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Preventive war, preventive scanning Héctor Abad Faciolince argues that present US procedures for anti-terrorist frontier scanning could mark the start of a new paradigm in discrimination against citizens of "grade-B" countries In this increasingly
paranoic world we live in there is a subject that holds a deep attraction for
me, perhaps out of some sort of latent masochistic leaning – the immigration
policies of rich countries. Last week the US government implemented new control
procedures for people wishing to enter its territory on a visa. A scanner takes
a biometry, or sophisticated digital photo, of your face and another apparatus
takes your fingerprints. The information is fed into a huge data bank and if a
face happens to coincide with that of some delinquent (foreign delinquents are
generally called terrorists), or if it does not coincide with the data on
your visa, the US government arrests you, deports you or takes other relevant
measures. Thus described, it
appears an almost limpid process, not much more irritating or humiliating than
having to have a visa. No one likes such policing security measures, but if
governments adopt them for the common good, and if everyone has to suffer the
inconvenience of controls, you end up having to undergo them however
begrudgingly. The basic point about this new frontier filter is that not
everyone’s face gets scanned and not everyone’s fingerprints are taken.
Inclusion in or exclusion from these procedures is based on citizenship. So, if
you are Canadian, European, Japanese or Australian, you do not have to pass
through the scanner (unless you intend to stay for more than three months). If
you are a US citizen, you never have to go through the scanner. Yet we cannot say that
the filter is racist. Although whites will tend to undergo controls far less
(given that most whites in the world live in the privileged countries), it is
also certain that whites number among affected criminals (Argentinian whites,
South African whites, Brazilian whites, Iranian whites, etc.). And although more
negroes, Arabs, Asiatics, American Indians or mixed race will tend to pass
through controls, there will also be as many negroes, Arabs, Asiatics or mixed
race who will not undergo procedures, namely negroes, Arabs and others who were
born in Anglo-American and other excluded countries. In round figures we can
say that of the six thousand million people in the world, about 15 per cent
(some 900 million people) are excluded from suspicion of terrorism. The rest of
the planet, which is like saying the outskirts of the great globalised city,
namely over 5 thousand million people, are potentially terrorists, and are as
such investigated a priori, before committing any crime. We could say
that what we have is “preventive scanning” in harmony with the current
triumphant ideology of “preventive war”. Preventive scanning for the poor. What interests me in all
of this as I re-read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is that slowly
and silently a new paradigm of discrimination is being established, though not
based on sex, political conviction, race or religious conviction. The categories
for immigration or judicial treatment now have more to do with the colour of
your passport than the colour of your skin, which is to say not so much with
your national origins as with your legal certificate of citizenship. If you are
the citizen of one country you will receive a certain kind of treatment and if
you are the citizen of these other countries then you will be treated in this
other way. Just a few weeks ago the Colombian government accepted on its knees (in exchange for a few million dollars in armaments) that no US citizen could be sent to the International Criminal Court for trial. At the same time the North American government decides that the terrorists born on its territory will be judged by normal tribunals. In exchange, terrorists from other countries will be taken to Guantanamo and held indefinitely in a sort of concentration camp. Article 7 of the Universal Declaration says: “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.” Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? I do not say that the United States is wrong to instal an apparatus of recognition at frontiers. This is beyond discussion. I say that if they do this, the should apply the same measures to everyone, starting with its own citizens, who are not immune to active terrorism. Where were the Unabomber and those who carried out the Oklahoma bombings born? Limbo? Obviously the US does not do it because its citizens would know how to defend their rights: they know the Constitution and they understand what is written in the Universal Declaration. On the other hand, we five thousand million citizens of the second-class world bow our heads and we think everything is all right. Provided they give us a pass to Disneyworld, we accept any humiliation. The
day will come when it is decided that citizens of Zone A must be judged by
independent tribunals and that citizens of Zone B (we of the Third World) may be
judged in any Guantanamo. That A citizens will never be tortured and that B
citizens may on occasions. That grade-A citizens will be able to drop bombs and
grade-B citizens will not. All rather arbitrary in the end. And we won’t even
have a journal in which to protest.
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