Barring of British Muslim Family Flying to Disneyland Touches Nerve
By SEWELL CHAN

LONDON — An uproar grew in Britain on Wednesday over what many saw as an unspoken new American policy to bar British Muslims from visiting the United States, after revelations that a large Muslim family, including young children, bound for a Disneyland vacation was inexplicably stopped from boarding a London flight to Los Angeles last week.

Social media reverberated with messages of anger and vexation by a diverse range of citizens in Britain, where around 5 percent of the population is Muslim, and where many people have expressed revulsion over calls two weeks ago by Donald J. Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, to prohibit all Muslim visitors. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group in Washington, said Wednesday that it had asked the Department of Homeland Security to investigate whether its officials had “implemented informally” Mr. Trump’s proposal.

That request came amid signs that a number of British Muslims had been stopped without explanation at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick Airports in recent days — not just the 11-member Mahmood family, which was abruptly denied permission to board a Los Angeles-bound jetliner at Gatwick on Dec. 15.

Their terminated plans became a catalyst for growing publicity and criticism of the United States. A member of the British Parliament, Stella Creasy, who represents a district in northeast London, demanded an explanation from the Americans for why the Mahmood family’s vacation had been ruined. “Widespread condemnation of Donald Trump’s call for no Muslim to be allowed into America contrasts with what is going on in practice,” Ms. Creasy wrote on the website of The Guardian on Tuesday.

Ajmal Masroor, a prominent British imam who has spoken out against Islamic extremism, said on Facebook on Wednesday that he was barred from boarding a flight at Heathrow on Dec. 17 by an American diplomatic official who gave no explanation.

Mr. Masroor wrote in a Facebook posting: “I am amazed how irrational these processes are but does USA care about what you and I think? I don’t think so!”

Daniel Hetlage, a spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection unit of the United States Department of Homeland Security, declined to discuss the specifics of any case, but he denied that religion was a factor in deciding who could enter.

An applicant to enter the United States “must overcome all grounds of inadmissibility,” Mr. Hetlage’s statement said, adding that there were more than 60 such grounds, “including health-related, prior criminal convictions, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds.” The statement did not indicate which grounds, if any, caused the British family to be denied entry.

Plainclothes officers from Customs and Border Protection are stationed at several “major gateway airports,” including Amsterdam; Doha, Qatar; Frankfurt; Madrid; Manchester, England; Paris; and Tokyo, along with Heathrow and Gatwick, a deputy assistant commissioner of the agency, John P. Wagner, said at a House hearing in June.

Under what is known as the Immigration Advisory Program, the officers “work in partnership with host government authorities to identify possible terrorists and other high-risk passengers,” Mr. Wagner said. The agency uses several automated data systems to detect suspicious travelers, but civil liberties campaigners have complained that many innocent people are denied entry without explanation or legal recourse.

The Guardian quoted Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, a member of the family stopped at Gatwick last week, saying, “It’s because of the attacks on America — they think every Muslim poses a threat.”

英穆斯林1家11口赴美 登機被擋

英國穆斯林一家十一人上周準備到洛杉磯迪士尼樂園度假，在倫敦登機前一刻被美國擋下來，引起大西洋兩岸穆斯林團體和政界質疑美國政府是否已悄悄執行美國共和黨總統參選人川普的主張，禁止所有穆斯林入境。

馬穆德（Mohammad Tariq Mahmood）和他的兄弟及家族九個孩子十五日在倫敦蓋特威克機場等候登機，他十歲的姪女在日記上寫著：「米老鼠，我盼望明天和你見面，我們就要上飛機了。」

但他們沒有登機。機場的美國邊境管制人員接獲華府指示，不准馬穆德一行人中的某些人登機。路透報導，美國政府消息人士說，只有一名成人不准登機，但這家人決定都不去了。一家人花一萬三千多美元（約台幣四十三萬元）買的十一張機票也不能退費。

馬穆德說，他行前上網申請美國的免簽證，都沒有問題，為何在登機前才不讓他們去美國？

美國官員否認是宗教因素不讓他們去美國，但美國聯邦法律保護飛機乘客的隱私，因此無法說明理由。美國海關暨邊境保護局說，禁止入境的理由有六十多種，宗教不包含在內。

美國最大穆斯林權益團體「美國與伊斯蘭關係協會」致函美國國土安全部，要求調查「國土安全部是否已非正式執行川普的提議」，並表示美國穆斯林社群已感到被國土安全部盯上。

英國反對黨工黨國會議員史黛拉．克里希要求英國首相卡麥隆介入調查，她說：「英國穆斯林擔憂，川普的計畫雖然受到譴責，但美國已在執行。」首相府表示，卡麥隆將調查此事。

英國每日郵報報導，馬穆德一家人並非尋常家庭。四十一歲的馬穆德是健身房老闆，身材無比壯碩，馬穆德的兄弟曾在以色列特拉維夫被拘留八天後被驅逐出境。報導質疑，兩個大男人帶九個小孩，孩子的母親為何未同行？

CNN檢查這家人的選舉名冊，發現十八歲兒子韓薩的電郵地址連結到可疑的臉書網頁，該臉書網頁似乎屬於伯明罕一位居民，職業欄寫著「神學士監督者」與「凱達領導人」。這家人表示，電郵地址不正確，他們的兒子住在倫敦而不是伯明罕。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/world/europe/britain-muslim-family-disneyland.html

2015-12-25．聯合報．A17．國際．編譯田思怡