LATAM-US: Xenophobic Threats Target Arabs Everywhere

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 15 2001 (IPS) - The xenophobic reaction to the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington Tuesday are threatening communities of Arab immigrants found throughout the world, including in Latin America.

Harassment of individuals, threats and attacks against mosques and Arab-owned businesses are not only occurring in the United States, but also in such far-flung countries as Australia, Portugal and even Sweden, famed for its peace and tolerance, where a Palestinian restaurant had its windows broken and walls painted with offensive graffiti.

Brazil, a country considered to have a healthy and peaceful coexistence of different ethnic groups and racial mixtures, has not escaped the wave of hostility.

The building housing the Arab Chamber of Commerce in Sao Paulo was evacuated Friday afternoon after a telephone call warned that a bomb had been planted there.

“Xenophobia is on the rise,” a business leader with ties to the local Arab community told IPS, requesting anonymity.

The pressures emanating from what is occurring in the United States is felt strongly everywhere, fuelling manifestations of anti-Arab sentiment, he said.

Some 11 million Syrian and Lebanese immigrants and their descendants live throughout Brazil. Just over 10 percent consider themselves Muslim, while the vast majority claim the Catholic faith.

But the problem lies in the fact that the general population, as in other countries, is confusing ethnic identity with religion, not realising that not all Arabs are Muslim, and that certain groups of non-Arab peoples – such as Afghanis, Malaysians, Turks, and Indonesians – mostly follow Islam.

Discrimination against Muslims intensified among children in Brazilian schools following the terrorist attacks in the United States on Tuesday, reports the World Assembly of Islamic Youth.

But the most serious threat reported so far in Brazil is against Mohammed Kassem Jomaa, mayor of the southern Brazilian city of Chui, located on the border with Uruguay.

Approximately 1,500 Arabs and Palestinians live in the Chui area, and many say they fear for the lives of their relatives in their countries of origin, and for their own safety.

The local media have reported on alleged ties between Jomaa and Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born millionaire who is believed to be in hiding in Afghanistan and who Washington says is its primary suspect for orchestrating the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in the US capital.

Jomaa requested that Brazilian justice authorities provide him with protection, saying he fears for his life, while the Federal Police accuse him of maintaining contacts with Bin Laden during trips to Lebanon, and of living in Brazil with false documents.

The Brazilian police say Jomaa was born in Lebanon, but he assures that he is Brazilian, born in Sao Paulo, and that he frequently travels to Lebanon to see his former wife and one of their two children.

The accusations, also coming from Uruguay, “are unfounded and are endangering my life,” says the mayor.

In Argentina, “the community of Arab origin is suffering the intensification of a discrimination campaign,” stressed Juan Gabriel Labaké, secretary general of Argentine Arab Federation.

There have been two brutal attacks against the Jewish community in Argentina in the past decade, attributed to Islamic fundamentalists, lamented Labaké. But never before have there been aggressions or the fuelling of hatred against the Arab immigrant community, he said, pointing out that a president of Syrian origin, Carlos Menem, governed the nation from 1990 to 2000.

Meanwhile, the authorities in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, at Washington’s request, are rushing to step up surveillance along their shared border at Iguazu Falls, where many Arabs live in the surrounding cities. There are reportedly suspicions that a support base for international terrorism is located in the area.

Paraguayan journalist Héctor Guerin, editor of the local daily ‘Vanguardia’, told IPS that security has been intensified at the Bridge of Friendship, which connects Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este with the Brazilian city of Foz de Iguaçú.

Guerin, however, said that the chief of police, Blas Chamorro, denied Friday that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had asked for collaboration in investigating the potential ties of members of the local Arab community to Bin Laden or to other known terrorists.

Paraguay’s foreign minister José Antonio Moreno stressed that the US embassy in Asunción has not made any request related to the matter, refuting the news stories indicating otherwise.

Arab communities exist in many other Latin American countries as well.

In Ecuador, they make up an important part of the population and, as in Brazil, Arabs are divided into a Catholic majority and smaller portion of followers of Islam.

No incidents of personal attacks or discrimination have been reported in Ecuador, though owners of Pakistani restaurants have seen a slight decline in business.

Concern about rejection of the Arab community there lies in information coming from the United States that a cell of Bin Laden’s cronies may be present in Ecuador.

Small communities of Palestinians and Lebanese call Peru home. There are an estimated 600 families living there, with 70 percent claiming Catholicism as their religion. The community’s leaders condemned the attacks against the United States.

Venezuela, meanwhile, has been the recipient of waves of Arab immigration, particularly of individuals and families dedicated to commerce. But Caracas is also in a unique situation because of its “petroleum diplomacy,” which has brought President Hugo Chávez closer to the countries Washington considers to be “enemies,” including Iraq, Iran and Libya.

Venezuela is the only Latin American member of the Arab- dominated Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The wave of threats and aggressions that Arabs are suffering in many countries was triggered by Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, but it is also a response to prejudices and stereotypes that are fuelled by Hollywood films in which Arab terrorists are the enemy, said the Sao Paulo business executive.