Iranian Alert -- February 19, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” But most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

Nuclear machinery found in Iran

2.19.2004
By Barbara Slavin and John Diamond, USA TODAY

United Nations inspectors have found sophisticated uranium-enrichment machinery at an air force base outside Iran's capital, Tehran, U.S. and foreign sources with knowledge of the discovery say.

The find at Doshen-Tappen air base appears to undermine Iran's claim it is not pursuing a nuclear bomb. The discovery may strengthen calls for action by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

The IAEA would not comment Wednesday, nor would the Bush administration. However, a source with knowledge of the find at the base said the Iranians had constructed and tested a gas-centrifuge system there. Such a system is used to refine uranium for nuclear reactors or bombs. There was no indication any uranium had been inserted or enriched.

Iran has long been suspected of seeking nuclear bombs and is building a reactor with the help of Russia. The United States has questioned why Iran needs nuclear power, since it has the world's fifth-largest oil reserves.

Under pressure last year to disclose its intentions, Iran agreed in a deal with France, Germany and Britain to suspend efforts to enrich uranium and to let inspectors into the country to prove it is not trying to build bombs.

Last week, U.N. inspectors looking through Iranian nuclear documents found drawings of a so-called P-2 gas centrifuge, twice as productive as a model Iran has acknowledged using to enrich uranium. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on Tuesday admitted Iran is doing research on the P-2, but for peaceful purposes.

Two U.S. sources briefed on the IAEA discovery said the Iranians admitted that they also possessed the actual machinery and tested it. The discovery appears to indicate that Iran is moving ahead with a nuclear-bomb program.

Before the latest revelations, U.S. intelligence believed Iran was 10 years from a nuclear weapon.

"The question is, did the Iranians actually give us the Full Monty or are they just doing a striptease?" asks Patrick Clawson, deputy director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Three sources with knowledge of the latest find say it will be mentioned in an IAEA report to be sent to the 35 governments on the organization's board this weekend.

One expert said Iran should be encouraged to keep cooperating with the IAEA and not be subjected to U.N. penalties.

"You want the Iranians to reveal more, and we know there is more to reveal," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

Pressure on Iran has increased since Libya decided last year to reveal its nuclear activities and Pakistan admitted that its top nuclear scientist sold nuclear know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-02-19-iran-nukes_x.htm

Many Iranians flaunt their style

The polarized worlds of reform-minded and conservative Iranians clash at an upscale mall in Tehran.

By Scott Peterson
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

TEHRAN, IRAN – As far as Hossein is concerned, his clothing shop for women, in a mall in an upscale district of Tehran, is the front line in Iran's simmering social war.

Women shopping here are reprimanded or even detained by overzealous morality police for showing too much hair. Hossein has been warned for displaying "too much red" in his window - colors known as "screaming" in Iran because they are so bright and happy.

For various infractions, he was recently forced briefly to shut down.

This mall - home turf for Iran's prosperous and disillusioned social elite - is a place where two worlds collide. On one side are young free-spirited Iranians, radicalized beyond politics against Iran's Islamic revolution and hard-line rulers.

One the other: Feared enforcers of the regime's Department of Vice and Virtue, who routinely target improper garb, pop music, and the peddling of Western influence by selling men's ties.

"I feel so sorry and hateful, to see these very stupid people who are destroying their own country with their own hands," laments Hossein, who wears a silver necklace and long, slicked-back hair. "[Hard-liners] made a very small world for themselves, and have been bombarded with ideas from people above them. The ideology has penetrated their minds. They do not know what the real world is."

Conservatives are likely to gain the advantage at the ballot box on Friday, as many pro-reformists vow to boycott the vote. Iranians under 30 make up two-thirds of the population and have voted enthusiastically for change since 1997.

They elected President Mohammad Khatami and the current reform parliament, or majlis. But the failure of reform in the face of hard-line opposition has turned many Iranians away from politics. One aim of the boycott is to ensure that a new conservative majlis has little popular legitimacy. Even Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi says she won't cast a ballot.

More than 100 reform legislators took the unprecedented step Tuesday of accusing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a letter of leading a system "in which legitimate freedoms and the rights of the people are being trampled on in the name of Islam."

