World
Lawyers at New York airport aid travellers caught up in ban
New York: A week after US President Donald Trump imposed a temporary travel ban for residents of seven Muslim-majority countries, dozens of lawyers remained at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to defend the rights of those affected, the media reported. The Central Diner, a 24-hour eatery in Terminal 4, has become a makeshift office for lawyers, interpreters and others who are donating their time and effort to aid travellers, Efe news reported on Saturday. Immigration attorney Tahanie Aboushi has been here all week assisting the families of some 100 people detained on arrival.
“This is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. The President’s executive order discriminates on the basis of nationality and we can’t stand by doing nothing in the face of something like this,” she told Efe news on Friday. Aboushi recounts the case of a father and son who spent 33 hours in custody after arriving on a flight from Iran.”They gave them two choices: be deported to Iran with a five-year prohibition on returning to the US, or face indefinite detention,” the lawyer said. Since Trump issued the order on January 27, federal judges have issued temporary injunctions blocking the deportation of Iranians, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Sudan, Somalis, and Yemenis who arrived in the US with valid visas.
But the problem extends beyond the borders of the US, according to Aboushi, who says that in some countries, airlines are preventing people of those nationalities – some with Green Cards – from boarding flights. “People whose entry has been blocked have valid visas and even so they have been exhaustively interrogated and reviewed,” lawyer Steven DeMaio said. “We need to remember they are not illegals.” “We have been told about cases in which authorities have asked permanent residents to sign form I-407, which implies a voluntary renunciation of their legal status,” DeMaio said. The attorneys wait in the Terminal 4 arrivals hall with signs in English and Arabic reading “Have you seen someone being detained?” and “free legal aid”.
Around 200 people gathered outside JFK’s Terminal 4 on Friday for an interfaith prayer service organised by the New York Immigration Coalition and Majlis Al Shura: The Islamic Leadership Council of Greater New York. “New York is home to 4.3 million immigrants and it is essential that we do everything we can to protect them against these anti-immigrant executive orders,” the coalition’s Muzna Ansari said. “As a Muslim woman myself, I am heartened by the tremendous momentum achieved by diverse New York communities. We are showing the new administration that our New York is welcoming, inclusive, and will not rest until we receive justice,” she added.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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