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DIPLOMATIC LICENSE
Current Events at the United Nations
Aired August 13, 2004 - 21:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RICHARD ROTH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I know what you're thinking. Why don't we take a break from all the problems in the world and just go to the movies. We can't. There's no escape. DIPLOMATIC LICENSE is next.
If you were running a human rights film festival, do you think the organizers ever have to worry that one day the abuses will stop, that there just won't be any more material for the dogged documentarians? Nah.
Welcome to DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth.
It's become such a tradition on DIPLOMATIC LICENSE, I can't remember when it started. We take a look at a few films that appear at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York, a chance for viewers from around the world to sneak a preview, especially if they'd never get an opportunity to find these films.
And talk about timing, a film festival on human rights just months after prisoner abuses in an Iraqi jail by U.S. soldiers.
Our first film starts just after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the skies over Pennsylvania. More than 3,000 people murdered. Their rights were certainly violated. Which brings us to what happened after the attacks and a film called "Persons of Interest."
These people of a certain skin color or nationality were of extreme interest to U.S. law enforcement. They tell the filmmakers what happened to them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On September 11, 2001 I was driving my car and a cop pulled me over. So he asked me where I'm from. So I said -- this is the first time a cop has stopped me and asked me where I'm from before I talked. Usually they ask after you talk, by the accent, they're interested to know where you're from.
He was like angry. He wants to know where I'm from. The reason to stop me is just to ask me where I'm from. So I said, you know, "Why did you stop me?" He said, "I stopped you for a red light. Give me your license."
I gave him the license. He went to his car. Two or three minutes later he comes back and he says, "Where are you from." I said, "I'm from Israel."
He said, "Arabic or Jewish?"
I said, "Will it make a difference?" He said, "A big difference." I sad, "I'm Arabic." He said, "You're under arrest."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROTH: The co-director of "Persons of Interest" has agreed to appear here for his own interrogation, Tobias Perse.
Thank you very much for joining us.
What were you trying to do with this film, since a lot of the abuses of this kind have been documented on local news, national news, magazines. What's different?
TOBIAS PERSE, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER: Well, at the time when we made the film, we shot the film after September 11, none of this had been documented, and even when we were researching the film, there was almost no journalism to find on this subject. So that wasn't the case then, and this is something that has become a bit more apparent in the last six months.
But this film is about people who were detained, non-citizens who were detained on immigration violations in America. So it's different than enemy combatants, say, or those who have been detained in Iraq.
ROTH: Well, the U.S. government insists it has the right to pursue all leads when hunting terrorist cells, and in the film, "Persons of Interest," U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft makes that quite clear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN ASHCROFT, U.S. ATTNY. GEN.: Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, it is said, would arrest mobsters for sitting on the sidewalk if it would help in the battle against organized crime.
It has been said that that was an effective policy, and I believe it was.
It will be the policy of this Department of Justice to use the same aggressive arrest and detention tactics in the war against terror.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: You know, whatever you think about Ashcroft, it's amazing. I think he may be the most popular figure in these documentary films in the last few years. He's in everything, usually kind of either lampooned or to highlight a view. Is he a goldmine for...
PERSE: Well, he's real gristle for the dogged documentarian.
That statement was made a month-and-a-half after September 11, on October 25, in front of the U.S. Mayor's Conference, and this isn't a conversation about terrorism or the war against terrorism.
We can remove from the conversation about these immigrations -- sorry, these detentions, have nothing to do with terrorism. The U.S. government and our Justice Department arrested more than 5,000 people, declared them potential or suspected terrorists, wouldn't give them legal rights, but didn't send the FBI over to investigate these people.
So clearly they knew these people they were arresting and holding without any legal recourse weren't in fact attacked to terrorism, or presumably they would have interviewed them.
ROTH: Now, how did you come to interview them? Did you find all of these people? Tell us about how they were chosen. Did they have any reservations about being -- going back to tell their story?
PERSE: I mean, it presented an interesting challenge in the beginning to make a film about people that the U.S. government functionally says don't exist.
They didn't release any numbers after a certain point, nor did they ever release the names of the individuals.
We worked through community activists, one in particular who really had just given himself to these people, in many cases financially helped them. And the trust that he had earned from them was essentially transferred to us. It was through no skill of our own, really, as interviewers, maybe you can say, and me as an interviewee, that they really came prepared to be themselves.