The social and political fault line in modern Iran has become so pronounced that both sides have taken to protesting the other in the most niggling ways.

At this mall, shoppers push the limits, wearing required long coverings, or manteaux, skin-tight and above the knee. Kerchief-sized headscarves are often accompanied by matching nail polish and lipstick.

Indeed, the secular world in more affluent parts of north Tehran is saturated with the Internet, illegal but tolerated satellite TV, and Western music, and thick with respect and even yearning for Iran's top enemy, America.

It could not be further from the poorer, religious areas of south Tehran, where Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution took root and still commands a faithful following. Indeed, Hossein says that most of the mall's morality enforcers appear to come from less privileged families, "and haven't seen this kind of thing in their lives. It's a different world."

"[Hard-liners] think the same about us as we do about them: that we are animals, imitators stricken by the West, and on the wrong path," he explains. "That is what I think - they are such animals."

In this milieu, Iranians revel in the forbidden. They drink alcohol and increasingly take drugs, attend promiscuous parties pumping with pop music, and even drag-race their cars while intoxicated, shouting: "This is Iran, where anything is possible!"

Among the majority of Iranians who demand reform, these may be extreme examples. But they fear the raw power of the hard-liners, who have used violence and the control of key state and security organs to block their dreams of democratic freedom and less strict social rules.

"There is too much pressure under this tyranny - we can't talk. Even a word, and tomorrow you are not here," says another shopkeeper who sells fashionable clothes smuggled from Turkey, and would not give his name. "They have a gun at our heads. They have the power, and we can do nothing."

His shop has been visited in recent days by Vice and Virtue officers. They insisted that neckties be removed from storefront mannequins, and broke a CD playing music by an artist, even though his work had been approvedby the Islamic Guidance Ministry.

Female mannequins are gone from the window. A saleswoman now wears a more conservative head covering - a partial concession. But it is draped over a tight manteau and blue jeans. Her eyes are framed by thick mascara; her rose-colored nails match her glossy lipstick.

"They come here in plain clothes as shoppers, ask for the price of a tie, then go out and bring uniformed officers," the saleswoman says.

The shop stops still for a moment when two men with beards pop in. There is a sigh of relief when they are recognized as friends. "I have my beliefs, and they have their beliefs, and that is all," says the saleswoman. "We're all Muslims, but there are hard-liners, and there are normal people."

Any relaxation of the dress code is "100 percent reversible," she adds. "When people in charge are that powerful, they can tell me: 'Wear this today, and don't wear that tomorrow.' " Iranians do report a broader tolerance in recent months. Hair coverings have been less strictly enforced; young men and women now hold hands publicly - an act that once sparked immediate beatings. And while shops that have been targeted by the authorities now bury their tightest-fitting manteaux on long racks, the shrink-wrap choice has become so prevalent that some women are dieting to improve the fit.

"When they put pressure on people - 'don't drink, don't wear this' - many want to try it, because it's forbidden," says one boyish salesman. "It's chic to buy a tie, and chic to be against them."

Architecture student Somayeh shops with her sisters, sporting plucked eyebrows, makeup, and a revealing head scarf that barely clings to the back of her head. "We fear [hard-liners] because they can make trouble for us with lashings, or put us in prison," says Somayeh, whose face shows a ski-goggle sunburn. Skiing on the slopes near Tehran is often beyond the control of the morality police. "But it is not like it used to be - they can't force us anymore not to go out with boys, or to wear this or that.

"Islam is not just about covering your hair and not drinking alcohol - it's also about not telling lies," Somayeh adds. "Some [hard-liners] are worse than those who don't cover themselves. Islam says: 'Don't deceive each other.' "

"Their Islam and their state are different from the ones we know," says her sister Parisa, who also studies architecture. She says she and her young friends once said their prayers regularly, but no longer do. "Even those who took part in the revolution 25 years ago say that this is not Islam. They are working against Islam."

The current "little bit of freedom" now tolerated, Parisa says, is meant only to "calm people." But for the anonymous shopkeeper, recent months have been marked by a clampdown that he thinks will only worsen if conservatives win parliament.

"Girls and boys coming out like this are only pretending to be free," he says, waving toward flirting couples. "What do you call liberty? Uncovering your hair? This is not freedom. The true liberty is expressing your idea.

