Anti-Terrorist Act Challenge

On April 6, you published a letter by Walter Jayawardhana accusing the Humanitarian Law Project of joining hands with terrorists, based on his reading of a March 20 article about our challenge to the Anti-Terrorist Act of 1996.

As a group committed to peace and unalterably opposed to terrorism, we filed suit to secure our right to provide humanitarian assistance to the Kurdistan Workers Party. Under the act we cannot continue to help negotiate peace, educate the public on the Turkish denial of human rights to the Kurds or provide lodging to anyone who is a member of the PKK.

The suit was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and includes as co-plaintiffs some Tamil organizations that wish to donate books, clothes and blankets to children via the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The act bars them from doing so.

The suit challenges the act on three grounds: It criminalizes the exercise of rights protected by the 1st Amendment; it gives the secretary of state unfettered and unreviewable authority to determine which group is to be labeled “terrorist”; and the act is so vague, failing to specify what activities are prohibited, that it leaves wide room for officials to discriminate in enforcement.

Jayawardhana accuses the Humanitarian Law Project of criminal activities not because of anything it has done, but because, along with some Tamils, it has filed a suit to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

RALPH D. FERTIG

President, Humanitarian Law

Project, Los Angeles