We built a set, it was confrontational, much like this, with lights and crew and soundmen, and they really came and really wanted to tell their stories. I think there was a way in which they expected that finally people would hear their stories. Again, these were people who never got an apology from the U.S. government.
ROTH: What do they think of America now? They continue to live here, most of the people in that film, but what do they think of America now?
PERSE: Well, actually probably half the people, in fact half the people in the film have been deported now. And there is -- it was different. I can't -- there wasn't a common sense.
A lot of people said if this weren't America, we wouldn't be standing here speaking about this right now. And yet the U.S. government says that the U.S. Constitution doesn't apply to these people because they're not U.S. citizens, in spite of the fact that there are U.S. Supreme Court rulings going back nearly a century that state very clearly that non- citizens are persons to whom the Constitution applies.
ROTH: All right. Well, as you know very well -- it's your film -- the reasons for the questioning surprised many of those quizzed by investigators as seen in the documentary "Persons of Interest."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got a call from my wife, Delilah, that there were about more than a dozen law enforcement officers at my house in Rockland County, and they had a search warrant to look for nuclear, chemical and biological warfare at our home.
I was asked to surrender to Manhattan's District Attorney Office, which I did, and subsequent to that, at my arraignment, it was said that I am the guy who basically has financed the terrorist attacks.
They found paraphernalia at my house which they deemed was pretty critical to the terrorist acts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My son's videogames, flight simulation videogames.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: His wife American. They were living the American dream?
PERSE: Right. I mean, in fact, what's common to all of these stories is just the arbitrary nature of the detentions.
In the first week following September 11, the FBI setup a tips line, both a Web site and a hotline, and he was one of the 96,000 tips that the FBI got and actually sought after.
Many of these tips were anonymous. His business partners -- he was involved in a business dispute -- turned him in as someone who had been one of the main financiers of al Qaeda. At the DA's office -- the DA testified that he had flown to Pakistan with persons unknown just weeks before September 11. Those persons unknown were his wife and his three children, which the DA's office obviously knew. They had the names on the tickets.
He was arrested with -- other pieces of evidence were his kids' Nintendo flight simulator name and then also he had $200 in Pakistan money as well as a ticket to go to the World Trade Center I think four months before.
ROTH: So how do you -- I know you said these people had nothing to do with terrorism, but in New York, especially, there are a lot of people who were worried about the big bomb --
PERSE: Right.
ROTH: -- and they're willing, it seems, to sacrifice all personal freedoms if it means the survival of everyone. How do you address those concerns?
PERSE: Well, I think there's no question that there is an urgent need for increased national security.
When I was first involved in the film, I didn't -- I thought maybe wrong place/wrong time and had a lot of, you know, many of those ideas also. But you can remove this completely from that conversation. This has nothing -- these people were arrested completely arbitrarily, and when you hear someone say that, it's a big hard to believe. You think, what, 5,000 people arrested arbitrarily? People arrested -- each story has almost a kind of comic element.
The first person in the film, he's Pakistani. The day after September 11 he was at a Burger King. He had rented a car and he was looking for something in the glove box. He saw a Burger King employee pointing to him. They called the police who in turn called the FBI and they arrested him on the spot.
They showed up to Sayed Ali (ph), who is the clip that you just showed, they showed up to his house with a search warrant for biological and nuclear weapons. I mean, they created essentially an ecstasy of hysteria.
ROTH: All right. A panic at that time, but you still believe that it exists still today, that pursuit of people.
Tobias Perse, co-director of "Persons of Interest," thank you very much for being on DIPLOMATIC LICENSE.
PERSE: Yes, thanks for having me here.
ROTH: The impact extends beyond the person who believes he or she is unfairly treated. Families are torn apart because someone they love became a person of interest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My husband was picked up and questioned basically, and then he was just kept in jail, in a special housing unit, for seven months, close to seven months, and then he was, after being in jail for 10 months, he was deported secretly to Jordan without any notification to myself or to his six other brothers who are in the United States or his lawyer or anything like that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): No West African peacekeepers. No U.N. peacekeepers. No American peacekeepers.
