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<\/a>The following is a\u00a0statement by Asian and Pacific Islander organizations in Washington State to\u00a0express\u00a0solidarity with Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities facing\u00a0violent anti-Muslim backlash.\u00a0While the\u00a0statement is specific to Washington, we encourage organizations in other parts of the country to use\u00a0it\u00a0as a model for\u00a0their own public statements.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Research shows<\/a> that since the attacks of 9\/11, the largest number of terrorist attacks in the United States have come not from Muslim communities, but from violent white supremacist, antigovernment, and other antidemocratic groups. Yet this fact has not been the basis for America\u2019s War on Terror. This begs the question, whose America are we trying to secure?<\/p>\n Since 9\/11, U.S. government officials, media pundits, and too many ordinary Americans have used national security arguments to justify the profiling of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, and other immigrant communities. This includes the warrantless surveillance of Muslim communities, and policies like \u201cspecial registration\u201d, which forced 85,000 immigrants from majority-Muslim nations to register with the U.S. government. These policies are not only unconstitutional<\/a> in their reliance on religion and national origin; they are also ineffective at keeping communities safe. What they have<\/em> been effective at doing is feeding the climate of fear and xenophobia that has fueled an exponential rise<\/a> in hate crimes targeting Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians.<\/p>\n Today, in the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Paris, and against the backdrop of a devastating refugee crisis stemming from conflicts in the Middle East, fear and xenophobia have once again gripped American politics, and deepened a climate of anti-Muslim hostility. A total of 31 U.S. governors, or nearly two-thirds of all governors in the country, have refused to admit Syrian refugees into their states, ignoring the fact that immigration policy is a federal issue, and that Syria\u2019s refugees are fleeing for their lives in a humanitarian crisis of gargantuan proportions. The fact that all but one of these governors are Republican reveals the ideological nature of the politics of fear. But the Democratic Party must also be held accountable. In a recent vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to restrict the entry of Syrian refugees, 47 Democratic legislators \u2013 nearly one-fourth of the Democratic Caucus \u2013 voted on the wrong side of history. Among these lawmakers, we are particularly disappointed in those from communities of color or formerly vilified European immigrant communities, whose families have experienced nativist scapegoating.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the\u00a0Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reports unprecedented levels of backlash against Islamic institutions and American Muslims, or those perceived to be Muslim since the Nov. 13th<\/sup> attacks in Paris. The extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric and falsehoods being espoused particularly by leading Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and the broader mainstreaming<\/a> of Islamophobia by other political candidates and lawmakers in the run-up to the 2016 general election, are taking a grave human toll.<\/p>\n Both CAIR and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) immediately condemned the terror attacks in Paris. Despite this, incidents of anti-Muslim hate violence in the last week-and-a-half have included shootings, intimidation, vandalism, armed demonstrations, and physical assault. In Meriden, CT, someone fired multiple shots at the Baitul Aman mosque. In Pflugervile, TX, vandals covered the door of the Islamic Center of Pflugerville in feces and threw torn, feces-covered pages of the Quran to the ground. In Orlando, FL, someone fired shots into the home of Amir and Nehal Elmasri, while the couple was out feeding the homeless. In San Diego, CA, someone shoved the stroller of a visibly pregnant Muslim woman, with her child inside it, causing it to strike her abdomen. Also in San Diego, a man attacked a Muslim student at San Diego State University, pulling off her Islamic headscarf and spewing hate. In Brooklyn, NY, a postal worker approached two Muslim women and an infant shouting, \u201cI am going to burn your f**king temple.\u201d He elbowed one of the women and spat in her face, and called the other woman a \u201cn**ger\u201d. In Philadelphia, PA, on a Southwest Airlines flight, a passenger claimed to be afraid to fly with two Palestinian-Americans after hearing them speak Arabic. These are just some of the stories.<\/p>\n As Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, we are intimately familiar with America\u2019s long and shameful saga of using fear to justify anti-immigrant politics and violence. While the targets of the latest generation of American xenophobia are Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians, throughout history, people from various Asian nations have been the targets of \u201cYellow Peril\u201d racism justifying brutal U.S. wars abroad, and violent<\/a> repression and exclusion at home. And people from Hawai\u2019i and the Pacific Islands have long paid the human price<\/a> for U.S. military violence on their lands, all in the name of national defense. To understand these linkages, one need only look to the reference<\/a> made by Mayor David Bowers of Roanoke, VA earlier this month to Japanese internment during WWII as his justification for refusing aid to Syrian refugees today. Then, as now, fear mongering and the \u201cothering\u201d of an entire group of people only exacerbate xenophobia and racism, while doing nothing to make us safer.