"With the Internet and satellite TV, people are understanding more and more every day," he adds. "This is the atomic age, and each person knows better if they are on the right path. I know what is right or wrong.... I don't need anybody else to tell me."

Regardless of the election results, these irreverent Iranians say they wouldn't care how the other half lives, if they were left to live their own lives.

"The conflict is brewing, and one day, one group will win," says Somayeh. "If the conservatives were to win, they would have done so already. In the end, they will lose."

• Second of two stories on Iran's reformist-conservative social divide. The first ran Feb. 18.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0219/p06s01-wome.html

When Islamic clerics meet 'The Great Satan' face to face

By Scott Baldauf
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW DELHI – As the principal of an Islamic seminary in New Delhi, Maulvi Mohammad Mouzzam Ahmed knows there is no such thing as a free lunch.
So when he was offered an all-expenses-paid trip to the United States a few months ago, to see how religious schools operate there, he was curious, and a little skeptical. What, he wondered, would the world's greatest superpower want with a nice moderate Muslim like him?

The maulvi was not alone. He was just one of a half-dozen Indian Muslim clerics invited to the United States in September as part of the US State Department's International Visitors program, a 60-year-old institution that has brought nearly 100,000 emerging world leaders an exposure to US culture, society, and institutions.

Every year, US embassy officials choose a theme. Last year's tour group of Islamic clerics from India - the country with the world's third-largest Muslim population - focused on American religious education, and was called "the madrassah program." Smart alecks here had another name for it: "Meet the Great Satan."

Maulvi Mouzzam, a pious middle-aged man with a disarming smile, is still not entirely sure what it was all about. But he did have a good time, he says. "Americans only work on a profit and loss basis, and I'm not sure what sort of benefit they have gotten from my visit," he says, now back at his job handling admissions at the madrassah he runs at Fatehpuri Mosque in Old Delhi. "I did enjoy the American people, though. They were not as virulently anti-Muslim as their government."

Given the prevalent anti-American sentiment found in South Asia these days, such suspicion is perhaps not surprising. But US diplomats in New Delhi say they have no hidden agenda. The main point, they say, is good old fashioned interaction: to bring different people from all over the world to see the United States for themselves, and determine whether the impressions they have or the propaganda they hear matches their own experiences.

Whether such programs actually work, of course, is another question. Some Indian academics see such programs as just another product of American naiveté. "I find American foreign policy incredibly naive at times," says Dipankar Gupta, an anthropologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Travel broadens the mind, but it depends on what kind of experience you have. It can actually backfire, and you can become more rigid to change."

Among Americans "there's this belief that if we show people the truth, then rationality will prevail," says Mr. Gupta. "But that's not the point. On issues such as moral values, people aren't very rational. It's what they do, it's what they've always done, and they don't change."

By most accounts, the madrassah educators group was rather cantankerous. Traveling from Washington, D.C. and Charlotte, Va., to Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles, these various mullahs, imams, and maulanas received an in-depth look at how American Jewish, Christian, and Islamic private schools operate, and how they incorporate secular subjects like math, science, and literature into a morally based educational framework.

Some, including Maulvi Mouzzam, were sharply critical of what they saw of the US, particularly regarding school discipline.

Today, the tour is still a bit of a blur for Mouzzam, who says the trip was so packed with meetings that he had little time for sight-seeing. But he recalls the shock he felt one day at a religious school, where an 8th grade student at the front of the class sat in her chair with her feet propped up on the top of her desk.

"The respect for teachers was missing," says Mouzzam. "I told them the religious education they are giving is insufficient, the children are learning their religion but they aren't learning what is right and what is wrong."

Unfortunately, he says, nobody seemed to listen, neither the American teachers nor the American diplomats back in Washington. "The only time they will actually take anything from us is when they are ready," says Mouzzam with a sigh. "Right now, they are in a position when they think they are Superman and they don't need anything from anybody."

Even so, America was a revelation for Mouzzam. "Everybody follows the rules. Everybody treats you with respect, not as some member of the multitudes to be pushed aside. The roads were all clean." But the food was not a high point.

