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Urdu launches new series
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Urdu is launching a 10-part weekly series entitled Uncle Sam ka
des (The Land of Uncle Sam) starting on Sunday 10 August 2003.
The
main focus of the series is to take a closer look at how the United
States has changed in the two years since September 11.
How
do Pakistani immigrants - from rich professionals in Houston to
struggling taxi drivers of New York - feel about their adopted country
and how are they coping with the new realities?
The
series looks at the United States' history with special reference
to native Americans, issues of race and poverty and the apparent
growing influence of religion in American society.
Interviews
for the series were conducted over a three week period in June 2003
in Boston, New York, Washington DC, Phoenix and Houston.
Most
of the Pakistanis interviewed said they had been investigated by
the FBI at some point.
"They
showed up at my office one day and asked questions for 90 minutes
on nuclear technology and my views on Al-Qaeda," said Dr Bashir
Ahmed Saeed, a physicist and former consultant at NASA's Johnson
Space Center.
He
is a green card holder and has been living in the US for over 30
years.
But
many economic migrants, living mostly in the New York area, complained
of worse treatment.
"Earlier
this year, FBI agents broke into the houses of a number of suspected
illegal immigrants," claimed Ahsanullah Khan of Brooklyn's
Cony Island Avenue, an area known as Little Pakistan due to its
large number of Pakistani immigrants.
"Thousands
of people have been detained, denied access to their lawyers,"
claimed Zahoor Wani, a New York immigration lawyer, originally from
Srinagar.
"Many
have either been deported or had to be released after months of
unlawful detention because the authorities could not find anything
against them."
But
recently there has been growing discontent within the US about the
prevailing conditions.
"America
has always been a country of immigrants who came here for freedom,
liberty and a better future," remarked Barry Hoffman, Pakistan's
Honorary Counsel General in Boston for 27 years.
"But
the way present administration has targeted a particular group of
immigrants in the name of homeland security, that's going too far.
It's un-American!"
The
US administration defends its frequent crackdowns on suspected Muslims
as a part of its priority to prevent another 9/11.
So
far, says John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, an outspoken supporter
of tougher anti-terrorist laws, the administration has been successful.
Responding
to allegations of an anti-Muslim bias, US officials point out that
those who carried out the 9/11 attacks did slip through the immigration
network, came from a particular region and claimed to be acting
in the name of a particular religion.
"When
people are going to be openly sympathetic to those who hate America
so much, what else do you expect in return?" asked Shahid Khan,
a Pakistani American trader living in the Washington DC area.
In
the past, the Pakistani American community in the US has not been
active in mainstream politics. That seems to be changing now.
"There
is a growing realisation within the community that unless we organise
ourselves and get involved in the political process, we will continue
to be irrelevant to the way decisions directly affecting our lives
are made," said Ghulam Bombaywala, President of the Pakistani
American Association of Greater Houston.
The
series will be available on .
Notes
to Editors
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World Service broadcasts programmes around the world in 43 languages
and is available on radio and online at .
It
has a global audience of 150 million listeners.
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