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Apr 4, 2014 - Recently, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a
report excoriating the United States for its human rights violations. It
focuses on violations ...
UN Human Rights Committee issued a report excoriating the United
States for its human rights violations. It focuses on violations of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the country is party. The
report mentions 25 human rights issues where the United States is failing. This
piece will focus on a few of those issues - Guantanamo, NSA surveillance,
accountability for Bush-era human rights violations, drone strikes, racism in
the prison system, racial profiling, police violence, and criminalization of
the homeless.
Accountability for Bush-Era Crimes; Torture
The UN committee expressed concerned with "the limited number
of investigations, prosecutions and convictions of members of the Armed Forces
and other agents of the US government, including private contractors" for
"unlawful killingsin its international operations" and
"torture" in CIA black sites during the Bush years. It welcomed the
closing of the CIA black sites, but criticized the "meagre number of
criminal charges brought against low-level operatives" for abuses carried
out under the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention program. The
committee also found fault with the fact that many details of the CIA's torture
program "remain secret, thereby creating barriers to accountability and
redress for victims."
In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration
jettisoned the Constitution and international law and openly embraced the use
of torture against suspected terrorists captured overseas. The CIA tortured
people in secret prisons around the world known as "black sites."
Torture was sanctioned from the top down. Then-President George W. Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice, lawyers and many others in the executive branch
played roles in crafting nifty ways to justify, approve and implement the use
of torture.
Rather than be held accountable, the top-level government officials
responsible for authorizing torture and other crimes have been given comfort in
the public sphere. Condoleezza Rice returned to Stanford University as a
political science professor. John Yoo, who authored the torture memos, is a law
professor at UC Berkeley. Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA officer in the Bush
administration, vigorously defends torture in his autobiography and interviews.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are able to rest comfortably in
retirement and continue to defend their records.
In the Guantanamo military commissions, evidence of torture is
concealed. A "protective order" restricts what defense lawyers
and the accused can say about how the defendants were treated in CIA black
sites, including details of torture, because that information is classified.
Defense lawyers have been fighting for declassification of those
details, as they are mitigating evidence.
The potential release of portions of the Senate Intelligence
Committee's report on the CIA torture program could tip the scale the
defense attorneys' favor. "There is every reason to believe the SSCI
[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] Report contains information about the
CIA's torture of Mr. al Baluchi," said defense attorney James Connell, who
represents Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the five 9/11 defendants, in a press
statement. "The SSCI knows the truth of what happened, and the military commission
considering whether to execute Mr. al Baluchi should know too."
Racism in the Prison System; Racial Profiling; Police Brutality
Of the report's 25 issues, four looked at racial disparities within
the United States' criminal justice system and law enforcement
practices. It denounced the "racial disparities at different stages
in the criminal justice system, sentencing disparities and the
overrepresentation of individuals belonging to racial and ethnic minorities in
prisons and jails." The committee condemned racial profiling by police and
FBI/NYPD surveillance of Muslims - but it did welcome plans to reform New York
City's "stop and frisk" program. It also denounced the continuing use
of the death penalty and "racial disparities in its imposition that
affects disproportionately African Americans." Finally, it expressed
concern at "the still high number of fatal shootings by certain police
forces" and "reports of excessive use of force by certain law
enforcement officers including the deadly use of tasers, which have a
disparate impact on African Americans, and the use of lethal force by Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the US-Mexico border."
The United States contains the largest prison population in the
world, holding over 2.4 million people in domestic jails and prisons,
immigration detention centers, military prisons, civil commitment centers and
juvenile correctional facilities. Its prison population is even larger than
those of authoritarian governments like China and Russia, which, respectively,
hold 1,640,000 and 681,600 prisoners, according to the International
Centre for Prison Studies. More than 60 percent of the US prison
population are people of color. African Americans, while 13 percent of the
national population, constitute nearly 40 percent of the prison
population. Moreover, one in every three black males can expect to go
to prison in their lifetime, compared to one in every six Latino males, and one
in every 17 white males. Thus, black men are six times more likely to
be incarcerated than white men. Even though whites and blacks use drugs at
roughly the same rates, African Americans are more likely to be
imprisoned for drug-related offenses than whites.
Every 28 hours, a black person is killed by a police officer,
security guard, or self-appointed vigilante, according to a report by
the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Recently in New York City,
NYPD brutalized two teenage African-American girls at a Chinese
restaurant in Brooklyn. A 16-year-old girl's face was slammed against the floor,
while police threw the 15-year-old through the restaurant's window, shattering
it as a result. The incident started when police ordered everyone to leave the
restaurant, but one of the girls refused.
