmes it deems of little significance. What is in doubt is the willingness of academics to forestall budgetary cuts by allowing the public to see the value of their work.

When scholars and society are considered separate, it is politicians like Tom Coburn who benefit. Politicians are able to exploit stereotypes of academics because academia blocks access to its best line of defence: its research.

There is no excuse, in the digital age, for continuing to suppress ideas and insight behind jargon and paywalls. We cannot debate what is in the public interest if the public has no way to discover what interests them.

Sarah Kendzior is a writer and analyst who studies digital media and politics. She has a PhD in anthropology from Washington University.

NKRG Seminar: The Growth of North Korean Refugee Claimants in Canada – Thursday April 04

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Location: Munk School of Public Affairs

Date: Thu Apr 04
Time: 2:30 PM – 4:30 PM 108N, North House

Speaker: Sonia Ryang, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies; C. Maxwell & Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Chair of Korean Studies, University of Iowa

The North Korea Research Group (NKRG) will present its research on the situation of North Korean refugee claimants in Canada and Toronto. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada shows that the number of North Korean refugee claimants in Canada has dramatically increased in the past few years.

The aim of this seminar is to consider the reasons that possibly explain this phenomenon, and better understand the settlement process of refugees, particularly in Toronto. In addition, we examine the role of non-governmental refugee organizations to highlight the differences in their approach and objectives. The social consequences and inter-group tensions of these developments are also addressed.

Our research is based on access-to-information requests to the government, interviews with various local organizations, and specific legal case studies. The content of our research presents original and up-to-date information on this important, yet largely unfamiliar issue.

#May1TO, May Day: Solidarity City! – Status for All!

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Join us in the streets for the 8th Annual May Day of Action!

NOI

5:30pm on Wednesday May 1st, 2013
March starts at Nathan Phillips Square

Mark the date, more information forthcoming.

Videos from previous year: http://bit.ly/MayDayTOVids
More info: www.toronto.nooneisillegal.org/MayDay

Organized by a coalition of organizations. To endorse and participate in the organizing, please email nooneisillegal@riseup.net.

Palestinian Refugees in Jordan and the Revocation of Citizenship

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Palestinian Refugees in Jordan and the Revocation of Citizenship: An Interview with Anis F. Kassim

Jan 28 2013
by Hazem Jamjoum

[Palestinian Refugees, 1948. Public Domain. From Wikimedia Commons.]
[Anis F. Kassim is an international law expert and practicing lawyer in Jordan. He was a member of the Palestinian legal defense team before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the 2004 landmark case on Israel’s separation wall, and that led to the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The following interview was originally published by BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in their quarterly magazine al-Majdal.]

Hazem Jamjoum: What legal status was afforded Palestinians who came under Jordanian control after the 1948 Nakba?

Anis Kassim: On 19 May 1948, the Jordanian army entered the area of central Palestine that the Zionist forces were unable to occupy, and began the process of legally incorporating central Palestine into the Jordanian Kingdom. As part of this process, on 20 December 1949, the Jordanian Council of Ministries amended the 1928 Citizenship Law such that all Palestinians who took refuge in Jordan, or who remained in the western areas controlled by Jordan at the time of the law’s entry into force, became full Jordanian citizens for all legal purposes. The law did not discriminate between Palestinian refugees displaced from the areas that Israel occupied in 1948 and those of the area that the Jordanian authorities renamed the “West Bank” in 1950.

On one hand, this citizenship was forced upon the Palestinians who did not really have much of a say in the matter. On the other, this was a welcome move because it saved those Palestinians the hardship of living without citizenship.

HJ: How was the process for the revocation of citizenship complex?

AK: First of all, I should note that the law itself has not been officially amended, so what I am about to describe is still what is officially in effect today. First of all, the Jordanian Constitution, adopted in 1952, states that citizenship is a matter to be regulated by a law, and the Jordanian Citizenship Law was indeed adopted in 1954, replacing that of 1928 and its amendment. According to this law, it is possible to revoke the citizenship of a Jordanian citizen who is in the civil service of a foreign authority or government. The citizen must be notified by the Jordanian government to leave that service and, if the citizen does not comply, the Council of Ministries is the body with the authority that is able to decide to revoke his citizenship. Even if the Council does decide to revoke the citizenship, this decision must then be ratified by the King, and even then, the citizen whose citizenship was revoked has the right to challenge the Council of Ministries’ decision in the Jordanian High Court, and it is this court’s decision that is binding and final. These procedures are being completely ignored when the citizenship of a Jordanian of Palestinian origin is revoked.

