Britain on Tuesday published its first list of people barred from entering the country for allegedly fostering extremism or hatred, including Muslim extremists, a right-wing US radio host, an Israeli settler and jailed Russian gang members.
The UK’s law and order chief, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, said she decided to publish the names of 16 of 22 people who have been banned by the government since October so others could better understand what sort of behavior Britain was not prepared to tolerate.
She cited unidentified “public interest” reasons for not disclosing the other six names.
“I think it’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country,” Smith told GMTV.
But some of the people on the list criticized it, and one analyst said it contains a wide variety of people to avoid giving Britain’s Muslims the impression that it singles them out.
Popular US talk-radio host, Michael Savage, who broadcasts from San Francisco and has called the Muslim holy book, the Koran, a “book of hate,” is on the list. Savage has also enraged parents of children with autism by saying in most cases it’s “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.”
Savage told the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com that he was considering legal action against Smith for defamation.
“She’s linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?” the site quoted him as saying on Tuesday.
A phone call to his home station, KNEW in San Francisco, wasn’t immediately returned.
The list includes Americans Stephen “Don” Black, founder of a Florida-based white supremacist Web site, and anti-gay preacher Fred Phelps Sr, who leads a church in Topeka, Kansas.
Black was criticized as the “Godfather of hate on the Internet” in a 2000 HBO documentary. The British government previously acknowledged that Phelps was banned.
His daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, has also been barred from the UK. The pair have picketed the funerals of AIDS victims and claimed the deaths of US soldiers are a punishment for tolerance of homosexuality.
Phelps-Roper, a spokeswoman for Phelps’ anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, claimed on Tuesday that Smith was helping to spread her group’s message.
“She caused the words to just flow all over the world,” Phelps-Roper said in an interview. “They’re publishing that story about [Smith] in every country in the world in languages I can’t even read.”
The list also includes Yunis al-Astal, a Hamas lawmaker in Gaza; Samir Kantar, a Lebanese man once jailed for murdering four Israelis; Egyptian cleric Safwat Hijazi; and Israeli settler Mike Guzovsky.
Also banned from entering Britain are Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, two leaders of a Russian gang.
Alan Mendoza, head of The Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank in London, said on Tuesday that he supports the idea of a public list of the unwanted, but that many of the names were “just here for padding.”
He said the British immigration officials’ real focus was keeping Islamic extremists out of Britain.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella group for UK Islamic groups, said Britain’s government appears to be “creating a sort of ‘pre-crime.’”
“We have more than sufficient legislation on the statute books to deal with the very situations they claim [they’re] trying to protect us against,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not