While police violence against people of color has long existed, the
militarization of American police exacerbates this trend. This trend began when
Richard Nixon inaugurated the War on Drugs in the 1970s. Then in 1981,
President Ronald Reagan signed the Military Cooperation with Civilian Law
Enforcement Agencies Act, which provided civilian police agencies with military
equipment, training, advice and access to military research and facilities.
When 9/11 hit, police militarization kicked into overdrive with the creation of
the Department of Homeland Security, which has given police still greater
access military equipment like armored personnel carriers and high-powered
weapons for anti-terrorism purposes. Now police look, act and think like the
military, with dangerous consequences for the communities they serve.
Among the report's suggestions to curb excessive police violence
were better reporting of incidents, accountability for perpetrators, and
"ensuring compliance with the 1990 UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force
and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officers". The Basic Principles include a
number of provisions, including "Law enforcement officials, in carrying
out their duty, shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before
resorting to the use of force and firearms" and "Governments shall
ensure that arbitrary or abusive use of force and firearms by law enforcement
officials is punished as a criminal offence under their law."
Drone Strikes, Assassination
To execute its perpetual global war on terrorism, the Bush
administration favored large-scale, conventional land invasions and
occupations, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has moved away from such
operations and embraced seemingly lighter tactics of irregular warfare to
continue the perpetual war, while making it less visible to Americans. Extrajudicial
killing and drone strikes are the most notable methods, but others include air
strikes, cruise missile attacks, cyberwarfare, special operations,
and proxy wars.
These tactics have meant more use of the military's Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) and the paramilitary branch of the CIA. Both the CIA
and JSOC carry out drone strikes and sometimes collaborate in joint operations.
The CIA, not the military, is legally mandated to launch covert
operations, which are classified and unacknowledged by the US government.
However, JSOC performs essentially the same operations,
particularly extrajudicial killings. Thus, transferring control of the
drone program from the CIA to the military would make little difference.
The UN report criticized the United States' assassination program
and drone strikes. It expressed concerned with the "lack of transparency
regarding the criteria for drone strikes, including the legal justification for
specific attacks, and the lack of accountability for the loss of life resulting
from such attacks." The United States' position for justifying its
extrajudicial killing operations is that it is engaged in an armed conflict
with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and "associated forces" - a term the Obama
administration created to refer to co-belligerents with al-Qaeda -
and that the war is in accordance with the nation's inherent right to
self-defense against a terrorist enemy.
However, the committee took issue with the United States' position,
particularly its "very broad approach to the definition and the
geographical scope of an armed conflict, including the end of
hostilities." A May 2010 report by Philip Alston, former UN
special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, notes
that, under international law, states cannot wage war against non-state actors,
such as international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, because of their nebulous
character and loose affiliations.
The committee's report also took issue with "the unclear
interpretation of what constitutes an 'imminent threat' and who is a combatant
or civilian taking a direct part in hostilities, the unclear position on the
nexus that should exist between any particular use of lethal force and any
specific theatre of hostilities, as well as the precautionary measures taken to
avoid civilian casualties in practice." Under international law,
self-defense against an "imminent" threat is "necessity of that
self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no
moment for deliberation." However, the Obama administration completely
obliterated this meaning. In a 16-page white paper leaked to NBC News, the
Obama administration believes that whether "an operational leader present
an 'imminent' threat of violent attack against the United States does not
require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on
U.S. persons and interest will take place in the immediate
future." Thus, a "high-level official could conclude, for example,
that an individual poses an 'imminent threat' of violent attack against the
United States where he is an operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated
force and is personally and continually involved in planning terrorist attacks
against the United States" without any proof of an actual plot against the
U.S. Thus, in Obama-lingo, the word "imminent" means the complete
opposite of what it is in the English language.
There is no due process in the assassination program, either.
President Obama and his advisors decide who will be killed by a drone
strike in a secret internal executive branch process that occurs
every Tuesday. Even American citizens are fair game for the assassination
program. In fact, four US citizens have been killed by drone strikes, including
a 16-year-old boy. A database called the "disposition
matrix" adds names to kill or capture lists, ensuring the
assassination program will continue no matter who is in office. Targeting for
drone strikes is not based on human intelligence but, rather, signals
intelligence, particularly metadata analysis and cellphone tracking. According
to a report by The Intercept, the NSA geolocates a SIM card or mobile
phone of a suspected terrorist, which helps the CIA and JSOC to track an
individual to kill or capture in a night raid or drone strike. However, it is
very common for people in places like Yemen or Pakistan, to hold multiple SIM
cards, give their phones, with the SIM cards in them, to children, friends, and
family, and for groups like the Taliban to randomly distribute SIM cards among
their units to confuse trackers. As a result, since this methodology targets
SIM cards rather than real people, civilians are regularly killed by mistake.
