Top 10 Civil Liberties News Stories of the Week - August 4, 2006 Edition

U.S. Government Interrogates Visiting Foreign Scholars Regarding Political Views

John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

• Georgetown University historian Waskar Ayi, a Bolivian who was denied reentry to the United States based, apparently, on his ethnic status as an Aymara Indian. U.S. officials seem to assume that his Aymara status means that he supports the indigenous rights agenda of Bolivian president Evo Morales, who is unpopular with U.S. officials. Ayi is in fact a critic of Morales. "I don't understand," Ayi told the Post. "I am considered to be very pro-America in Bolivia. I am in limbo. I have missed two semesters, and I may lose another."
• Yoannis Milios, a professor at the National Technical University of Athens who was scheduled to give a presentation at SUNY-Stony Brook but was interrupted by immigration officials, interrogated for hours about his support of Communist fiscal policy, and turned away.
• Dora Maria Téllez, who was denied access to a teaching post at Harvard University because she had supported Nicaraguan communists 30 years ago.
• Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss religion scholar who had been invited to a teaching post at the University of Notre Dame but was denied visa renewal by the U.S. government after 9/11. Civil libertarians regard the persecution of Ramadan, a well-liked moderate known for his criticism of religiously-motivated violence, as a blatant case of racial profiling.

• U.N. Human Rights Committee Responds to Shadow Report, Issues Observations
• Emergency Contraception May Soon Be Available Without Prescription
• Good Samaritans Indicted for Taking Dying Immigrants to Doctor
• Victory Over Government-Mandated Public School Segregation
• New Statistics on Sexual Violence in U.S. Prisons
• U.S. Government Interrogates Visiting Foreign Scholars Regarding Political Views
• ACLU: Government Overcensored Documents in PATRIOT Act Case
• FDA Decided to Delay Emergency Contraception in 2004 Before Reviewing Data
• Louisiana Sheriff Threatens to Arrest Citizens with Ethnic Hairstyles
• "In God We Trust" Turns 50