HJ: Did the status of Palestinians in Jordan change after the 1967 War with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank?

AK: No. their status remained as Jordanian citizens.

HJ: When did the differentiation between Palestinian citizens of Jordan begin?

AK: Today we can speak of five kinds of Palestinian citizens of Jordan. The first differentiation came in the early 1980s, when the Jordanian government was concerned that Israeli policies and practices aimed to squeeze out the Palestinian inhabitants of the occupied West Bank; to empty out the Palestinian territories to replace them with Jewish settlers. The Jordanian government then created the first real differentiation between its Palestinian citizens by issuing differentiated cards.

Those who lived habitually in the West Bank were issued green cards, while those who habitually lived in Jordan but had material and/or family connections in the West Bank were issued yellow cards. The sole purpose of these cards at the time was so that the Jordanian authorities at the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge—the only crossing point between Jordan and the occupied West Bank—could monitor the movement of these card holders, enabling the Jordanian authorities to know how many Palestinian West Bankers had crossed into Jordan, and to ensure that they returned, essentially a kind of statistical device. Indeed, this was a wise policy in terms of countering the Zionist plans to continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The major turning point came with the Jordanian disengagement (fak al-irtibat) from the West Bank on 31 July 1988.

HJ: What was the disengagement?

AK: Since 1948, when central Palestine came under Jordanian control, the Jordanian government has claimed the West Bank as part of the kingdom. By 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had come to be recognized on an Arab and, to some extent, international level as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, but the Israelis and Americans were still refusing to recognize the PLO, let alone to officially communicate with it. Jordan’s King Hussein shrewdly took the decision to disengage from the West Bank as a message to the United States and Israel that if they were going to negotiate with anyone over the fate of Palestinians in the West Bank, it should be with the PLO. In the famous speech he delivered on 31 July 1988 [1] in which he declared the disengagement—and we have to remember that this was during the most intense period of the first Intifada— King Hussein stated that the purpose of the disengagement was to support the Palestinians’ struggle for self determination by relinquishing his claim to that territory.

HJ: How was the disengagement a “turning point” for Palestinians’ status as Jordanian citizens?

AK: When the disengagement was declared, the color of the cards (yellow and green), that had been used as a statistical device, became the criteria for determining the citizenship status of a citizen. The government issued instructions to the effect that those who habitually lived in the West Bank, that is green card holders, on 31 July 1988 were “Palestinian citizens,” while those who were living in Jordan or abroad were Jordanian. Put another way, over one-and-a-half million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons.

HJ: You previously mentioned that we can speak of five kinds of Palestinian citizens of Jordan. What are the different kinds of status among Palestinians citizen of Jordan currently?

AK: The first category we can call hyphenated Palestinian-Jordanians. These are Palestinians who were in Jordan on the date of the disengagement with no material connection to the West Bank or Gaza Strip, or who were Jordanian citizenship holders abroad. These are regarded as Jordanians for all legal purposes.

The Palestinians in the second category are the green card holders whose citizenship was revoked by the government orders that I described earlier.

The Palestinians in the third category are the yellow card holders, who kept their citizenship after the disengagement, but many of whom have more recently faced the revocation of their Jordanian citizenship rights.

The fourth category is that of blue card holders. These are 1967 Palestinians refugees from the occupied Gaza Strip who are in Jordan and who were never given citizenship rights. They are in a very miserable position because, since they are not Jordanian, they cannot enjoy any of the benefits of citizenship in this country: they cannot access public schools or health services, they cannot get driving licenses, they cannot open bank accounts, or purchase land. They are mostly concentrated in the refugee camps in the Jerash area, specifically the one called “Gaza Refugee Camp,” which is generally known as the worst of the refugee camps in Jordan in terms of living conditions. To build a tiny house in the camp, they need to get several permits from several government departments. While they receive some modest support from UNRWA, any support that comes from the rest of the society has to be approved by Jordanian security authorities.