This morning, as feared, war crashes into Monrovia. Within hours, the government forces lose most of the city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Apparently most of Monrovia is now under control and the rebels seem to have taken minimal casualties. Reports are coming in that thousand of government troops are preparing to surrender, and it only is the executive mansion that is now remaining.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Liberia, hot time in the summer of 2003. The African nation founded by freed American slaves is the subject of another film in the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. It's called "Liberia: An Uncivil War," and joining us now from Washington is the film's producer and director Jonathan Stack. We saw his co-producer in the field there.
Jonathan, what did we learn in this film that we didn't learn by watching the news last year?
JONATHAN STACK, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER: I think the main thing was, you know, news is about short clips, and these are stories of people's lives, experiencing war on both sides, not to mention the fact that we were the only crew actually that was filming the other side that was attacking the city.
So we had two film groups working. I was in Monrovia and simultaneous James Brabazon was filming with the LURD rebels who were approaching the city, so we were trying to create this dynamic of war told from both sides of a conflict.
ROTH: All right, well, your cameras are, as you mentioned, right there on both sides as the initial battles for Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, got underway.
There's a nice touch right before this clip, as you see this young soldier unwrapping a mortar like it's a chocolate bar, and then we see the violence from both sides.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(EXPLOSION)
(SCREAMING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Underscoring the entire film, Jonathan Stack, is the fact that the people are waiting for international intervention, the United Nations, the United States, President Bush talks about ships, troops, they never seem to come over the horizon.
How did you feel being there?
STACK: I felt like a lot of people. I felt extremely frustrated. It seemed like it would have taken so little to end the war and the feeling there was that this was a country that had given so much to America over the last 150 years.
They'd always done everything America had asked of them in terms of serving in World War I, World War II, as a Cold War ally, and finally in the summer of 2003 they really were begging the United States to help put an end to the violence, and it was very frustrating to know how simple it could have been.
In fact, I spoke to a soldier who was there and he said -- and I think he was accurate. He said it would have taken one American soldier to stop the whole war, and that's how simple it was.
Everybody was waiting for it to end and wanting it to end, and it just needed that kind of one little impetus, and it was politically complicated and it took a lot longer than we all would have hoped.
ROTH: When watching this film, and I wonder what it was like when you were there, you think of currently Sudan, you think of Rwanda, you think of other African trouble spots where people are waiting for aid and the outside community, the Security Council, moves very slowly.
Isn't Liberia unfortunately just the latest in a string of African countries which have desperately needed outside help and the world is slow in coming to its rescue?
STACK: I think that obviously there are many parts in the world that need aid, and there's no simple answer.
I think that what's distinct about Liberia is this historic relationship with the United States, and remember the context when this is all happening. This is a time in which -- right about the time when the United States was trying to say, you know, we can rebuild Iraq by ourselves. If you weren't there to help fight the war, then you're not going to be part of rebuilding it, and things weren't going so well in Iraq.
And I think when Liberia came into the news, everybody around the world was saying, all right, America, you want to be a nation-builder, let's go back and look at the one country in the world you actually did build, which is Liberia, and let's just see how it's doing 152 years later. And lo and behold, what we look at is a country which is ranked among the very last in the world for the quality of life.
And so there was an irony to it that I think is different, that America really wasn't fulfilling its historic obligations, and that it really put into question how good...
ROTH: So who's human rights were violated and by who in this film?
STACK: Well, I think that's what is so interesting in this story, that there are so many layers of complicity in all of this. I mean, Charles Taylor, let's face it, he is now considered one of the worst human beings on this planet, now he's an indicted war criminal, so obviously all kinds of human rights that he's been involved with.
The LURD rebels were coming and they were launching these mortars into downtown urban Monrovia and thousands of people were dying. They are obviously human rights abusers.
And I think that the United States implicitly is also involved in terms of some of the weapons that were being launched were connected to America. And I think in a way, just by their failure to live up to a kind of historic responsibility. This sort of notion of reciprocity, I don't think we reciprocated what Liberia has offered us over the years. We didn't reciprocate.
ROTH: You mentioned Charles Taylor, the man behind any story in Liberia, and in this film is Taylor, the former president. He said he would leave the country if peacekeepers arrived.
