H16233
Headlines : Human RightsIcelandic woman chained on arrival at JFK for 1995 overstay
Photo of Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lilliendahl misidentified on AlterNet as Eva Ósk Arnardóttir
A tall, blonde, blue-eyed Icelandic woman, Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lilliendahl, arrived in New York on December 3 to do some Christmas shopping. She had overstayed a tourist visa some ten years earlier, but this was enough of an excuse for the DHS staff to abduct her for a little game of torture the prisoner.
She was chained, interrogated, photographed, fingerprinted, denied sleep and phone calls and publicly humiliated in front of other travelers at the hands of those she called, Small kings with megalomania.
In this December 20 story in Iceland Review, the oldest English magazine in the country, we learn that Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy for the US Ministry of Homeland Security, confirmed the assault by apologizing for it. Earlier reports in the same magazine on December 13 and 14 described her ordeal and suggested her case was similar to other cases, one involving a young Icelandic mother and her 8-year-old daughter who were held in a dirty, bedless room for 15 hours prior to being deported.
Erla’s own account can be read on her blog, or here, translated into English by a certified translator.
The real story is how such sensational news was kept out of the mainstream media. A single story appeared in the International Herald Tribune, so why not in its parent publication, the New York Times? And it is worth noting that the Qatar Gulf Times was apparently unique among newspapers for running the AFP wire story on the incident.
[Posted By Beagle17]Republished from Iceland Review
Iceland’s Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir received a letter from Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy for the US Ministry of Homeland Security, yesterday, saying he regretted the treatment of an Icelandic tourist earlier this month.
The letter states that the incident gives the US Ministry of Homeland Security a reason to review work procedures regarding how foreign tourists are being received in the US, Morgunbladid reports.
Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lilliendahl was arrested at JFK airport in New York on December 9 for an earlier visa violation. After 24 for hours of interrogation and humiliating treatment, being locked up in a prison cell, barred from making phone calls and refused food and drink, Lilliendahl was deported.
Posted by Beagle17
RSS here: feed43.com/beagle17.xml Grew up in Nova Scotia. Hold BSc. in Biology and Grad. Diploma Journalism. Moved to Korea in 1997, and Taiwan in 1999. Currently teaching, writing, and doing Web design. Concerned about depleted uranium, Islamophobia,...
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Anyone have any theories as to why this story was on AFP but nearly ALL newspapers in the world declined to run it?
I would have expected it to be run in nearly all papers due to its inherent sensationalistic qualities.
It was not hard to confirm that the government of Iceland took this woman’s accusations seriously. The DHS did not deny her accusations and even apologized for her mistreatment, but apart from the oft-repeated blog version (see the Alternet link under the photo) and the AFP and IHT versions, this story went totally ignored. I can see some editors having doubts about her story, but isn’t their job to report the facts, and the fact is the woman made the claims, the Icelandic government took her seriously, and DHS has apologized. This surely warrants some follow-up by media institutions.
So why the silence?
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
So why the silence?