: ----- Original Message -----
: From: arthur <bayou@blarg.net>
: To: <iww-news@iww.org>
: Cc: <bayou@blarg.net>
: Sent: Sunday, 25 July 1999 08:50
: Subject: U.S. Human Rights Report, part 3
: > Forward by bayou@blarg.net
: > From: nativenews <owner-nativenews@mLists.net>
: > Subject: NATIVE_NEWS: US: Human Rights Watch Annual Report
: > 1999 Part 3
: > Source : Human Rights Watch Annual Report 1999
: >
: > URL: http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/usa/index.html
: >
: > UNITED STATES
: >
: > Human Rights Developments
: >
: > because the CNMI authorities were exempt from normal federal
: > immigration, trade, and worker protection statutes. During the year,
: > legislation to address human rights violations in the CNMI was
: > introduced in Congress and actively supported by the Clinton
: > administration. The Department of the Interior prepared a report that
: > documented the trafficking of Russian and Chinese women for
: > prostitution as well as an overall worsening of conditions for foreign
: >
: > workers.
: >
: > Death Penalty
: >
: > The United States continued to rely on the death penalty despite the
: > international trend away from its use. Forty-five individuals were
: > executed in 1998 as of September; the U.S. had broken its previous
: > record in 1997, by executing a total of seventy-four persons. Among
: > those executed were two women (the first women executed since 1984),
: > individuals who may have been mentally ill or retarded, juvenile
: > offenders, and foreign nationals.
: >
: > In April 1998, the United Nations special rapporteur on
: > extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions released his report on
: >
: > the death penalty in the U.S. The special rapporteur found that the
: > death penalty was applied in an unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory
: > manner. The report called for a suspension of executions until
: > significant reforms were implemented to bring the U.S. into compliance
: >
: > with international human rights standards. The special rapporteur's
: > plea for a moratorium echoed the American Bar Association's similar
: > call in 1997. The special rapporteur criticized the U.S. practice of
: > imposing the death penalty on juvenile offenders and on mentally
: > retarded or mentally ill persons as "a step backwards in the promotion
: >
: > and protection of the right to life" and in contravention of
: > international human rights standards. From 1976 to 1997, seventy-four
: > people were released from death row due to evidence of their
: > innocence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
: >
: > As in the past, race played a role in the application of the death
: > penalty. Two 1998 studies by the DPIC illustrated this. One focused on
: >
: > the city of Philadelphia and found that an African-American was four
: > times more likely to be sentenced to the death penalty than a white
: > defendant on similarly severe murder charges and with a similar
: > criminal background. The other examined the race of district attorneys
: >
: > (who make the decisions on whether to seek the death penalty) and
: > found that nearly 98 percent of the district attorneys in states with
: > the death penalty were white while 1 percent were African-American.
: >
: > The U.S. continued to be one of only six countries to execute persons
: > who were younger than eighteen when they committed their crime. The
: > imposition of the death penalty on persons who were under eighteen
: > years of age at the time of their offense violates the provisions of
: > several international and regional human rights instruments. Despite
: > nearly unanimous international condemnation of the use of the death
: > penalty for juvenile offenders, six countries in the world-Iran,
: > Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Yemen-were
: > known to have executed juvenile offenders in the 1990s. The United
: > States led the list with nine executions between 1990 and 1998,
: > one-half of the known worldwide total for the period. Two such
: > executions took place in 1998 in the state of Texas-the first of
: > juvenile offenders anywhere in the U.S. in five years. A third took
: > place in Virginia, where Dwayne Allen Wright was executed in October.
: > Wright was a juvenile offender and was mentally ill and may have
: > suffered from brain damage.
: >
: > The U.S. continued to ignore its obligations under the Vienna
: > Convention to notify non-national defendants of their right to contact
: >
: > their embassies. In April 1998, the International Court of Justice
: > called on the U.S. to delay the execution in Virginia of a Paraguayan
: > national, Angel Francisco Breard, until it could examine his case and
: > decide whether the U.S.'s failure to notify the defendant of his
: > consular rights had made a difference in his case. The U.S. decided
: > that, with or without consular notification, Breard would have been
: > convicted of a capital crime; the execution went ahead.
: >
: > Discrimination
: >
: > The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
: >
: > Discrimination (CERD), which the U.S. has ratified under the Clinton
: > Administration, defines discrimination more broadly than under U.S.
