Amnesty International Condemns SuperPower
Rajkumar Subramaniam
Today Amnesty International members all over the world are starting a
campaign to improve human rights protection for all
those who live on US soil. We are doing this at a time when the US
political establishment is immersed on issues of morality in
politics and society.
The concept of right and wrong is high in today's news agenda. This is the
time, then, to address seriously long standing human
wrongs in this country. To address the violation of the dignity of the
voiceless. Of the prisoners subjected to inhuman treatment.
Of the members of ethnic minorities brutalized by the police. Of the
asylum seekers jailed like criminals.
Amnesty International has been knocking on the doors of Congress for the
past 37 years. We have been telling the US
authorities that cruelty does not just happen elsewhere. Serious human
rights violations are not just a foreign affair. They are
happening in the US today and -- worst of all -- some are on the increase.
And where is the public outcry? Where are the zealous defenders of
morality when a mentally ill inmate is shackled to a
four-point metal restraint board for 12 weeks? When a pregnant woman is
shackled during her seven hours of labour?
Where is the public outcry at the shockingly cruel conditions in many of
the nations's jails and prisons? Or at the New York
Police department's 3 million dollar purchase of the right to kill Anthony
Baez with impunity?
What we have in the US political establishment today is a clear case of
hypocrisy and inconsistency.
The words of a refugee who was detained in harsh conditions for 14 months
before being granted asylum painfully illustrates the
situation: "Everyone says America is the place for human rights. I thought
maybe I had arrived in the wrong country."
A greater focus on the punishment rather than the rehabilitation of
prisoners has led to cuts in programs and facilities in many
US prisons. Prison authorities are turning to other ways of dealing with
prisoners. Ways that are cruel, painful and often life
threatening: supermaximum security units, electro-shock devices, chemical
sprays, lethal injections.
Not all sectors of society are equally affected by this, however. This is
a country were racial discrimination remained legal until
the 1960s, underpinning a system where black people faced discrimination
at work, at school and at the hands of the police
and the criminal justice system.
In a country still struggling to eradicate racial discrimination, more
than 60 per cent of prisoners come from racial minorities. Up
to one third of all young black men in the US are in jail or prison, or on
parole or probation.
You have all received copies of the one-hundred-and-fifty page report
published for this campaign. The abuses it describes,
should shock the conscience of people everywhere. It is one of several
reports on human rights in the USA to be published this
year, but only one of many produced by our organization in the past
decade.
Since the report was completed, we have continued to receive information
of disturbing cases from around the country: INS
detainees in a Florida jail subjected to electroshocks, beatings, punitive
solitary confinement and prolonged shackling. Use of
restraint chairs in juvenile facilities in Maine. Sexual abuse of women in
prison. Retaliation against those who dare to complain
or denounce.
What Amnesty International is saying today, has been said many, many times
before, and not only by us.
A large and very active NGO community in the USA has repeatedly raised its
voice as well against the persistent pattern of
police brutality, the endemic violence against prisoners, the punitive
treatment of asylum seekers, the arbitrary, unfair and racist
use of the death penalty.
As we speak, the State of Virginia is preparing to execute next week a
young man who was just 17 at the time the offense was
committed.
There is nothing new here. It has all been denounced again and again. And
that is the reason for this campaign. Enough has
been written and said.
In a perfect symbol of the current state of human rights in this country,
juvenile justice measures are being proposed that would
encourage the trial of 15-year-old children as adults. Many of these
children could end up in adult prisons, where they could
face the risk of being raped, tortured and murdered.
The truth is that many standards of human rights protection in the United
States have not kept pace with evolving international
standards of decency. The United States has one of the worst ratification
records of all industrialized nations. Together with
Somalia, the US is the only country in the world not to have ratified the
International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Even though the US government uses these same international standards to
judge others, it fails to apply the same yard stick at
home. It has campaigned vigorously to block the establishment of a truly
effective and independent international criminal court.
And it continues to fuel violations abroad by providing weapons and
expertise to governments that deliberately violate the rights
of their citizens.
Amnesty International can only welcome at the current soul searching on
morality in politics. But unless this exercise addresses
the central needs for the protection of the dignity of the weakest groups
in society human rights in the USA will continue to be a
tale of two nations: rich and poor, white and black, male and female.
Source: Amnesty International, International Secretariat, 1 Easton Street,
WC1X 8DJ, London, United Kingdom
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"Our lives will be the witnesses of the seriousness of the struggle we have
taken on that will only end with victory or death." -Che Guevara
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"tharAsai muthalil edai pOdu" ezhaththu kavi kasi Ananthan
"The great thing is to get the true picture, whatever it is".
- Winston Churchill (during WW2)
A coward dies hundred times, thamizhan once.
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