<\/p>\n On this 40th<\/sup> anniversary of the arrival of refugees from the wars in Southeast Asia, we are also reminded that the very existence of refugees is often the outcome of U.S. military violence. Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. government dropped\u00a02.7 million tons of explosives<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 more than the Allies dropped during the entirety of World War II \u2013 on Cambodia, whose population was then smaller than New York City’s. The bombing drove hundreds of thousands of villagers to the capital of Phnom Penh, devastated the country\u2019s food supply system, and led to the starvation of half a million people. It also radicalized a population that had previously been politically neutral, creating a base of support for the rise of the Khmer Rouge, which would later wipe out one-fourth of Cambodia\u2019s population through a policy of genocide.<\/p>\n If this story sounds familiar, it should. The tragedy of the Cambodian genocide, which still reverberates today, was a result of the Vietnam War, or what Southeast Asians refer to as \u201cThe American War\u201d. Likewise, today, half the population of Syria has been displaced by war. But that refugee crisis traces back to the first Iraq War in 1990, which triggered the collapse of Iraq that has continued today, creating political space for the rise of the Islamic State. Today there are 4 million Iraqi refugees. As scholar Vijay Prashad reminds<\/a> us, these Iraqi children and families, along with the 5 million Syrians who have been displaced, should be thought of as regime change refugees, products of western intervention.<\/p>\n And what happens after refugee resettlement? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines \u201crefuge\u201d as \u201cshelter or protection from danger or distress\u201d. If the Southeast Asian refugee experience is any indication, in order to find true refuge in America, refugees will have to contend with the nation\u2019s contradictions \u2013 between freedom and democracy on the one hand, and white supremacy on the other. Many Southeast Asian refugees were settled into impoverished and abandoned neighborhoods alongside African Americans who had been fighting for freedom for generations (and still<\/a> are). They soon found that they had fled one form of violence only to be thrust into another. Today, as a result of a combination of 1996 immigration and anti-terrorism laws, more than 13,000 refugees from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam \u2013 many who were criminalized and racially profiled in their youth \u2013 have been deported or are now facing deportation<\/a>.<\/p>\n In many ways, we as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have long found ourselves caught in between the global violence justified by America\u2019s rhetoric of liberty and freedom, and the domestic reality of America\u2019s origins in slavery and genocide. We applaud President Barack Obama for his unwavering insistence<\/a> on admitting Syrian refugees, despite public opposition. We also welcome the outspoken position that Washington State Governor Jay Inslee has taken, unapologetically<\/a> opening our state\u2019s arms to Syrian refugees. This is the courage we expect from our leaders. In this era of fear and nativism, both the president and our governor have revealed that they are students of history, as all elected officials have a duty to be, to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. We call on public officials at all levels of government to do the same.<\/p>\n But as Dr. Martin Luther King said so prophetically<\/a> in 1967, when he called the U.S. government \u201cthe greatest purveyor of violence in the world\u201d, in order to build real democracy and security: \u201cWe as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.” Today the richest 80 people in the world own as much as the poorest 3.5 billion people or half the world\u2019s population. U.S. taxpayers pay $8 million every hour to support war, a total of $600 billion just in 2015, compared to $63 billion on housing. We pay<\/a> $80 billion each year to incarcerate 2.4 million people, and far more<\/a> when accounting for the costs to families and communities of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. The outcomes of these investments are racial. They benefit a few at the expense of growing numbers of dehumanized \u201cothers\u201d \u2013 Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, poor and criminalized Black and Brown people. Achieving real security will require us to end this savage human sorting.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time for all Americans to have honest conversations about the root causes of insecurity and fear, and to build a shared agenda to invest in the common good: public education, public infrastructure, jobs, affordable housing, restorative justice, and climate justice. The outcomes of war and greed, the double helix in the DNA of white supremacy, are uneven. If America is ever to realize genuine peace and security, we must organize and agitate for change alongside those who are most deeply harmed by America\u2019s profound contradictions.<\/p>\n SIGNERS:<\/strong><\/p>\n * Multiracial organizations with\u00a0API leaders and\/or constituents<\/p>\n
\nThe Anti-Muslim Backlash <\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Long Arc of American Violence<\/strong><\/h3>\n
We Need a \u201cRadical Revolution of Values\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Things you can do:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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SIGN THIS STATEMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n