As with the word "imminent," the Obama administration
utilizes its own warped definitions of "civilian" and
"combatant." As The New York Times reported in
May 2012, the Obama administration "counts all military-age males in a
strike zone as combatants . . . unless there is explicit intelligence
posthumously proving them innocent."
Despite claims to the contrary, drone strikes kill a significant
number of civilians and inflict serious human suffering. So far, US drone
strikes and other covert operations have killed between 2,700 and nearly 5,000
people, including 500 to more than 1,100 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia,
according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's figures. Many of
those deaths occurred under Obama's watch, with drone strikes killing at
least 2,400 people during his five years in office. Only 2
percent of those killed by drone strikes in Pakistan are high-level
militants, while most are low-level fighters and civilians. In
addition to causing physical harm, drone strikes terrorize and
traumatize communities that constantly live under them.
Drone strikes have lulled in Pakistan due
to peace talks between the Pakistani government and Pakistan Taliban,
which collapsed on February 17. The last US drone strike in Pakistan
happened on Christmas Day 2013. In Yemen, drone strikes have continued. Several
US drone strikes in Yemen occurred during the first 12
days of March. Last November, six months after President Obama laid out
new rules for US drone strikes, a TBIJ analysis showed that
"covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than
in the six months before the speech." It also was recently reported that
the Obama administration is debating whether to kill a US citizen in Pakistan
who is suspected of "actively plotting terrorist
attacks," according to The New York Times.
It is very likely these operations will continue. The Pentagon's 2015
budget proposal, taking sequestration into account, spends $0.4 billion less
than 2014 at $495.6 billion, shrinks the Army down to between 440,000
to 450,000 troops from the post-9/11 peak of 570,000, and protects money for cyberwarfare and
special operations forces. Cyber operations are allocated $5.1 billion in the
proposal, while US Special Operations Command gets $7.7 billion, which is 10
percent more than in 2014, and a force of 69,700 personnel. While President
Obama promised to take the United States off a "permanent war
footing," his administration's policies tell a different story. The Obama
administration is reconfiguring, rather than halting, America's "permanent
war footing."
Guantanamo, Indefinite Detention
President Obama recommitted himself to closing the prison in
Guantanamo last year, but has made little progress, which the UN report noted.
The committee said it "regrets that no timeline for closure of the
facility has been provided." It also expressed concern that "detainees
held in Guantanamo Bay and in military facilities in Afghanistan are not dealt
with within the ordinary criminal justice system after a protracted period of
over a decade in some cases."
The report called on the United States to expedite the transfer of
prisoners out of Guantanamo, close the prison, "end the system of
administrative detention without charge or trial" and "ensure that
any criminal cases against detainees held in Guantanamo and military facilities
in Afghanistan are dealt with within the criminal justice system rather than
military commissions and that those detainees are afforded fair trial
guarantees." Currently, 154 men remain held in the prison at
Guantanamo Bay. Of those, 76 are cleared for release; around four
dozen will remain in indefinite detention; 20 can be
"realistically prosecuted," according to chief prosecutor Brig. Gen.
Mark Martins' estimate; six are being tried in military commissions
and two are serving sentences after being convicted in the commissions.
President Obama promised to close Guantanamo right when he stepped
into office. However, he has yet to fulfill that promise. Congressional
obstructionism, especially from the Republican Party, has stalled his plans.
For a long time, Congress blocked funding for transferring Guantanamo
prisoners. Recently, though, Congress eased those restrictions, making it
easier to transfer prisoners to other countries, but not to the United
States.
While the Obama administration is working to close the prison at
Guantanamo, it maintains the policy of indefinite detention without trial,
designating nearly four dozen Guantanamo prisoners for forever imprisonment.
Obama's original plan to close Guantanamo was to open a prison in
Illinois to hold Guantanamo detainees, many indefinitely. While soon
killed, this plan would have effectively moved the system of indefinite
detention from Guantanamo to US soil. Now the Obama administration is
considering opening a prison in Yemen to hold the remaining
Guantanamo prisoners, many of whom are Yemeni. Indefinite
detention violates international human rights law, but has
been embraced by Obama ever since he stepped into the White
House. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that Obama
signed into law contains sections that allow for the indefinite detention of US
citizens on American soil.
