DAP leaders to meet US Charge d’affaires Robert A. Pollard  tomorrow over the US Immigration blacklisting of Malaysia as one of the 15 “terrorist-risk” countries from October 1

(Penang, Thursday): DAP leaders will  meet the United States  Charge d’affaires Robert A. Pollard  at the United States Embassy in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow over the US Immigration blacklisting of Malaysia as one of the 15 “terrorist-risk” countries from October 1, from which date  “visiting aliens” to the United States who had travelled to these countries would be subject to special screening, like being finger-printed, photographed and tracked, “if they can’t credibly explain their trips there”. 

On Tuesday, DAP asked for an urgent  meeting with the US Ambassador, Marie Huhtala to protest over Malaysia being blacklisted in the expanded list of 15 “terrorist-risk” states,  which will not only cause grave inconvenience and hardships to Malaysians travelling in the United States but also highly detrimental to Malaysia’s international image and attractiveness as a safe investment destination. 

DAP leaders will meet with Pollard as the Charge d’affaires of the United States Embassy as Marie Huhtala is overseas and will not return until next month and will discuss three inter-related subjects: 

• The blacklisting of Malaysia from Oct. 1 as one of the 15 “terrorist-risk” states under the new ruling made in early September by US Attorney-General John Ashcroft, whereby  visitors  from these countries could be finger-printed, photographed and tracked  like common criminals in the United States  by the US immigration authorities; 
• The problem faced by some 5,000 bona fide Malaysians after months of waiting in getting approvals for visa to study, work or vacation in the United States; and 
• The reasons for the  US branding of Malaysia as a terrorist state, such as  by naming Malaysia as one of the 15 “terrorist-risk” states from October 1, despite the protest by the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to  United States Vice President Dick Cheney  when they met in Washington last week that Malaysia does not like to be branded as a terrorist state or as having links with terrorists especially in view of the Malaysian government’s “firm stand against terrorism and terrorists”.

DAP had protested strongly when  two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington last year, Malaysia was included in the list of 26 countries with large Muslim populations and  judged by the Bush Administration as presenting terrorism concerns, subjecting them to tight visa review process where all men, Muslim and non-Muslim,  age 16 to 45  would have to complete a detailed questionnaire to be studied in Washington by a terrorist task force.

Besides Malaysia, countries affected by the new rules were Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Although the Bush Administration had promised at the time that it would take 20 days for such visa applications to be cleared by the Washington terrorist task force, there was recently  a backlog of some 10,000 applications some of which had been outstanding for more than six months.

Malaysia had suffered the worst as well over 5,000 of this  10,000 backlog were from Malaysians, including Malaysian Chinese and Indian students from prestigious universities such as Harvard, Yale and MIT.  Although the State Department claimed two days ago that   this 10,000 backlog had been cleared by “automation and other improvements in procedure”, it had not explained how such a backlog could take place with many foreign  students who went home for the summer vacation  unable to get back to the United States in time for the new academic year.

The interminable delays for bona fide visitors to the United States, in particular for study, are most short-sighted, especially as the failure to halt the September 11 attacks was the result of  US intelligence failure of unprecedented magnitude and not visa processing.

Now, Malaysia is to be the object of further selective discrimination, “graduating” from the blacklist of 26 countries where visa applications are subject to tight “terrorist’ screening into a more select blacklist of 15 “terrorist-risk” countries in the company of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan and  Indonesia.

From the new “short-blacklist”, it would appear that countries like Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had  passed the test of the United States Justice Department and are not included in the “terrorist-risk” states, unlike Malaysia.

DAP leaders would like to find out from the US Embassy how these countries passed the test, while Malaysia failed and is now lumped in the new blacklist of 15 “terrorist-risk” states -  whether it is connected with the “929 Declaration” by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri  Dr. Mahathir Mohamad on September 29 last year that Malaysia is an Islamic State and the escalating  UMNO-PAS competition to out-Islam and out-Islamic State each other in disregard of the 1957 Merdeka Constitution, the social contract and the 1963 Malaysia Agreement that Malaysia is a democratic, secular and multi-religious nation with Islam as the official religion but Malaysia is not an Islamic State, whether UMNO Islamic State or PAS Islamic State.

(26/9/2002)