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Show 14 U of U students hope wall's destruction of Friday will smash hate BY LEON D'SOUZA Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY" - For some University of Utah students, the monolithic brick wall outside the campus' Marriott Library, daubed with a pastiche of revolting slurs, stood for much of last week as an affront to their sense of propriety. The epithets — everything from despicable racist and sexist smears to more benign stereotypes about Utah's dominant religious faith — seemed to do little more than inspire loathing. Opponents of the "Writing on the Wair project hurled bricks at it, calling it ill-conceived and immature activism. Project sponsors responded by offering them tangible bricks and brushes. The wall will be torn down Friday as an act of intellectual liberation, said Jasmine Linam, a spokeswoman for the Associated Students of the University of Utah. Linam, who spearheaded the project, said the wall — which stands 6 feet tall, 63 feet long and was made with 900 bricks — was a campus tradition until aboutfour years ago, when it was discontinued. No one knows exactly why, but Linam thought it would be a good practice to revive. "Last year, there was this incident when two men were walking by somewhere on campus and somebody opened a window and threw a Gatorade bottle at them and called them 'faggots,"' Linam said. The intolerance of that incident got to her. In part, it's what motivated the wall, the idea being to give people a physical representation of the sort of obstacles ideological walls can create. "It's this heavy, huge thing that is so hard to move, you have to get so many people together to bring it down," Linam said. "That's kind of how life is." Her point was not ignored, but some opponents of the idea said it trivialized and oversimplified the debate over contentious social issues. Others found the structure — built with $3,500 in student funds — just plain offensive. "The main problem with it is that some of these words are open to interpretation," said student Curtis Rochette, of Salt Lake City. "It also ignores intent." Some words might only be offensive when used in certain ways. To suggest that "sissy" is offensive, for example, would be assuming too much, Rochette said. Another student, Shawn Franklin, said that some words deemed offensive had lost their sting from years of colloquial use. Certain racist slurs, he said, wouldn't be considered racist if used in ordinary greetings in some parts of the country. But Haley Miyatake, a spokeswoman for the Latterday Saint Student Association, said some words ought not to be tolerated. Her organization supported the project despite its creed to shun foul language — abundantly visible on the wall. "Some people might think it's offensive, but the idea behind tearing it down is to expel those words," Miyatake said. Members of the Mormon group have added their own contributions. There's a brick inscribed with the sentence, "LDS Can't Be Liberal." Miyatake hopes that will help shatter the conservative image often associated with the Mormon church. "People just assume that all LDS people think the same way. And that's not true " she said. University administrators hoped the wall would spur thought and stimulate dialogue. Annie Nebeker, associate dean of students, said many of the words inscribed on the structure were daily struggles for some of her students. "I think it helps to see that racism and discrimination are ugly and hard to face," Nebeker said. The "Writing on the Wall" project has been a popular activity on American campuses for several years. In the tradition of the Berlin Wall, Linam hopes students will keep pieces of the bricks as souvenirs. * Migrant smugglers get creative in face of increased enforcement BYANANDASHOREY Associated Press PHOENIX - Marisela Chavez-Ramirez's journey from Mexico to be reunited with her husband in this country ended when U.S. border officials found the woman and her 3-year-old daughter curled up in the gas tank of a Dodge Caravan. A smuggler had squeezed the pair from the Mexican state of Guanajuato into the tank, accessible through thefloorof the van, to try to sneak them through the San Ysidro Port of Entry south of San Diego. They were discovered after an inspection revealed that a second tank had been added to carry fuel. "To see a child, with a baby bottle in its mouth, that was shocking," said Adele Fasano, director offieldoperations for the San Diego district of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Smugglers and individual migrants have a long history of adapting their tactics to try to circumvent whatever barriers immigration officials put in their way. But they've shown more creativity in recent years as the government has FRIDAY APRIL 1,2005 STATESMAN-WORLD & NATION launched repeated crackdowns along the frontier. Fasano said there has been a spike in California in cases where smugglers place women and children in small compartments in vehicles to drive them across the border. Migrants have also been found inside pi6atas and washing machines. Arizona-based agents have found smugglers who disguised their vehicles to look like TV news trucks or U.S. Border Patrol vehicles. A fake FedEx truck has also been used to haul migrants. In Texas, authorities once found a man rolling down a street disguised as a tumbleweed. People have also tried attaching cow hoofs to their feet to disguise their footprints. "The only problem with that is there aren't too many twolegged cows," said Doug Mosier, spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas. The National Border Patrol Museum in El Paso displays many artifacts from crossing attempts, like the cow-hoof shoes, carpet-covered sandals, and a boat made from truck hoods. "Desperate people are very ingenious and very clever, and I am quite often surprised at the complexity and the thought behind devising these things," said museum curator BrendaTisdale. "Sometimes my heart is broken because they resort to things that lead them to be injured, stranded or dead by the smugglers. You have to feel compassion for people who are driven to these measures." Officials credit their operations for the changing smuggling techniques. Hundreds of additional agents have been sent to Arizona, for example, to try to stop the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have made this state the most active illegal crossing point on the southern border. "It is getting a lot more difficult for them to come across the border," said Andrea Zortman, a Border Patrol spokeswoman in Arizona. "They are trying to disguise vehicles, blend in with ranchers, hide footprints. We are seeing their frustration." In