: > law as any practice or policy that is discriminatoryin "purpose or
: > effect." Under this standard, policies that are race-neutral on their
: > face but have a persistently adverse impact on a racial group may rise
: >
: > to the level of discrimination. In the U.S., areas of concern in this
: > regard include, among others, the impact of criminal justice policies,
: >
: > such as the "war on drugs," application of the death penalty, and the
: > widespread disenfranchisement of felons.
: >
: > The onus of harsh criminal justice policies continued to fall
: > disproportionately on black Americans, fueling persistent complaints
: > of racial discrimination. According to the most recent figures from
: > the Department of Justice, one in twelve (8.3 percent) black men aged
: > twenty-five to twenty-nine were in prison in 1996, compared to 2.6
: > percent of Hispanics men and 0.8 percent of white men in the same age
: > group. Black Americans constituted a disproportionate share of the
: > prison population: 48 percent of state prisoners, 30 percent of
: > federal prisoners, and 42 percent of jail inmates, according to 1997
: > statistics, the most recent data available. The rate of imprisonment
: > for black men was 8.5 times that of white men. According to a U.S.
: > Department of Justice analysis, if current rates of incarceration
: > continued, one in three of the next generation of black men would
: > spend time in prison at some point in his life.
: >
: > The nation's war on drugs, for example, continued to have a
: > well-documented disparate impact on African-Americans. Drug control
: > policies emphasized law enforcement in low-income urban areas,
: > contributing significantly to the number and proportion of blacks and
: > Hispanics who were arrested, convicted and imprisoned. The arrest
: > rate for drug offenses was six times higher for blacks than for
: > whites. ( See Drugs and Human Rights section.) More than one-quarter
: > of all black inmates in state prisons were convicted of drug offenses,
: >
: > compared to 13 percent of white prisoners.
: >
: > For many African-Americans, the most egregious example of disparate
: > treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system was the much
: > harsher sentencing for crack than for powder cocaine offenses under
: > federal law. Compliance with CERD would require revision of the
: > federal sentencing laws to ensure that blacks (convicted more
: > frequently of crack offenses) and whites (convicted more frequently of
: >
: > powder cocaine offenses) receive equivalent sentences for equivalent
: > crimes.
: >
: > The scale of felony disenfranchisement in the U.S.-the denial of the
: > vote to persons convicted of felonies-was unparalleled: in 1998, an
: > estimated 3.9 million U.S. citizens were denied the right to vote,
: > including over one million who had fully completed their sentences. No
: >
: > other democratic country in the world denies as many people-in
: > absolute or proportional terms-the right to vote because of felony
: > convictions. The racial impact of disenfranchisement laws was
: > particularly egregious. Thirteen percent of African-American men-1.4
: > million-were disenfranchised, representing over one-third (36
: > percent) of the total disenfranchised population. In two states, data
: > published by Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project showed
: > almost one in three black men to be disenfranchised. In seven states,
: > one in four black men is permanently disenfranchised. These rates of
: > disenfranchisement are an unintended but nonetheless foreseeable
: > consequence of harsh criminal justice policies that have markedly
: > increased the number of people sent to prison and the length of their
: > sentences as well as of drug law enforcement that has put hundreds of
: > thousands of adults behind bars, a preponderance of whom are
: > members
: > of minority groups.
: >
: > In June 1997, President Clinton called for a national debate on race
: > relations and appointed an advisory panel (the Advisory Board to the
: > President's Initiative on Race) to compile a report of its
: > recommendations to address the problem of racism. The panel's report
: > was submitted to the president in September 1998, and it disappointed
: > civil rights leaders and others by failing to make bold proposals.
: > Meanwhile, a long-overdue U.S. compliance report on CERD remained
: > pending.
: >
: > Expanding the federal statute outlawing hate crimes received strong
: > public support from the Clinton administration, and the importance of
: > such support was underscored by proof that racist sentiment can turn
: > deadly-as in the brutal and degrading June 1998 murder of James
: > Byrd,
: > a black man in Texas, whose killers dragged his beaten body behind
: > their pickup truck until he died.
