"Canadian novelist slams U.S. airport authorities"

Sunday, November 3, 2002

Novelist slams U.S. airport authorities 
Mistry cancels 2nd leg of book tour in six U.S. cities after repeated
searches 
By Sutton Eaves and Maureen Murray
Canada - The Toronto Star


Renowned Canadian author Rohinton Mistry says being a repeated target of
U.S. airport security officials prompted him to cancel the second leg of
an American book tour.

"I don't find this is the random check that they talk about, not when
they happen to have it at every single stop, every single airport. The
random process becomes 100 per cent certitude," Mistry said last night
during a public interview with the CBC's Shelagh Rogers, at Harbourfront
Centre. Mistry was nominated for this year's Booker Prize.

He is one of several authors featured at the International Festival of
Authors.

"They pull you aside and while your fellow passengers come on to the
plane, they look at you, wondering if you've been a naughty boy because
someone is taking your luggage apart and taking your shoes off and
examining them very closely," said Mistry, a Canadian who was born in
India. 

"And when it keeps happening every single time, you get into this
convoluted logic, trying to convince yourself about why it's happening.
`Perhaps it's something about my beard, maybe I should change my
beard.'"

It was this train of thought, which he characterized as "trying to
appease a bad policy," that prompted him last week to call off stops in
six U.S. cities, including Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, to promote
his new novel Family Matters.

Mistry was sombre as he described being selected for special security
checks at airports across the United States. 

"I began having visions of Guantanamo (where U.S. officials are holding
suspected terrorists) ... and I said, no thank you," said Mistry.

In a letter sent to U.S. bookstores affected by the cancellation, a
publicist at Random House wrote: "As a person of colour he was stopped
repeatedly and rudely at each airport along the way - to the point where
the humiliation to him and his wife (with whom he has been travelling)
has become unbearable."

Mistry also expressed sympathy for less prominent citizens who had been
subjected to similar treatment.

"I have the luxury of cancelling and not going, but there are others
who, for various reasons, are condemned to endure this because they ...
don't have a choice," he said.

Many travellers of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent have
complained in the past year about being subjected by U.S. authorities to
overly rigorous security and what some have termed racial profiling.

Recently, U.S. authorities ordered that Canadian passport-holders who
were born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, or
Yemen must be photographed or fingerprinted on arrival in the U.S.

After a protest from Ottawa, Washington said it would loosen the rule.

Mistry was to have addressed an estimated 500 of his fans in Salt Lake
City tomorrow evening. 

`"We're broken hearted," said Betsy Burton, co-owner of The King's
English Bookshop in Salt Lake City. 

Burton said she was ashamed to learn of the author's treatment.

"Mr. Mistry is one of the great novelists at work in the world today and
the fact that he has been treated this way in a country predicated on
individual liberty is shocking," Burton wrote in a notice to patrons. 

"On behalf of those who believe in freedom and in basic human decency,
we wish to extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Mistry and to his wife
for the barbaric treatment they have suffered," Burton wrote.


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