NSA Surveillance
Notably, the UN report denounced the NSA's mass surveillance
"both within and outside the United States through the bulk phone metadata
program (Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act) and, in particular, the surveillance
under Section 702 of Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) conducted through PRISM (collection of the contents of communications
from US-based companies) and UPSTREAM (tapping of fiber-optic cables in the country
that carry internet traffic) programs and their adverse impact on the right to
privacy. "The report also criticized the secrecy of "judicial
interpretations of FISA and rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISC)," which prevent the public from knowing the laws and legal
interpretations that impact them. Promises of "oversight"
obviously did not persuade the committee, either, as it said "the current
system of oversight of the activities of the NSA fails to effectively protect
the rights of those affected," and "those affected have no access to
effective remedies in case of abuse."
Continuing NSA leaks, provided by former intelligence contractor
Edward Snowden last year, have revealed the depth of the United States' massive
surveillance system. The bulk collection of phone metadata is probably the most
well-known program. Recently, President Obama proposed ending the bulk phone
metadata collection program. But the NSA's surveillance system extends far
beyond phone metadata.
In a program called PRISM, the NSA collects user data,
such as search history and message content, sent through internet communication
services like Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and Skype. Major tech companies have
denied knowledge of the program, but the NSA claims those
companies knew and provided full assistance. The NSA uses a back
door in surveillance law to monitor the communications of American
citizens without a warrant. As mentioned earlier, the NSA is
also involved in the drone program through the collection of signals
intelligence. Additionally, much of NSA surveillance is used for economic
espionage. With the help of Australian intelligence, the NSA spied
on communications between the Indonesian government and an American law
firm representing it during trade talks. Indonesia and the United States have
long been in trade disputes, such as over Indonesia's shrimp exports and a US
ban on the sale of Indonesian clove cigarettes. It is highly unlikely Obama's
reforms will curb these abuses.
Criminalizing the Homeless
The plight of homeless people is rarely held up as a pressing human
rights issue. But, in the UN report, it is. The committee expressed concern
"about reports of criminalization of people living on the street for
everyday activities such as eating, sleeping, sitting in particular areas
etc." It also "notes that such criminalization raises concerns of discrimination
and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."
For evidence of such criminalization and of "cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment," look no further than to the liberal, historically
countercultural city of San Francisco. The city that smugly prides itself on
progressivism has a sit-lie ordinance that forbids people from
sitting or lying on public sidewalks between 7 AM and 11 PM. It
particularly hurts and targets homeless people.
In the same city, homeless people are washed away. Street cleaners
from the San Francisco Department of Public Works regularly spray their
high-powered hoses at homeless people sleeping on the streets.
Recently, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, police shot
and killed a homeless man. His crime? Illegal camping . . . in the Albuquerque
foothills. Albuquerque police went to arrest 38-year-old James Boyd, who was
sleeping in a campsite he set up. After arguing with police for three hours,
Boyd was apparently about to leave and picked up his belongings. As he started
walking down the hill, police shot a flash-bang device at Boyd.
Disoriented, he dropped his bags, appeared to take out a knife, and
then police fired multiple bean-bag rounds at Boyd. The man fell to the
ground, hitting his head on a rock, his blood spattered on it. Officers yelled
at him, telling Boyd to drop his knife. When Boyd didn't answer, police fired
more bean-bag rounds and sicced their dog on him. Boyd was later taken to a
hospital and pronounced dead a day later. In addition to stun guns and bean
bags, officers shot six live rounds at Boyd. The shooting prompted an FBI
investigation, which is ongoing, and a protest in Albuquerque
that was met with intense police violence as officers fired tear gas into the
crowd.
Clean Your Own Backyard
The UN report elevates the suffering inflicted by US domestic and
foreign policies to the realm of international human rights. To be tortured,
spied on, unjustly imprisoned, put in solitary confinement, indefinitely
detained, extrajudicially killed by the state, racially profiled, deprived of a
home and criminalized for being homeless is to have one's basic human rights
violated and dignity as a human demolished. That's why there are international
laws to protect those rights - laws with which the United States and every nation-state
are bound to comply. Even as the United States commonly condemns other
countries for their human rights abuses, it has yet to clean its own
house.
UN Issues Scathing Assessment of US Human Rights Record,By Jamil
Dakwar, Director, ACLU Human Rights Program, May 15, 2015 | 4:30 PM
The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a scathing report today,
consisting of 348 recommendations that address myriad human rights violations
in the United States.
The report came out as a part of a mechanism called the Universal Periodic
Review (UPR), which examines the human rights record of all U.N. member states.
The council questioned the United States on its record earlier this week.