: >
: > National debate on the rights of gay men and lesbians contained some
: > ugly rhetoric in 1998, including from senior politicians of the
: > Republican Party. The legal rights of homosexuals received greater
: > protection at the federal than at the state level, though federal
: > policy on the treatment of gay men and lesbians in the military-"don't
: >
: > ask, don't tell, don't pursue"-continued to have a discriminatory
: > impact. In some areas, bias crimes against homosexuals increased,
: > while groups espousing "family values" sought to "cure" homosexuality.
: >
: > The brutal murder of a young gay man, Matthew Shepard, in Wyoming
: > in
: > October galvanized nationwide concern over hate crimes.
: >
: > In May 1998, President Clinton signed an executive order protecting
: > federal civil workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation,
: >
: > and the House of Representatives voted to uphold the order in August.
: > Employment discrimination remained a problem, however, since only ten
: > states had laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual
: > orientation. Seven states had executive orders barring discrimination
: > in public employment based on sexual orientation, and two had state
: > civil service rules prohibiting discrimination based on sexual
: > orientation. As a result, in the forty states without comprehensive
: > laws, it remained legal for any private employer to fire, deny
: > promotion, unfairly compensate or decline to hire people because of
: > their-actual or perceived-sexual orientation. The Employment
: > Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would protect workers in every
: > state from discrimination based on sexual orientation, was not acted
: > on as the congressional session ended. (For further discussion, see
: > section on Gay and Lesbian Rights.)
: >
: > Discrimination against women continued in many areas, including
: > employment, education, and judicial and law enforcement bias in
: > domestic violence cases. The failure to ratify the Convention on the
: > Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) left
: > women in the U.S. without enhanced human rights protections against
: > sex discrimination.
: >
: > International Human Rights Scrutiny
: >
: > The low priority that the U.S. government gives to international human
: >
: > rights treaty compliance became increasingly apparent duringthe year.
: > For example, the U.S. became a party to the Convention Against Torture
: >
: > and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and
: > CERD
: >
: > in 1994. Both treaties require reports to the United Nations,
: > describing the nation's treaty compliance. The U.S. compliance reports
: >
: > on both treaties were due in November 1995, but as of October 1998,
: > neither had been submitted. Other important human rights treaties,
: > including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
: > Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
: > Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on the
: > Rights
: >
: > of the Child, remained unratified. (Only two countries in the world
: > have not ratified the children's rights convention: Somalia, which has
: >
: > no internationally recognized government, and the United States.) In
: > addition, the administration did not move toward signing or ratifying
: > core International Labour Organisation conventions intended to protect
: >
: > basic labor rights.
: >
: > United Nations special rapporteurs monitor countries' compliance with
: > international human rights standards. During late 1997 and 1998, three
: >
: > special rapporteurs visited the United States. When Bacre Waly Ndiaye,
: >
: > the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary
: > executions, conducted a mission at the end of 1997, officials at the
: > State and Justice departments made almost no effort to facilitate his
: > meetings with local officials or his access to prisons' death rows.
: > There were improvements in the way the U.N. special rapporteur on
: > violence against women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, was treated by
: > federal
: > officials during her June 1998 investigation of human rights abuses
: > of women in custody, including prisons and INS detention centers, but
: > Michigan officials would not allow her to visit prisons in that state.
: >
: > (The other special rapporteur visited the United States in February
: > and examined religious intolerance.) The federal government, by
: > authorizing the special rapporteurs' visits, showed an increased
: > openness, but there was far less acceptance of such international
: > monitors at the state level.
: >
: > After Special Rapporteur Ndiaye released a report in April 1998 that
: > was highly critical of the application of the death penalty in the
: > U.S.-and called for a moratorium on its use, echoing a similar call by
: >
: > the American Bar Association-U.S. officials dismissed the report as
: > unnecessary and inaccurate. U.S. officials were forced to defend the
: > use of the death penalty before the U.N. Human Rights Commission in
: > Geneva. At that time, U.S. officials argued that the nation had such
: > strict due process standards that the rights of all capital defendants
: >
: > were being protected. Meanwhile, the U.S. acknowledged it had not
: > adhered to the Vienna Convention's consular notification procedures
: > in the case of a Paraguayan national, but the man was executed
: > anyway,
: >
: > despite international and World Court protests.
: >
: >
: > Reprinted under the Fair Use
: > http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
: > doctrine of international copyright law.
: >
: >
: > .
: >
: >
: >
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