[Ppnews] America Criticized For Human Rights Abuses

[Political Prisoner News]

America Criticized For Human Rights Abuses

Created 12/08/2010 - 09:16
by Linn Washington Jr.

Given the sensationalism in mainstream US news 
media coverage of alleged sexual impropriety 
charges filed against WikiLeaks founder Julian 
Assange in Sweden, it’s no surprise that other 
significant news about America involving that 
Scandinavian nation is being left uncovered.

In early November, Sweden called on the US to end 
the death penalty and to improve conditions in 
maximum security prisons, as the United States 
went through its first-ever Universal Periodic 
Review by the United Nation’s Human Rights Council.
US condemned for its continued use of capital punishment

Sweden joined nearly two dozen countries in 
calling upon the US to end its pariah-like status 
as the only western industrialized nation to 
engage in executions. The US has over 3,200 
people facing death sentences, a sharp rise from 
1968, when America’s death row population 
numbered just 517, according to statistics 
compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Other countries critical of the US posture on the 
death penalty – practiced by the federal 
government and 35 states – included Australia 
(the birthplace of Assange), France, Germany, the 
United Kingdom and the Vatican.

The caustic onslaught in the U.S. against Assange 
for leaking sensitive documents, where attackers 
include members of Congress – some even calling 
for Assange’s death, either extrajudicially or 
after a trial--is ironic, coming so close to 
December 10th, the annual international observance of Human Rights Day.

That observance commemorates the UN’s 1948 
adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
One clause in that Declaration provides people 
worldwide with the right to receive and impart 
information “through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The American assaults on Assange extend beyond 
the White House and Capitol Hill. Amazon, under 
pressure from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), removed 
WikiLeaks from its computer servers, while 
MasterCard, PayPal and Visa have halted payments 
to WikiLeaks from donors supportive of work of 
that entity, almost certainly after receiving pressure from the US government.

While US officials attending that human rights 
review held in Switzerland proudly pointed to 
such continuing rights progress in America as the 
election of a black President and his selection 
of a Hispanic female US Supreme Court Justice, 
fifty-six countries including staunch US allies 
offered 228 recommendations for improving human 
rights in the nation that touts itself as the 
world’s leader in protecting the rights of all.

Those recommendations involved a wide range of 
issues, ranging from attacking poverty among 
Native Americans to addressing abuses impacting 
immigrants and closing the infamous Guantanamo 
prison. However, most of the recommendations 
presented at that human rights review centered on 
concerns about deprivations and disparities in 
the U.S. criminal justice system.

Belgium and Switzerland, for example, called on 
America to stop sentencing teens to life in 
prison. Pennsylvania leads the nation in the 
number of life-sentenced teens, with over 300 
currently languishing in the state’s prisons.

Haiti called for ending the discriminatory impact 
of mandatory minimum sentences and Thailand 
called for addressing sexual violence inside U.S. 
prisons, where homosexual rapes far exceed 
heterosexual rapes outside prison walls.

France urged the U.S. to study the racial 
disparities evident in the application of the 
death penalty. African-Americans comprise 41.43 
percent of the people on death rows across 
America – a figure more than twice the percentage 
of America’s black population.

The United Kingdom expressed concerns about 
damning evidence that the death penalty could 
sometimes be administered in a discriminatory manner.

Respected Harvard Law School Professor Alan 
Dershowitz recently wrote a commentary expressing 
his concerns about Kevin Cooper, a black 
California death row inmate facing execution for 
slaughtering four members of a white family in 
1983, despite the troubling reality that the lone 
survivor told police the murders were white.

Facts now establish that police destroyed 
blood-stained clothing evidence supplied by the 
girlfriend of one (white) man police never 
investigated, and that the prosecution’s forensic 
witnesses falsified evidence against Cooper.

Dershowitz stated that the facts “do not add up” 
in the murder conviction of Cooper. He has asked 
outgoing California Governor Arnold 
Schwarzenegger to grant Cooper clemency. 
America’s largest death row is in California, 
which has 697 persons facing execution.