The fifth, and newest, of the categories is that of Jerusalem residents. These have always been a special case: the Israelis consider them permanent residents of Israel without any citizenship rights, while for Jordan they are citizens whose status was not affected by the disengagement. The problem now is that the Israelis, as part of their ongoing ethnic cleansing project, are revoking the residency rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem who cannot prove that their “center of life” is in that city, to use the terms of the Israeli High Court. The Jordanian government has yet to officially take a position on the Jordanian citizenship rights of these Jerusalemite Palestinian citizens of Jordan whose residency in Jerusalem has been revoked by Israel. This is now another emerging problem.

HJ: You mentioned that yellow card holders have been facing the revocation of their Jordanian citizenship in recent years. Can you expand on this?

AK: The main institution that handles this issue is the Follow-up and Inspection Department (al-mutaba’a wa al-taftish) of the Jordanian Ministry of Interior. To understand what’s happening you need to understand that the way Jordanian citizenship works since 1992 is that every citizen must have a “national number” (raqam watani). Anyone who does not have this number is not a citizen.

In recent years, the Follow-up and Inspection Department has been expanding on the scope of its authority in interpreting the 1988 government regulations dealing with the revocation of Palestinians’ Jordanian citizenship. We need to keep in mind also that these regulations were never made public, and that in fact no policy, let alone law, dealing with the revocation of Palestinians’ citizenship in Jordan has ever officially been made public. Originally, as I described, 31 July 1988 was treated as a cut-off date, if you were a green card holder in the West Bank, your citizenship was revoked, and otherwise you remained a citizen. The Department has since expanded to the revocation of citizenship from others under other pretexts.

For instance, many Palestinian citizens of Jordan were able to acquire Israeli-issued West Bank residency permits through such procedures as family reunification since 1967. Of course, part of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies manifested as revocation of West Bank residency permits over the years under various pretexts. For example, at one point West Bank residency permit holders who were away from the West Bank for more than three years had their residency revoked by the Israelis. The Follow-up and Inspection Department of the Jordanian Interior Ministry has revoked national numbers (i.e. citizenship) from many Palestinians who had their West Bank residency permits revoked by the Israelis under the pretext that these people should have kept these residency permits, and that the Palestinian should go and get the Israelis to reissue them their West Bank residency permits.

Another example is that of PLO or Palestinian Authority (PA) employees. Even though a Jordanian citizen can work for any other government, many Palestinian citizens of Jordan who have taken jobs in PA institutions have been stripped of their national numbers. A more recent example is that of the Jordanian parliamentary elections [November 2010]. Many of the Palestinians who went to register as voters were sent to the Follow-up and Inspection Department, where they had their national numbers revoked.

Ultimately, however, it is difficult to discern a particular logic to the post-1988 revocations. In some cases, one person or group within the family has their citizenship revoked, while others in the same family remain citizens. With regards to employment in the PLO or PA, there are PA parliamentarians and ministers with Jordanian national numbers, while some Palestinian citizens of Jordan, for example, have had their citizenship revoked for working for a PA-owned company or civil institution. We can only say that so far it seems very arbitrary. I should also add that this wave of citizenship revocation means that yellow card holders live with the perpetual fear of any interaction with the government bureaucracy, since this could result in being sent to the Follow-up and Inspection Department and having their citizenship revoked.

HJ: Is there a way to know how many Palestinians have had their Jordanian citizenship revoked since 1988?

AK: No, these numbers are kept secret by the Jordanian Ministry of Interior and are not made public. There are various estimates, but these numbers vary. The most well-known of these is that of the Human Rights Watch report that stated that over 2700 Palestinians citizens of Jordan had their citizenship revoked between 2004 and 2008, but this number is based on a journalistic article in a Jordanian newspaper, and so, in addition to not giving information on the years before or after the period, are not to be taken as authoritative.

HJ: What is the effect of the revocation of citizenship on the people involved?

AK: They become like the blue-card holders from the Gaza Strip that I talked about before without the ability to access any government services, open bank accounts, etc. It should be mentioned though that there is a potentially very dangerous situation for Jordan; if this trend continues it will become a “ghetto state.” When you forfeit a Jordanian’s citizenship and keep him in Jordan because you don’t have the power to send him to Palestine—because the Israelis of course refuse—you will end up with over a million stateless Palestinians within your borders, and who have nowhere to go.

