“Jews (Read: Northerners) Unwelcome”, By Garba Shehu Garba Shehu - 1 hour agoCOLUMNS, OPINION Profiling of citizens in accordance with their religion and ethnicity is wrong and condemnable. —————————————— As the Nazi leaders quickened their preparations for the European war of conquest that they intended to unleash, anti-Semitic legislation in Germany and Austria paved the way for more radical persecution of Jews. These, as the reader may recall, led to the expulsion of millions, as well as the genocidal activity involving the extermination of six million Jews in Germany alone. The government of Adolf Hitler required Jews to identify themselves in ways that would permanently separate them from the rest of the population. In August 1938, German authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939, Jewish men and women bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin had to add “Israel” and “Sara,” respectively, to their given names. All Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage, and, in the autumn of 1938, all Jewish passports were stamped with an identifying letter “J”. (Read Google). In the build-up to the genocide, Jews were removed from public services and purged from the security services. Their children’s enrolment in schools was curtailed and access to business opportunities and most public buildings were stopped. Signs as indicated above, “Jews Unwelcome” were a common sight at public places. In addition to Germany, history has shown elsewhere that practices requiring displaced persons to carry ID cards to distinguish them as a non-indigene or “outsider” has only served to promote further discrimination and marginalization. A look at a few more global examples of ID card discrimination may be useful for this discussion. Rwanda Starting in 1935, the Belgians began a national ID system in Rwanda that indicated whether a person was “Tutsi”, “Hutu” or “Twa”. The Belgian government supported the Tutsis political power and sought ways to distinguish them from the rest of the inhabitants. The means to determining these classifications was highly arbitrary, based on physical appearances and the personal property of the person in question. The primary justification for this distinction was the “lighter” skin of the Tutsi people, signifying to the occupiers that they may have European ancestry. The privileges afforded by the Tutsis led to increased resentment by the Hutu populations who had been marginalized during Belgian rule, leading to several conflicts and finally the genocide of nearly one million Tutsis in 1994. South Africa South Africa has an extensive history in using ID cards, called “passes”, to restrict the movement of black people within the territory. Passes were used to exclude native populations from the Cape Colony. Later in 1923 the Natives (Urban Areas) Act deemed certain areas in South Africa as “whites”, requiring all black persons in the areas to carry around passes at all times. Any black person found without a pass would be arrested and relocated outside of the “white” area. So the discriminatory policies gradually being churned out by our brothers in South-Eastern Nigeria, against their own Northern brothers is really nothing new or unique to humanity. The government of Enugu has said that they are embarking on a house-to-house registration of Nigerian citizens of Northern extraction in their midst while the neighbouring Imo state has taken the further step of planning an Identity Card scheme that every Northerner living in the state will henceforth have to carry, and produce upon request. The government of Imo has, in addition, prescribed that northerners (read aliens) who are certified to continue in their state must henceforth show evidence of work that they doing and that any who did not have this will not be allowed to live in the state “to engage in terrorism.”
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 17:48:36 +0000
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