Although many of these recommendations in the report are redundant
or too general to offer tangible solutions to the human rights situation in the
U.S., they echo many of the concerns raised by U.S. civil society groups like
the ACLU, who attended the review and offered concrete recommendations to
reverse policies that are inconsistent with international human rights
principles.
For example, the report adopted a recommendation made by Sweden to
"halt the detention of immigrant families and children, seek alternatives
to detention and end use of detention for reason of deterrence." The
report also adopted several recommendations calling on the Obama administration
to independently investigate allegations of torture documented in the recent
Senate torture report and provide reparations to victims. Denmark, for
instance, recommended that the United States "further ensure that all
victims of torture and ill-treatment — whether still in US custody or not —
obtain redress and have an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation
and as full rehabilitation as possible, including medical and psychological
assistance."
In addition, the report included many fitting recommendations to
address police brutality and excessive use of force as well as ending racial
profiling against minorities and immigrants. Mexico recommended that the U.S.
"adopt measures at the federal level to prevent and punish excessive use
of force by law enforcement officials against members of ethnic and racial
minorities, including unarmed persons, which disproportionately affect Afro
American and undocumented migrants." Ireland, for its part, directly
touched on the broken trust between American law enforcement and communities of
color and recommended that the U.S. "continue to vigorously investigate
recent cases of alleged police-led human rights abuses against
African-Americans and seek to build improved relations and trust between U.S.
law enforcement and all communities around the U.S."
While in some areas, like LGBT rights and freedom of speech, the
United States' human rights record fares far better than other parts of the
world, in many areas — including national security, criminal justice,
social and economic rights, and immigration policy — the U.S. has an
abysmal record compared to other liberal democracies.
This report sends a strong message of no-confidence in the U.S.
human rights record. It clearly demonstrates that the United States has a long
way to go to live up to its human rights obligations and commitments. This will
be the last major human rights review for the Obama administration, and it
offers a critical opportunity to shape the president's human rights legacy,
especially in the areas of racial justice, national security, and immigrants'
rights.
The Obama administration has until September to respond to the 348
recommendations. At that time, the administration will make a direct commitment
to the world by deciding which of the 348 will be accepted and implemented over
the next four years, and which will be rejected. While many of the
recommendations fall outside the constitutional powers of the executive branch
— such as treaty ratification and legislative actions on the national, state,
and local levels — the Obama administration should use its executive powers to
their fullest extent to effectuate U.S. human rights obligations.
The U.S. record for implementing U.N. recommendations has thus far
been very disappointing, but if President Obama really cares about his human
rights legacy, he should direct his administration to adopt a plan of action
with concrete benchmarks and effective implementation mechanisms that will ensure
that the U.S. indeed learns from its shortcomings and genuinely seeks to create
a more perfect union.
The world will be watching.
U.N. Group Says U.S. Should Consider Reparations
The United States should think reparations to African-American
descendants of slavery, a U.N. working group said Friday.
Jan. 29, 2016, at 4:35 p.m.
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States should consider reparations to
African-American descendants of slavery, establish a national human rights
commission and publicly acknowledge that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a
crime against humanity, a United Nations working group said Friday.
The U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent
released its preliminary recommendations after more than a week of meetings
with black Americans and others from around the country, including Baltimore,
Chicago, New York City, the District of Columbia and Jackson, Mississippi.
After finishing their fact-finding mission, the working group was
"extremely concerned about the human rights situation of
African-Americans," chair Mireille Fanon Mendes-France of France said in
the report. "The colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial
subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the
U.S. remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to
reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African
descent."
For example, Mendes-France compared the recent deaths of unarmed
black men like Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police to the
lynchings of black men in the South from the post-Civil War days through the
Civil Rights era. Those deaths, and others, have inspired protests around the
country under the Black Lives Matter moniker. Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are
reminiscent of the racial terror lynchings in the past," she told
reporters. "Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human
rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency."
Some of the working group's members, none of whom are from the
United States, said they were shocked by some of the things they found and were
told.
For example, "it's very easy in the United States for
African-Americans to be imprisoned, and that was very concerning," said
Sabelo Gumedze of South Africa.
Federal officials say 37 percent of the state and federal prison
populations were black males in 2014. The working group suggests the U.S.
implement several reforms, including reducing the use of mandatory minimum
laws, ending racial profiling, ending excessive bail and banning solitary
confinement.
"What stands out for me is the lack of acknowledgement of the
slave trade," said Ricardo A. Sunga III, who lives in the Philippines.
The working group suggests monuments, markers and memorials be
erected in the United States to facilitate dialogue, and "past injustices
and crimes against African-Americans need to be addressed with reparatory
justice."
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