THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE AND 141 NONPROFITS PRESENT THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF UNITED STATES HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS EVER
COMPILED
Racial Profiling, Police Brutality, Treatment of Immigrants/Katrina Survivors Among Issues Presented in Rebuttal to U.S. State Department Claims
For more information, contact: Janis D. Shields, (215) 241-7060, (302) 545-6596 (cell) or Beth George, 212-584-5000 x313, bgeorge@fenton.com
GENEVA (JULY 11)- The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker human rights organization, and a coalition of more than 140 U.S.-based non-profits and organizations and 32 individuals have released the most comprehensive review of human rights violations in the United States ever compiled. The 465-page "shadow report" was assembled for the United Nation's Human Rights Committee as part of its review of U.S. human rights abuses later this month.
The U.N. review is a routine procedure that occurs every four years for countries that have ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR is one of two treaties that together are the equivalent to an international "Bill of Rights." The U.S. signed and ratified the treaty in 1992, but the U.S. review - its second - is more than seven years late due to the State Department's delay in submitting its own official report.
Last year, the U.N. warned that it would commence reviewing the U.S. without the official report if it were delayed any longer. The State Department submitted its official report on October 21, 2005.
"The U.S. has been previously cited by the United Nation as an egregious human rights violator," said Tonya McClary, national coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee Criminal Justice program, which questions the morality and monitors the effectiveness of the United States' penal system. "The principal offender is the prison system. Because prisons are a closed system, operating in secrecy, the public does not comprehend the extreme forms of abuse, violence, and racism practiced daily behind bars."
"Prisons are one of the largest growth industries in the United States," according to McClary. "With only 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. holds an astounding 25 percent of the world's prison population."
"To make matters worse, race and poverty drive public policy and law enforcement. Police brutality, racial and gender profiling and use of excessive force are commonplace," McClary adds. "U.S. prisoners are mostly poor and working-class people who need jobs and education."
The "shadow report" is a rebuttal to the official U.S. report. Among the issues it documents are:
* Persistent and widespread abuses by law enforcement agents across the U.S.: Ongoing police brutality and abuse, in the form of unjustified shootings, use of excessive force, including excessive and abusive use of TASERs, extraction of coerced confessions, and rape, sexual assault, and unlawful strip searches by police and other law enforcement officers, including immigration authorities, as well as racial and gender profiling; * Immigration: The physical and sexual abuse and the intimidation many immigrants face when they are detained at the border, at airports, and by federal, state, and local law enforcement and immigration officers; the failure of U.S. immigration law to adequately protect refugees, asylum seekers and immigrant families and respect their right to due process, and discrimination against migrant workers; * Hurricane Katrina: The racially discriminatory evacuation of New Orleans, the failure to protect against unnecessary loss of life, pervasive abuses by law enforcement and military personnel in the days and months following the storm and discriminatory policies in the hurricane's aftermath that have restricted residents' right to vote, ability to participate in the rebuilding process and access to basic necessities; * Juvenile Justice, Domestic Use of Torture and Prison Conditions within the United States, such as the sentencing of youth and teens to life in prison without the possibility of parole; shackling women prisoners during childbirth, limitations on prisoners' access to courts, lack of access to adequate health care, rape and discrimination against minorities that violate international human rights standards.
In the "shadow report," the groups underscore the common theme that binds these human rights violations together: an unstated policy of "U.S. exceptionalism." Before ratifying the treaty, Congress attached various "reservations, understandings and declarations," limiting the application of the treaty within the U.S. The coalition members point to the U.S. claimed limitations on the treaty, the State Department's reluctance to participate in the U.N. process, and the ongoing human rights violations in the United States as a systemic pattern of ignoring international human rights obligations.
"Far from being out-of-the-ordinary or an aberration - which is the image painted by the Bush administration - prison abuse and the use of torture in the United States is frighteningly widespread," McClary explains. "Violations include the use of electric stun belts, grenades and guns; tethers; waist and leg chains; air tasers; and restraint hoods, belts and beds. Prisoners can be held in long term solitary confinement and extreme isolation in severely confined spaces with little or no daily contact, for days, weeks, months - even years. Sexual assault of female prisoners is also common."
"It's time for the United States to own up to its responsibility to its own citizens and to the world community and acknowledge its own pattern of human rights violations," McClary states. "The U.S. must recognize its obligations and honor the treaty."
On July 10, McClary, joined by Andrea Ritchie, a civil rights attorney and member of the AFSC National Community Relations Committee, presented findings of widespread police brutality and misconduct in the U.S., to the U.N. committee in Geneva. These findings were documented in the report, In the Shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent Police Brutality and Abuse in the United States, co-authored by McClary and Ritchie, which was submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Committee on behalf of over 25 national and local organizations from across the U.S.
Other coalition members who will testify in Geneva include: the American Civil Liberties Union, Global Rights, Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the International Women's Rights Action Watch, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice Now, among others.
On July 17-18, representatives of the State Department and other federal agencies are expected to answer questions from the committee.
Last May after hearings held by the U.N.'s Committee Against Torture - an international review process similar to the human rights hearing that will be held in July - the Committee Against Torture demanded that the U.S. close the prison at Guantanamo. It also called for strict regulation of TASER use by law enforcement agents in the U.S., and expressed concern regarding ongoing police brutality and use of excessive force, particularly against people of color, immigrants, and LGBT people, as well as sexual assaults in police custody, immigration detention, and prisons. The Committee also specifically referenced violence committed by law enforcement agents in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and asked the US to report back on investigations into these abuses within a year.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee is expected to release its findings on July 28, 2006.
More information is available at http://ushrnetwork.org/page227.cfm or at www.afsc.org/community/criminal-justice.