FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:  Dina Paul Parks, 212-337-0005, x11

Haitian Coalition Urges President, Congress to Protect Due Process

NEW YORK, October 24, 2001 -- The National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) is calling on President Bush and Congress to take steps to resolve a number of civil liberties concerns raised by anti-terrorism legislation currently pending before lawmakers. In letters dated today and signed by over 25 organizations and individual citizens, NCHR asks the President and Congress to fix the language of the PATRIOT Act of 2001 to ensure that thousands of non-citizens are not placed in indefinite legal limbo and denied basic due process protections. Earlier today, the House of Representatives passed their version of the bill. When senators take it up either later on today or tomorrow, NCHR urges these lawmakers to include due process protections in the final act.

"We understand that extraordinary measures must be taken to protect national security,"  said Jocelyn McCalla, NCHR’s Executive Director.  "Destroying the nation’s precious freedoms that American citizen and immigrant servicemen and women are right now fighting to protect, however, should not be among those measures."  Among the more alarming provisions of the bills are the powers granted solely to the Attorney General to jail any non-citizen, without charging them with a crime, indefinitely. Exercising judicial oversight would be exceedingly difficult in these cases. In addition, the legislation does not even provide for court-appointed legal representation for those unable to afford their own lawyer, a right accorded to the accused by the 1966 landmark Supreme Court Miranda ruling. "Haitians and many other immigrants are already very familiar with the power of the state to exercise such control over our lives,"  added Mr. McCalla. "That’s the kind of nightmare, in our native countries, from which many of us fled. It would truly be a sad irony if the United States, a refuge and haven, now places us at risk for similar abuses."

During the week of October 1st, the House Judiciary Committee unanimously passed a bipartisan bill that accorded the government numerous additional tools to protect national security without sacrificing this nation’s respect for human and individual rights. NCHR believes that the President and Congress can and must work hard to revive those provisions before this legislation is made final and signed into law. At a minimum, the final act should:

• Provide a finite period of time that a person can be held without being charged with a crime. A period of seven days was included in the first version of this legislation and seems reasonable.

• Provide for evidentiary standards and judicial review of the Attorney General’s detention powers.

• Ensure court-appointed counsel for those unable to afford their own attorney.