![]() has a history of forcefully removing their children from their homes and into so-called “Indian Schools.” ![]() This ceremony was part of a healing ceremony led by Michael Topaum, the spiritual leader of the American Indian Movement, which was apropos to the fact that Fort Sill was a prisoner-of-war camp for Apache tribal members and that the U.S. It was an honor to officiate a Buddhist ceremony at the start of the rally – chanting the Heart Sutra while the six camp survivors offered incense in front a Buddha statue that had been carved in Manzanar in 1943, which I had borrowed from LA’s Zenshuji Temple. A protest rally then was held in a nearby park with roughly 200 Oklahoma residents, representing a diverse cross-section of protestors: immigrant rights advocates such as Dream Action Oklahoma, ACLU Oklahoma, Black Lives Matter, and the American Indian Movement ( see the LA Times’ coverage). I had the privilege of joining a group of 25 protestors, including six WWII Japanese American camp survivors, who traveled to Fort Sill to declare that “Never Again is Now.” Despite threats from the military police at the Fort Sill gate, the six camp survivors – all of whom were children during their wartime incarceration – made moving statements from their personal experience ( see Democracy Now! coverage). I decided to join this protest as the treatment of these children is not a partisan political issue – we should recall that a previous Democratic administration similarly used Fort Sill to house unaccompanied migrant children back in 2014 – but a question of basic human decency and our nation’s values and character it was wrong then and it is wrong now. ![]() When the Department of Health and Human Services announced on June 11 that up to 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children would be transferred from Texas to Fort Sill, Oklahoma – a former WWII internment camp that held 700 persons of Japanese ancestry, including 90 Buddhist priests – I was heartened to hear that Tsuru for Solidarity was planning to mobilize a second protest on June 24 in Oklahoma. Administration officials have asserted that basic human hygiene does not have to be afforded these children, while border agents tell these migrants that if they want to drink water, they need to get that from their cell’s toilets again, to enact our nation’s “tough” deterrence immigration policies favored by some.įort Sill (Oklahoma) – WWII Japanese American Internment Camp and 2019 Detention Facility for Migrant Children We have also read inspection reports of numerous facilities – such as the ones in El Paso and Clint, Texas – where children have been denied showers, soap, or toothpaste whilst trying to take care of the younger infants. These examples of harassment by the Border Patrol are attempts to persuade the refugees to turn back before they have a chance to have an interview with an asylum officer. ![]() Here, the women and children try to sleep on concrete floors while being deliberately prodded by Border Patrol agents all day and night, try to live on two bologna sandwiches for four days whilst denied bathroom visits. The Dilley facility holds over a thousand asylum seekers, mostly women, children, and infants from Central America and Mexico. Tsuru for Solidarity, a nonviolent and direct action project, was initially created by Japanese American community leaders Satsuki Ina, Nancy Ukai, and Mike Ishii in conjunction with the March 2019 Pilgrimage to Crystal City, a former WWII internment camp in Texas that housed over 2,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, and Protest at the South Texas Family Residential Center (located 40 miles away in Dilley, Texas). A Letter Asking Buddhist Leaders to Support Tsuru for Solidarity UPDATE: Read the updated letter here. ![]()
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