The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SIKH LAWYER'S REFUSAL TO REMOVE TURBAN HELPS TO EXPAND CIVIL RIGHTS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E172-E173 on Feb. 7, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SIKH LAWYER'S REFUSAL TO REMOVE TURBAN HELPS TO EXPAND CIVIL RIGHTS
______
HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS
of new york
in the house of representatives
Friday, February 7, 2003
Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, on January 28, the New York Times ran an article about New Jersey lawyer Ravinder Singh Bhalla. Mr. Bhalla won a significant victory for civil rights when he got the rules changed regarding searches at our prisons.
Mr. Bhalla went to visit a client at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where I am from. The guards would not let him in because he refused to remove his turban. Mr. Bhalla informed the guards that the turban is not a hat, but is a religious symbol required of all observant Sikhs. Mr. Bhalla is of the Sikhs faith. He cited his first amendment right to practice his religion and his fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches, nothing that he had already passed through the metal detector. He also cited his client's sixth amendment right to see his lawyer, a right that could not be exercised unless Mr. Bhalla was allowed into the prison.
Mr. Bhalla took his case to the Federal District Court in Newark. Then on January 17, the Federal Bureau of Prisons changed the policy, saying that turbans, prayer shawls, yarmulkes, and other religious items do not have to be searched. I commend the Bureau of Prisons for this enlightened decision, and I commend Mr. Bhalla for taking a stand on principle. By doing so, he has raised awareness of the rights of the Sikhs in this country and made all Americans more conscious of civil rights for all members of our diverse society.
Sikhs have been subjected to attacks and violence in the wake of the horrible September 11 attacks. A Sikh gas station operator was murdered in his gas station in Arizona simply because he wore a turban. All in all, there have been over 300 attacks on Sikhs. These attacks stem mostly from ignorance coupled with Americans' legitimate anger at the events of September 11. Because Osama bin Laden wears a turban, some ignorant people assume that anyone who wears a turban is a terrorist and an enemy of this county. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Mr. Bhalla showed us. There are over 500,000 Sikhs in this country and they are proud Americans who contribute in all walks of life from law and medicine to farming. One Sikh American, Dalip Singh Saund, served two terms in the House in the late fifties and early sixties.
African-Americans have been through the civil rights struggle; in some ways we are still fighting it. As Mr. Bhalla says, Sikhs are going through many of the same things. By taking a stand for his rights, Mr. Bhalla has expanded Americans' awareness of Sikhs and expanded our tolerance as a society, something that benefits us all.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to place the New York Times article on Mr. Bhalla into the Record.
How One Man Took a Stand and Changed Federal Policy Toward the Sikh
Community
(By Ronald Smothers)
Newark, Jan. 27.--When guards at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center demanded last September that a Newark lawyer let them search his turban before being admitted to visit a client, they may have not have known much about the traditions of his Sikh faith.
``To a Sikh, removing his turban in public is the same as a strip-search and as intrusive as asking a woman to remove her blouse,'' said the lawyer, Ravinder Singh Bhalla.
But Mr. Bhalla, 29, knew quite a bit about the traditions of American law. Born in New Jersey of immigrant parents and educated at the University of California, the London School of Economics and Tulane University Law School, he knew his rights and was not afraid to list them, one by one.
There was his First Amendment right to practice his religion, including the ritual public wearing of the head covering, he told the guards. Then he expounded on his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches, since he had already passed through the metal detector without setting off alarms. Finally there was his client's Sixth Amendment right to the lawyer of his choice--a right that could be exercised only if Mr. Bhalla forfeited his own rights.
Mr. Bhalla refused to remove his turban, and the guards refused to let him in. But on Jan. 17, the federal Bureau of Prisons issued a clarification of its search policy, after Mr. Bhalla asserted all of these rights in Federal District Court here, before the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice in Washington and, armed with letters of support from a host of Sikh groups, directly to the Bureau of Prisons hierarchy.
Dan Dunn, a spokesman for the bureau, said that religious garments like turbans, prayer shawls or yarmulkes need not be considered part of the routine searches of personal effects that prison guards must make of visitors. They could be searched, he said, if there is a ``reasonable suspicion that the person is about to engage in or is engaging in criminal activity.''
What Mr. Dunn described as a simple clarification of policy is being hailed as a milestone by Mr. Bhalla and others. They say that by treating searches of religious garments as distinct from other personal-effects searches and subjecting them to stricter requirements, the agency is recognizing their intrusiveness.
``This marks a significant improvement in agency policy,'' said Harpreet Singh, the director of the Sikh Coalition, an amalgam of groups representing the nation's estimated 500,000 Sikhs. The group was founded just after Sept. 11, 2001, when many Sikhs found themselves the objects of suspicion at airports and elsewhere.
Since the terror attacks, he said, his group has won concessions from the federal Department of Transportation on airport security searches of Sikhs, given the faith's prohibitions against removing turbans, as well as the requirement among the more devout that they carry a
``kirpan,'' or dagger.
Under the department's revised procedures, turbans will not be searched unless there is a positive reading on a metal detector. For their part, Sikh groups have agreed that it is legitimate to require those carrying daggers to secure the items in their checked luggage.
``But the broader significance of all of this is that we are educating a broader range of people about Sikhs and our rights,'' Mr. Singh said.
Sikhism, a monotheistic religion, dates back to the 15th century in the Punjab region of what is now India. Its doctrine has evolved through a succession of prophets or gurus, and in an atmosphere of persecution by the larger numbers of Hindus and Muslims in South Asia. One of Sikhism's main requirements is that adherents not cut their hair, which is considered a visible testament to their connection with their creator, especially in times of persecution.
Mr. Bhalla said many people mistakenly believe that the Sikh turban is a hatlike garment molded in one piece. It is actually a long swath of cotton, 3 feet by more than 15 feet, which takes Mr. Bhalla 15 minutes each morning to fold and carefully wind onto his head.
In taking on Mr. Bhalla at the gates of the Metropolitan Detention Center, guards may have picked the wrong person, said Gerald Krovatin, a New Jersey criminal lawyer in whose firm Mr. Bhalla works. Mr. Krovatin said that last November his colleague was one of the founding members of the national Sikh Bar Association and the only one among the estimated 50 Sikh lawyers in the country who is a criminal litigator.
Perhaps the seminal moment for Mr. Bhalla came in a federal courtroom in Newark when he was just 13. He and his father were attending a hearing for two Sikh community leaders whom the United States attorney's office was trying to extradite to India as suspected terrorists.
Mr. Bhalla recalled that SWAT teams and snipers were stationed outside the court, and plainclothes agents shadowed his and his father's every step because the judge and the prosecutor had reported receiving death threats. It turned out that the prosecutor in the case was the one sending the death threats, apparently in an effort to heighten the sense of danger.
Mr. Bhalla said the incident taught him how ``ridiculous'' sterotyping and prejudice could be.
``Right now Sikhs are going through some of the same things that African-Americans went through, and like them we are learning the importance of having some political power and knowing how the system works,'' he said. ``But we are just starting.''
____________________