HJ: Earlier you described the Jordanian law of citizenship and the various levels of government and judiciary through which the revocation of citizenship must pass to become final. Can Palestinians who have had their Jordanian citizenship revoked make use of what you described as an advanced citizenship law to challenge the Follow-up and Inspection Department’s actions?

AK: As I described above, there is no question that the revocations of citizenship that the Jordanian authorities have carried out since 1988 contradict the written law and indeed the constitution. Under the law, the revocation of citizenship must follow the procedures I spoke about earlier, and are not the subject to such things as the color of your card or regulations. As it stands, however, a junior officer of the Follow-up and Inspection Department can decide the fate of a citizen’s citizenship rights. It is now a more simple matter to revoke a yellow card-carrying citizen from his citizenship than it is to revoke their driving license! With the revocation of a driving license, the citizen has the right to challenge the revocation in a court. The Inspection and Follow-up Department is indeed the only government department that is not subject to judicial review.

The government justifies this by stating that the revocation of citizenship by this Department is an “act of state.” There is one judge, Justice Farouq Kilani, who was president of the Jordanian High Court of Justice who did challenge the government’s position, and stated that citizenship is a matter regulated by law and not regulations, and that therefore the actions of the Department are null and void. As a result of his ruling—this was in 1998—the Minister of Justice demanded his resignation, and Kilani resigned. He subsequently gave two public lectures on the topic, and wrote a book called Independence of the Judiciary, an excellent treatise in which he describes in detail both his landmark ruling and his encounter with the Justice Minister. His ruling was very correct, constitutionally sound and legally unchallenged. The Jordanian judiciary has a long tradition of reviewing administrative decisions, including decisions involving citizenship. As it stands now, the situation in Jordan is very suffocating on this issue of citizenship revocation because there is no right to appeal since the government treats these decisions as “acts of state,” and it is practically impossible to take these issues to an international court.

It is also important to mention that there is no refugee law in Jordan. As such, once the citizenship is revoked, the Palestinian refugee is left with no political, civil, or economic rights.

HJ: Besides the position that citizenship revocation is an “act of state,” how does the Jordanian government justify stripping its Palestinian citizens of their citizenship rights and rendering them stateless?

AK: There have been several justifications or excuses given. Jordanian officials maintain, for example, that the revocations are designed to force Palestinians to stay in Palestine, to stop the Zionist leadership from implementing its ethnic cleansing project. This argument is usually framed within the paradigm of the “alternative homeland” project, the Israeli right-wing’s position that Palestinians have a homeland, and this homeland is Jordan. We do not debate the importance of these goals, and of full-fledged rejection of the “alternative homeland” project on all fronts. Mixing this in with the issue of Palestinian citizenship rights in Jordan is like mixing apples and pears. The “alternative homeland” is a national issue, and thus should not be treated solely at the Jordanian level, but through Jordanian-Palestinian-Arab coordination as an Arab summit item. Such a political issue should not and cannot be mixed with a human rights issue such as the rights of Palestinian citizens of Jordan. Moreover, the people who are fighting the “alternative homeland” project are the Palestinians themselves who have fought it with their own bodies in these decades of spilled Palestinian blood. Actually, if Jordanian officials are sincere about their political position, they should take more credible action against the Israelis to force them to leave the Palestinians in peace and to allow the refugees to return, as is their internationally recognized right.

Furthermore, as a sovereign state, the Jordanian government could have taken steps during the negotiation of the Wadi Araba Israeli-Jordanian peace settlement to insist on such things as allowing Jordanian citizens to maintain their West Bank residency permits, and to restore those that had been stripped. As it stands now, the Jordanian government does not have the power to push for such a residency permit to be issued to an individual, and so by stripping them of their Jordanian citizenship, these individuals are left stranded with nowhere to go. But also as it stands, the Jordanian government can stop security coordination with Israel, and can stop the marketing of Israeli products in Jordan. Lately, the Jordanian Ministry of Industry has allowed the entry of 2500 types of Israeli products into the Jordanian market.

Another justification that Jordanian officials forward is that they are not revoking citizenship, rather they are “correcting the situation” of certain individuals who were wrongly classified, that all they are doing is simply dropping the national number. “Correcting the situation” is the new catch-phrase you see. They say this to avoid contradiction of the Follow-up and Inspection Department’s actions with the law and constitution, but the fact remains that simply dropping the national number is in effect the total revocation of citizenship.