"Ooph," says Mouzzam, remembering how thin and sickly he looked when he returned. He couldn't eat the meat because it wasn't halal, or Islamically clean. He didn't like the vegetables because they didn't taste as good as the ones back home. He couldn't eat sweets because he's diabetic. And he couldn't drink milk products because they were too rich, and he has a heart condition.

"When I came back, my friends all said I looked like I had just come from some backward faraway Indian village," he laughs.

But most important, Mouzzam says he was surprised that Americans were so friendly to a bearded Muslim cleric wearing traditional kurta pajamas. "I used to think that all Americans were against Islam, but they weren't," he says. But while Americans were friendly, by and large, he feels that Americans still need a better understanding about Islam, and about why certain people turn to violence or terrorism to solve their problems.

"You have to go to the source, to the roots of terrorism," says Mouzzam. "You say you are against people picking up arms, and yet you allow Ariel Sharon to pick up arms and kill the Palestinian people. When you are attacked during 9/11 you retaliated against the terrorists." But when India's parliament was attacked by terrorists on Dec. 13, 2001, "we were told not to react. It is not a level playing field."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0219/p01s02-wome.html

Iran gags reformist papers ahead of polls
Thursday 19 February 2004, 11:31 Makka Time, 8:31 GMT

The papers published a letter critical of Ayat Allah Khamenei

Iran's hardline controlled judiciary has ordered two reformist newspapers to be shut down after they published a letter critical of the Islamic republic's supreme leader.

The closure of the papers, Shargh and Yas-e No, came on the eve of parliamentary elections here that are expected to see conservatives wrest control of the Majlis from reformists, most of whom have been barred from standing.

They were the only two newspapers who dared to publish a letter from incumbent reformist deputies that questioned Ayat allah Ali Khamenei's role in the mass disqualifications.

Some 70 reformists who resigned from parliament warned in the open letter of a "widening gap between the regime and the people" and asked if Khamenei had allowed the disqualifications of reformist candidates.

"The organs under your authority, having for four years humiliated the Majlis (parliament) and its deputies by blocking legislation, have openly blocked the most basic right of the people: to choose and be chosen," they said.

Criticising the supreme leader is a serious criminal offence in Iran.

"I condemn this decision. It is a way of restricting freedom of the press"

Issa Saharkhiz,
Association for the Freedom of the Press

The Tehran prosecutor's office closed the papers because they carried the stinging text despite an order from the Supreme Council for National Security - Iran's top national security body - not to do so, according to a leading press freedom activist.

"I condemn this decision. It is a way of restricting freedom of the press," Issa Saharkhiz of the Association for the Freedom of the Press said.

Journalists questioned

Officials went to the offices of the two newspapers to inform them of the ban. They also questioned two Shargh journalists, Saharkhiz said.

Iranians go the polls on Friday

The official news agency IRNA quoted a Shargh employee as saying the paper had been shut "until further notice".

"They told our editors that the final decision on Shargh will be announced officially on Saturday, February 21st," the employee was quoted as saying.

A Yas-e No employee said the papers were padlocked by prosecutors later on Wednesday, and the sign on the building where the paper operates from was also torn down.

Tehran's chief prosecutor is Said Mortazavi, who several years ago ordered a major judicial crackdown on the press as head of Tehran's press court. On being promoted last year, he was quick to warn journalists to be even more careful.

New nuclear parts 'found in Iran'

BBC News, UK
19 February, 2004

UN nuclear inspectors in Iran have found undeclared components of an advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuge at an air force base, diplomats say.
Correspondents say the find may be the first known link between Iran's nuclear programme and its military.

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has declined to comment on the find.

The diplomats said the parts found were compatible with the P-2 centrifuge - a more advanced type than the model Iran has acknowledged using.

The daily USA Today reported that the machinery was found at the Doshen-Tappen air base in Tehran.

The IAEA is currently examining Iran's nuclear activities for signs that it might be developing weapons.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes and says it made a full declaration to the IAEA in October.

On Tuesday, Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Tehran had only been studying designs of a P-2 centrifuge and that the IAEA had been informed about its research.

"The P-2 centrifuge device is a research programme... We try to utilise any new models in the industry," he was quoted as saying.

