By Farbod Faraji, National Security Project at 6:09pm
Today the ACLU and PEN American Center asked the State Department to speed the issuance of a visa to Ghassan Zaqtan, a widely-published and internationally respected poet and writer who had intended to begin a two-week book tour for his new collection, Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, yesterday.
Mr. Zaqtan applied for a visa on March 7, 2012 at the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and was told at the time that he would receive his visa within two weeks. Four weeks later, Mr. Zaqtan has yet to receive a response. Without a visa, Mr. Zaqtan cannot visit the United States, and the American readers who have invited him to the United States cannot meet with him and hear him speak.
Today, the ACLU sent letters to the Departments of State and Homeland Security asking them to grant a visa to Kerim Yildiz, a British citizen living in London. Yildiz, the executive director of the U.K.-based Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), has apparently been refused a visa to enter the U.S., and we worry that the delay — which has lasted nearly a year — relates to his human rights advocacy on behalf of Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and elsewhere.
By Anna Estevao, National Security Project at 1:07pm
Last month, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the State Department’s failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the declassification of 23 leaked State Department cables. These cables have already been fully disclosed online by WikiLeaks and distributed by major national and international newspapers. The U.S. government has maintained that the cables are secret. As we’ve said before, the government’s struggle to ignore WikiLeaks has reached the point of absurdity.
In Alaska, if you're a transgender person, the state requires you to have surgery to change the gender marker on your driver's license. Today, the ACLU filed a brief challenging this state surgery requirement on behalf of a transgender woman, K.L.
K.L. has lived as a woman for two years, and whose work documents and even her U.S. passport all identify her as female. But when she tried to change the gender on her state driver's license, she was told she had to submit proof of having undergone sex reassignment surgery.
Today, Texas executed Humberto Leal Garcia, a Mexican national who was tried, convicted and sentenced to die in the state of Texas without ever being given access to the Mexican consulate. Most agree his sentence would have been different if he had been given that access. It is certain that his lawyer would have been different – Mexico pays for experienced lawyers to defend against death penalty cases for its citizens.
Texas violated Leal’s rights under Vienna Convention on Consular Relations when it neglected to inform him of his right to consult the Mexican consulate upon his arrest. The Texas authorities don’t even deny that – they simply say, in legalese, “too bad.” Because of their ability to rely on the hypertechnical timing requirements of state and federal law, Texas prosecutors can afford to ignore a legitimate legal claim. Not deny the claim, mind you – just ignore it.
Late last week, the government denied a travel visa to Malalai Joya, an Afghan politician, writer, and human rights activist. Today, the ACLU sent a letter to Secretaries Clinton and Napolitano asking them to reconsider this decision.
Over the weekend, it was reported that renowned Columbian journalist Hollman Morris — one of 12 international journalists selected to participate in the prestigious Nieman fellowship program at Harvard University during the 2010–11 academic year — has been denied a visa by the State department. The U.S. embassy in Bogota informed him that he has been found permanently ineligible for a visa under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
This week, as the ACLU welcomes our clients Professors Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan to the United States — scholars who, until recently, were barred from entering the country because of their criticism of U.S. policy and who will be speaking to audiences in New York today and tomorrow — we also celebrating the news of another almost-excluded scholar being granted permission to enter the country.
Good news for the First Amendment! Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has signed orders earlier this week that effectively end the ideological exclusion of Professors Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan, two prominent scholars who were denied visas to enter the United States under the Bush administration. In two separate lawsuits, the ACLU represents a handful of American organizations that have invited the scholars to speak to American audiences.
In 2006, before M.I.A. was rocking the Grammys nine months pregnant, the U.S. government actually denied her a visa to enter this country to work on an album. The reason she was kept out? The lyrics to some of her songs were considered sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers and Palestinian Liberation Organization.