HJ: Do you see any way that this situation can be reversed?

AK: The January 2010 report of Human Rights Watch [2] about the citizenship revocation raised some awareness both locally, on an Arab level as well as internationally, but this was short-lived and has not alleviated the situation. This issue requires an international campaign of human rights organizations because there is no venue left to air your grievances. Ultimately, the situation would best be alleviated by addressing the root-cause of the situation of these Palestinians, which is the implementation of Palestinians’ right to return to the lands from which they were displaced. Until then however, more attention needs to be given to this thus far largely-ignored issue, and the Jordanian laws and constitution need to be respected and implemented by restoring the citizenship of those whose rights were revoked, and ensuring that the law is followed in any future case of citizenship revocation.

_______________________

[1] See the text of the speech at: http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/88_july31.html

[2] Human Rights Watch, “Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality,” Human, January 2010: http://www.hrw.org/node/87906

Displacement in Myanmar

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From IRIN
BANGKOK, 22 March 2013 (IRIN) – More than 1,000 people have been displaced following sectarian violence in central Myanmar this week, government officials tell IRIN.

“The numbers are still unclear, however, between 1,000 and 2,000 have been displaced,” Ye Htut, Myanmar’s presidential spokesman, said on 22 March. Many of the displaced are now staying in a local football stadium in the town of Meiktila, where they are receiving relief assistance, while others are staying with family and friends.

The comments follow two days of violence in Meiktila, in Mandalay Division – the worst communal unrest to shake Myanmar since clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddists and Rohingya Muslims in western Rakhine State in 2012. That earlier violence left 167 dead, hundreds injured and over 120,000 people displaced. More than 10,000 homes were burned or destroyed.

The current conflict erupted after an argument broke out between a Muslim gold shop owner and his Buddhist customers. A Buddhist monk was reportedly among the first killed, leading a Buddhist mob to set fire to Muslim homes and at least five mosques, local media reports say.

Government reports suggest at least five people have been killed, but unconfirmed reports say the number is much higher.

Potential to spread

“This is an extremely worrisome situation,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, said. “The government is not doing enough to head this off, and further sectarian violence in Myanmar is a real risk.”

The government must promote reconciliation and tolerance in the multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, while at the same time holding those responsible for the violence accountable, he explained.

“What happened in one place could easily happen in another,” Basil Fernando, director of policy and programmes for the Asian Human Rights Commission, said from Hong Kong. “It’s imperative the government takes action against those responsible.”

But according to Ye Htut, action is already being taken.

“We take this very seriously and will hold accountable those responsible,” he said, noting 13 people were arrested on the morning of 22 March alone.

“At the moment, the situation is under control. However, there are still small groups of people trying to incite trouble. It’s important we have the full cooperation of local residents,” he said.

“This is quite unusual. People are being manipulated,” said one local journalist who used to live in the area. He cited extremist views, such as anti-Muslim sentiment by some groups, as a possible underlying factor in the violence.

Myanmar’s Muslims account for approximately 4 percent of the country’s roughly 55 million inhabitants, however, the last nationwide census was conducted in 1983. The government lists 135 ethnic groups, which are grouped into eight national races: Burman, Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Mon, Rakhine and Shan.

Photo: Courtesy of the Arakan Project
More than 100,000 Muslim Rohingya are displaced
Condolences

On 21 March, Vijay Nambiar, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Myanmar, arrived in Yangon, where he expressed sorrow over the loss of lives and destruction in Meiktila.

“While firm action by the authorities was needed to prevent further loss of life or spread of violence, the continued fostering of communal harmony and preservation of peace and tranquillity among the people was the most urgent priority, and this was the responsibility of all sections of society. Religious leaders and other community leaders must also publicly call on their followers to abjure violence, respect the law and promote peace,” he said.

In a brief statement on 21 March, the US embassy said it was closely monitoring the situation and extended its “deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives and property in the violence.”

The latest violence is seen as yet another test for Myanmar’s reform-minded President Thein Sein, who has been praised for opening up and liberalizing the once-pariah Myanmar, also known as Burma, since taking office in March 2011.