He also said Iran could meet its own nuclear fuel demands and could supply the fuel to other countries.

Pakistan link

Gas centrifuges - which can be used to make nuclear warheads - spin at supersonic speeds to separate fissile uranium-235 from the non-fissile uranium isotopes.

The diplomats - who were not identified - said preliminary investigations by IAEA inspectors indicated the Iranian components matched drawings of equipment found in Libya and supplied by the clandestine Pakistani network headed by scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The P-2 centrifuge is a Pakistani version of the advanced Western G-2 design and can produce material for use in reactors or bombs.

Iran agreed late last year to a tough inspections regime overseen by the IAEA.

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, countries are allowed to enrich uranium, but must notify the authority they are doing so.

Iran promised the IAEA in October that it would suspend its uranium enrichment programme.

US President George W Bush has said the world needs tighter restrictions to prevent the spread of nuclear know-how.

Washington said it would give Iran more time fully to disclose its nuclear activities before deciding whether to refer the issue to the United Nations Security Council.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3502717.stm

Iran's bloggers fear clampdown

February 19, 2004
CNN Int'l

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Take one exasperated Iranian woman. Add a computer. Hook it up to the Internet.

"And you have a voice in a country where it's very hard to be heard," said Lady Sun, the online identity of one of the first Iranian women to start a blog -- a freeform mix of news items, commentaries and whatever else comes to mind.

Initially created to defy the nation's tight control on media, these Web journals have turned into a cyber-sanctuary -- part salon, part therapist's couch -- for the vast pool of educated, young and computer-savvy Iranians.

As Friday's parliamentary elections approach, however, there's a distinct tone of worry that conservatives expected to regain control of parliament would step up pressure to censor the Internet.

"It will be the end of the blog era in Iran," said a Tehran-based blogger who operates pinkfloydish.com, the name indicative of her love of Western music.

But thus far, the Internet has managed to avoid the hardliners' choke hold on media, which has silenced dozens of pro-reform newspapers and publications since the late 1990s.

Thousands of Iranian blogs have cropped up since late 2001 when an Iranian emigre in Canada devised an easy way to use the free blogging service Blogger.com in Farsi. Though several English blogs outside Iran are read by Iranians, the most popular ones are in Farsi and operated inside the country.

Blogs offer a panorama of what's whispered in public and parleyed in private. People vent, flirt and tell jokes. They skewer the ruling clerics with satire and doctored photos -- such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei donning a Western business suit instead of his usual turban and robes.

The anonymity of e-mail addresses and use of pseudonyms strip away any timidity.

"We always wear masks in our society." said Lady Sun, who started her blog in November 2001 and later married one of its readers. "This is a place to take them off."

The masks, however, stay on offline, and like many other bloggers interviewed, Lady Sun spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bloggers can get quite feisty, as one commented in Farsi on the ruling clerics: "It's very pleasant to have to talk with 18th century people in 2004."

Even the Iranian vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, has a blog, though hardly anti-establishment -- it's mostly to gauge the sentiments of Iranians.

"Ordinary people read his thoughts and give him feedback -- directly through e-mail," said Hossein Derakhshan, the Toronto-based blogger who devised the seminal guidelines for Farsi characters. "This is very rare for an Iranian politician."

Iranians are not alone in embracing blogs. A blogger in Iraq gained a worldwide following last year with his reports on life on the eve of war. In the United States, information and political junkies exchange items not easily found in mainstream media.

"You're basically avoiding the filter whether it's a nefarious government or an ignorant editor," said Sree Sreenivasan, a professor of new media at Columbia University in New York.

Bloggers in Iran have sidestepped censorship efforts, in part, by running sites through multiple servers and using foreign-based blogs as portals to Iranian ones whose locations may keep changing.

But more importantly, officials have not countered with their ultimate weapon: bringing all servers under government control.

Plans to outlaw privately run Internet service providers were announced last year but were never followed through. Some suspect officials feared too much public outrage. But a new parliament could change the dynamics.

"We have suffered under unjust press laws," said Issa Sahakhiz, member of the Iranian branch of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "We are afraid (of) more to come with this new parliament."

In a country full of paradox, the Internet has been one of the biggest.