two separate cases in January, a total of 29 illegal immigrants were found in dump trucks in southwestern Arizona, said Border Patrol spokesman Joe Brigman. Suicide car bomber targets religious pilgrims, killing 5 BY TRACI CARL Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide car bomber blew himself up Thursday near an Islamic shrine, killing five Iraqis in the latest attack on Shiite Muslim pilgrims marking a major religious holiday. The blast in Tuz Khormato, 55 miles south of Kirkuk, killed three civilians, including a child, and two soldiers helping guard the shrine, police reported. Sixteen people were wounded, hospital officials said. Fighters from the Sunni Muslim-led insurgency staged a string of attacks on Shiite pilgrims in the days leading up to the festival, which marks the end of a 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of Shiites' most important saints. The day's biggest gathering was in the holy city of Karbala, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visited two shrines, marched in honor of Hussein and beat their chests with their fists in a sign of mourning. Seeking to head off attacks, police in Karbala closed streets to vehicles, set up checkpoints and frisked people for weapons. No major incidents were reported. Late Wednesday, gunmen ambushed a truck carrying pilgrims near Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, and killed one person, and an AP Photo/Gerry Broome COL RON JOHNSON, Commanding Officer of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, speaks about his fallen Marines during a ceremony at W.RT. Field at Camp Lejune in Jacksonville, N.C., Thursday. The 24th MEU lost 15 Marines during their seven month tour in Iraq. attack earlier in the day killed a pilgrim in southern Iraq. On Monday, two attacks on pilgrims left four dead, including two police officers. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, meanwhile, said his country's troops will leave Iraq by year's end. Ukraine had already said it would begin pulling out its 1,650 soldiers, the fifthlargest contingent in the U.S.-led coalition, but had not set a timetable for com- pleting the withdrawal. A number of nations have pulled out of Iraq, pressured by criticism of the mission at home and threats from militant groups in Iraq, which have kidnapped and even beheaded some foreigners. In Romania, which has 800 soldiers in Iraq, Prime Minister Calm Popescu Tariceanu refused Thursday to say whether he would consider withdrawing his country's troops after kidnappers released a video showing three Romanian journalists who were abducted in Baghdad. The video, aired Wednesday by AlJazeera satellite television, showed the three Romanian journalists and a fourth unidentified person — possibly an American — with guns pointed at them. But Tariceanu said no demands had been made. Coalition forces holding Zarqawi aid with dual ILS.-Jordanian citizenship BY JOHN J. LUMPKIN Associated Press WASHINGTON - U.S. forces in Iraq are holding a senior operative of terrorist leader Abu Musab alZarqawi who has joint American-Jordanian citizenship, defense officials said Thursday. The man was captured in a raid by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq late in 2004, said Matthew Waxman, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. "Weapons and bombmaking materials were in his residence at the time he was captured " Waxman said. Waxman described the man as an associate of Zarqawi and an emissary to insurgent groups in several cities in Iraq. Zarqawi, who has declared his allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, is the most-wanted man in Iraq and is blamed for numerous bombings since the U.S.-led invasion removed Saddam Hussein from power two years ago. Defense officials also believe the captured American helped coordinate the movement of insurgents and money into Iraq, Waxman said. The officials said the man holds joint U.S.Jordanian citizenship but declined to provide his hometown or otherwise identify him. After his capture, a panel of three U.S. officers determined he was an enemy combatant and not entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention, Waxman said. Human rights groups argue the enemy combatant classification is vague and affords fewer legal | protections than prisoner- • of-war status. He is still being held as a security threat but has been visited by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He is the first American known to be captured fighting for the insurgency in Iraq, Waxman said, and officials are considering options how to proceed with his case. SCHIAVO From page 2 KRISTIE KIESEL, from Ohio, right, prays as an unindenified woman on the left cries outside Woodside Hospice Thursday, in Pinellas Park, Fla., where Terri Schiavo died Thursday. Schiavo, the severely braindamaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube in an epic battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41. AP Photo/Miami Herald Herald, Charles Trainorjr. laughed with them and struggled to talk. Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer sided with her husband and authorized the removal of the feeding tube keeping her alive. It was disconnected March 18. During the seven-year legal battle, federal and state courts repeatedly rejected extraordinary attempts at intervention by Florida lawmakers, Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and President Bush on behalf of her parents. Supporters of her parents, many of them anti-abortion activists and political conservatives, harshly criticized the courts. Many religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, said the removal of sustenance violated fundamental religious tenets. About 40 judges in six courts were involved in the case at one point or another. Six times, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. As Schiavo's life ebbed away, Congress rushed i through a bill to allow the federal courts to i take up the case, and President Bush signed it j March 21. But the federal courts refused to ' 1 step in. The case prompted many people to ponder what they would want if they, too, were in such a desperate medical situation, and many -( rushed to draw up living wills. The case also ' led to a furious debate over the proper role of government in life-and-death decisions, and , whether the Republicans in Congress violated :! their party's principles of limited government and deference to the states by getting involved.., In Washington on Thursday, the president jj was careful to extend condolences to Schiavo's "families" — meaning both Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers — even though he backed j efforts to reconnect her feeding tube. j |