U.S. representatives responding to their 
international critics stated that despite 
legitimate debate on the propriety of the death 
penalty, as a matter of law at the federal level 
and in 35 states, “that punishment is permitted,” 
according to the draft report issued by the UN Human Rights Council.

While the America’s governmental scheme makes it 
structurally difficult for the federal government 
to outright ban states from conducting 
executions, the federal government could end its 
own use of the death penalty for federal crimes. 
The U.S. government death row holds nearly 70 persons.

One U.S. death-row inmate – Pennsylvania’s ‘Death 
Row Journalist’ Mumia Abu-Jamal – received 
mention by name in one recommendation. Abu-Jamal, 
perhaps the most well-known of 25,000-plus under 
death sentence worldwide, observes the macabre 
anniversary of spending 29-years inside a 
death-row prison cell on December 9th.

Cuba called on the U.S. to “end the unjust 
incarceration of political prisoners including 
Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Ample 
evidence supports international claims that 
Native American leader Peltier, repeatedly denied 
parole, and ex-Black Panther Abu-Jamal, are 
unjustly incarcerated for deaths involving law enforcement officers.

The issue of political prisoners in the US is a 
subject generating interest internationally, yet 
it is an issue largely ignored by Americans, said 
Efia Nwangaza, a lawyer who attended that UN 
human rights review session held in Geneva, Switzerland.

“There are over 75 political prisoners in the US, 
most of them former Black Panther or Black 
Liberation Army people,” said Nwangaza, a 
Philadelphia native now living in South Carolina, 
who helped prepare documentation on US political prisoners for that UN review.

“We’ve made progress through an admission by 
omission, with the US not denying it has political prisoners.”

In addition to criticisms about death penalty 
policies in the U.S., nations around the world 
raised concerns about racial profiling practices 
in America against blacks, Latinos and persons 
perceived as Muslim, inclusive of U.S. citizens, immigrants and visitors.

U.S. representatives, responding to criticisms 
about racial profiling, “assured delegations” 
that America condemns racial and ethnic profiling 
in all forms,” according to the Human Rights Council’s report.

Ironically, even as U.S. representatives offered 
their assurances, the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed 
a class-action lawsuit against the Philadelphia 
Police Department for racial profiling in that 
city where the U.S. Constitution was drafted and approved.

That lawsuit involves the police practice called 
‘stop-&-frisk’ – where police detain and search 
persons. This practice in Philadelphia impacted 
253,333 persons in 2009 – a 148-percent increase 
over 2005 – with 72.2 percent of those subjected 
being blacks, who comprise 44 percent of that 
city’s population, according to the lawsuit.

This dragnet-style policing only produced arrests 
in 8.4 percent of the ‘stops,’ with the majority 
of those arrests being for “interactions 
following the initial stop” like disorderly 
conduct and resisting arrest – i.e. alleged 
crimes that most likely resulted from legitimate 
objections to being stopped without cause.

One of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit is State 
Representative Jewell Williams, a veteran of 
20-years in law enforcement work, who was roughed 
up by Philadelphia police in March 2009 while 
inquiring about a police stop of two 65-year-old 
black men during an encounter around the corner from Williams’ house.

Exposing a paradox in America’s race-based 
policing, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and 
the city’s Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey 
(named in the ACLU lawsuit) are both black, but 
they back their Stop-&-Frisk policy, downplaying 
its demonstrable racially-disproportionate impact.

“Mayor Nutter repeatedly promised that this 
policy [Stop-&-Frisk] would be carried out in a 
way that respected the Constitution,” said Mary 
Catherine Roper, an ACLU-Pa staff attorney. “But 
instead of stopping people suspected of criminal 
activity, the police appear to be stopping people because of race.”

Former Philadelphia Mayor John Street told 
ThisCantBeHappening! recently that the excessive 
Stop-&-Frisk practices are actually 
counter-productive to effective crime fighting 
because the practices alienate citizens that 
police need to assist them in crime fighting.

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Source URL: 
<http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/334>http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/334




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