Authorities allowed it to expand in the 1990s without any serious controls -- even as they hunted for illegal satellite television dishes and Western movie videos. The huge online appetite has been fed by thousands of Internet cafes, low-cost computers from East Asia and a rush of entrepreneurs offering Internet accounts.

Other tightly run nations -- such as Saudi Arabia and China -- keep reins on the Internet. In Iran, almost anything is a click away. Beside blogging, Iranians spend time in chat rooms, download music, read poetry, visit any of the countless Farsi news sites or even surf the erotic offerings.

At its present course, Internet usage in Iran is expected to grow sevenfold to 15 million users by 2006, according to studies cited by the Middle East Economic Digest. More than half of Iran's 65 million are under 25 years old and hungry for the Web.

Pedram Moallemian, an Iranian who runs the English-language eyeranian.net from San Diego, reaches many of those Iranians with observations on everything from the Iranian elections to U.S. news programs.

"The blog in Iran is truly an amazing phenomenon," Moallemian said. "It shows that Iranians are saying, 'Look, we're part of the world as well."'

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/02/19/iran.blogging.ap/

Dutch MPs Back Expulsion of Asylum Seekers

February 19, 2004
Sarawak Tribune
Reuters

THE HAGUE -– The Dutch lower house of parliament approved plans on Tuesday to expel up to 26,000 failed asylum seekers in a move that won praise from the far-right but sparked protests and threats of hunger strikes.

The plans, which still have to be endorsed by parliament’s upper house, would force the failed applicants, many of whom have lived in the Ne-therlands for years, to leave over three years, while some 2,300 others would be granted amnesty.“Some of these people probably learned Dutch, they will have children who were born there and grew up being Dutch. To then push them out of what has become their own country is a monstrosity,” the Society for Threatened Peoples said.

The asylum overhaul in the Nether-lands, where the anti-immigration party of murdered populist Pim For-tuyn swept into a short-lived coalition in 2002, will allow the expulsion of failed applicants if they do not leave of their own accord.Dutch refugee groups staged a mass demonstration outside parliament in The Hague last week against the expulsions and failed asylum seekers have threatened to go on hunger strike.French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen welcomed the move. “This proves that good sense is starting to prevail among European governments,” Le Pen said.

“These are people who do not fulfil the conditions required by law to stay on the national territory. Well, what else can you do but ask them to go home or go elsewhere?”Immigration has been a hot topic across Europe in recent years, with far-right parties winning votes in countries from France to Austria, putting pressure on more mainstream politicians to introduce tougher policies.The Dutch lower house of parliament rejected a series of motions on Tuesday intended to soften asylum plans by Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk, signalling approval for the plan, a government spokesman said.“We have given status to about 2,300 asylum seekers and we have said that others have to leave our country. (Verdonk) wants a better, stronger ap-proach. She wants to bring into effect that people return to their country of origin,” the spokesman said.

The policy tightened asylum legislation from 2001 to ensure that those whose applications have been rejected – many of whom have been in the country long enough to raise families are helped to return home, he said.They would be given eight weeks to leave the Netherlands voluntarily and then taken to special departure centres where they would be given assistance to leave voluntarily or be forcibly repatriated after another eight weeks. While several countries, including Britain and Denmark, have tightened asylum policies, the Dutch government’s plans for mass expulsions have been compared by some critics with the World War Two deportation of Dutch Jews during Nazi occupation.But the Dutch government has dismissed the accusation, saying there is no legal basis for the failed asylum seekers to remain in the Netherlands and it is doing all it can to help them to return freely to their countries of origin.

“We have careful procedures in the Netherlands. This is and cannot be compared with Jews who were put on trains to go to the gas chambers,” Verdonk was quoted as saying by Dutch broadcaster NOS on its website.New York-based Human Rights Watch slammed the policy of the Dutch government last week, saying sending people home to countries like Somalia and Afghanistan could put them at risk.The Netherlands has seen the number of asylum seekers fall sharply since 2000, when 43,560 people applied for refugee status. Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics showed that 18,670 people sought asylum in 2002. The Dutch Refugee Council estimated that the number had fallen to about 10,000 in 2003.

http://www.sarawaktribune.com.my/publish/article_24146.shtml

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