Taylor rose to power in a coup and is accused of fomenting (AUDIO GAP) in neighboring African countries.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLES TAYLOR, FMR. LIBERIAN PRESIDENT: All of us that went to school in America always prayed that one day we could setup an American- style system here, free speech, free press, rule of law. That is what we've always wanted to do, and that's what we setout to do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Taylor's election did not bring peace. The conflict spread to Sierra Leone and threatened to engulf all of West Africa. Charles Taylor is accused of creating and supporting the RUF, the army responsible for some of the worst atrocities in modern history. Taylor now faces the possibility of life behind bars for the crimes committed in Sierra Leone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Do you think he's going to be turned over to the War Crimes Court?
STACK: I think there will be a lot of pressure put on him to do it, on Nigeria, really, that's where he is right now.
I think that it's going to be hard for him to avoid going to Sierra Leone, but it's very politically complicated.
ROTH: Did the people follow him or was he just a leader that happened to be there? There was a strange reverend or peace organizer in an empty stadium, great moment in your film. Of course, he wasn't allowed on the Taylor flight to Nigeria, I noticed.
STACK: Dr. Paul? He's somebody who just showed up there, and we all thought he had come -- what the story was was that he was George Bush's spiritual advisor, that's what people thought, and he had come to Liberia to help convince Charles Taylor that indeed he needed to depart the country and step down from office. That's all we knew, and he showed up at this stadium, which was pretty empty of people, all starving, and he was just kind of a very strange scene.
ROTH: You have a very good moment of exchanges of sound bytes from David Crane (ph), the prosecutor in Sierra Leone, the war crimes trial, and Taylor denying the allegations. Who did you believe?
STACK: You know, I guess it's -- you know, I think it may be a sort of a miscommunication of cultural values. I think that in part Taylor clearly has been involved with things that are horrific. There is no doubt about that. The question is, you know, is he any worse than any of the other people in the region? I'm not sure of that.
And I think for whatever reason he has been singled out and perhaps he's going to be made an example of, and hopefully this will lead to a better, you know, more peaceful, more stability in the region.
ROTH: You got very close up to a lot of action and you got great timing. For a filmmaker, you must have loved it.
A woman is talking about bullets flying and then suddenly the glass shatters and you've just escaped a bullet hitting you or the woman.
What about being around so much death and violence right in front of you?
STACK: You know, it was -- I had never been in a war zone before, so part of it was -- and I never had filmed before. I was actually this stuff, and I'm so bad at it that I had to focus on the camera and the lens and all this stuff with the camera, and that really helped.
I just kept my eye on the eye piece and I tried not to worry too much, and I guess I was very fortunate.
There are a lot of very brave people who work in these areas. I wasn't one of them. I just ended up kind of naively stumbling into it and then I just figured I'm just going to stay to tell the story and stay till the end, and waited to see what would happen, and it just kept going on and on and on, and it was a pretty scary but incredibly rewarding, in terms of exhilarating for somebody who had never been in a war zone.
ROTH: Jonathan Stack, producer, director, the film "Liberia: An Uncivil War." A lot of great moments in this film. Also, the type you don't see on regular newscasts, which are really what is special also about this film. A nice subtle touch amidst all that violence.
Thank you very much for appearing here on DIPLOMATIC LICENSE.
STACK: Thank you very much for having me.
ROTH: At the end of the film, forget about a D-Day-style reunion 50 years later. The government soldiers and the rebels embraced with the guns barely silent in the film "Liberia: An Uncivil War."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you feeling?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is the war over?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, the war is over (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): There is something about the ease with which the war concludes that makes it seem all the more pointless.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECY.-GEN.: We have very little time. The archbishop has to catch a flight at 2:30 -- no, he has to leave here at 2:30. I know you were all wondering how is was going to do it. He is powerful, but not that powerful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Timing is everything in religion or politics, especially when it comes to catching a plane. That laugh undeniably from Archbishop Desmond Tutu after a travel goof from Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
That's what happens when you put two Nobel Peace Prize winners together.
Most of you are still sitting there going nowhere, so why don't you fill up your weekend by sending us an e-mail. You know we haven't asked in a while. I'd rather send you an e-mail, but do you want your Web address sent all over the world? I didn't think so. So instead, take a look. E- mail me and a cast of interns who will peruse your message at Diplomatic.License@CNN.com. Postcards from summer vacation spots are also welcome.
That's it for this week's DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. I'm Richard Roth. Tune in next week. Until then, keep it right here for the latest news and weather.
END
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