THE land of the free and the home of the brave. For the most part, America lives up to that image—of an open society with a press that's the freest in the world; a political system that encourages dissent and opposition; a solid democracy with a system of checks and balances that's the envy of everyone. But that image takes a beating in a scathing 151-page report titled, United States of America: Rights for All, that is the centrepiece of a year-long campaign that the London-based Amnesty International has launched to address human rights violations in the US.
Last year, when New York City police allegedly beat Haitian immigrant Abner Louima and sodomised him with a toilet plunger, human rights groups and the press condemned it as an act of 'torture'. But because it took place in the US, the officers involved were charged not with torture but with first-degree assault, aggravated sexual abuse and federal rights violations. However, the same conduct, when engaged in by the police in other countries, is condemned by the US state department in its annual country report on human rights practices as 'torture'. The US Congress has failed to enact or even consider a statute to formally criminalise torture in the US. Although many such acts are susceptible to prosecution under state penal laws and federal civil rights statutes, torture as such isn't a criminal offence if it takes place in the US.
Then there was the case of 32-year-old Angel Francisco Breard, a Paraguayan citizen who was executed in Virginia on April 9. Even a ruling from the International Court of Justice, protests from the government of Paraguay and an appeal from Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, to the Governor of Virginia didn't sway the US Supreme Court, which refused to stay Breard's execution on grounds that his rights under the convention had been denied.
"It's time for the US government to put an end to its selective approach to human rights and to start adjusting its conduct and legislation to conform with international human principles," said Amnesty International secretary-general Pierre Sane. There are severe accusations against what Amnesty says is America's half-hearted adoption and execution of international conventions, including Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which calls for the US to provide foreign prisoners with every available resource to ensure a fair trial.
The Amnesty report gives examples of police brutality in prisons and judicial outrage from nearly every state. It condemns the increasing use of electronic devices like stun guns and stun belts used to deliver 50,000 volt shocks from as far as 300 ft away. In particular, it focuses on the treatment of female inmates—the systemic harassment of women in some prisons, including selling women to male guards or male prisoners as sex slaves. In at least eight states, sexual contact between guards and women prisoners is not a criminal offence. The report also takes up the issue of shackling women prisoners while they're giving birth.
Another area of Amnesty's concern is the treatment of political asylum seekers who're often thrown into county jails along with common criminals. Asylum seekers have been detained as prisoners for months before seeing a judge or even finding counsel. Hundreds are women fleeing gender-based violence in other countries. Some of their children end up housed with dangerous juveniles in detention, according to a joint study by Amnesty International and the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
Amnesty has long campaigned against the death penalty. It notes how Death Row swells with more than 3,300 prisoners waiting execution. Minorities are over-represented in all categories. According to the report, America's increasing use of the practice puts it in the same class with China and Iran, hardly the most admired societies. It is especially appalled that US courts ignore international norms by sentencing criminals to death when they're mentally deficient or are minors when they commit capital offences.
William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, thinks the campaign could be a good thing for the US. "To the extent to which its own house is not in order in human rights terms, it compromises and jeopardises the role that the US can play internationally," he said. "To take one example, when the US ratified the international covenant on civil and political rights a number of years ago, it did so with reservation on the issue of the execution of juvenile offenders. Having done so, it now makes it impossible for the US to criticise the reservations that China is going to be taking as it ratifies the international covenants."
THE denial of rights, says the Amnesty report, is not so much a matter of conscious policy-making as it is random breakdowns in carrying out the law when individuals collide with the legal system. Abuses usually involve police, judges or jailers with little or no reverence for principles of equal justice for all. Amnesty plans to build support for reform. It recommends the establishment of independent, quasi-legal bodies to probe allegations of policy or prison abuse and the prohibition of capital punishment for felons who are mentally deficient or juveniles—as a first step toward the abolition of the death penalty. A major part of what Amnesty hopes to accomplish is the education of the American public as to the seriousness of human rights breaches in the US.
Asked what he thought about the report, a retired administration official said: "We Americans take pride in our country's role both as a champion of human rights around the world and as a model of how those rights are exercised. So we need to sit up and take notice when Amnesty International concludes that the good old US is shortchanging its own citizens on issues basic to their lives and liberties. This isn't a gaggle of morally superior America-bashers looking down their noses at us. Amnesty members recognise American contribution to furthering liberty.... They just think—understandably—that America ought to practice what it preaches."
However, another Administration source strongly disagreed with the report. "The US is a haven by comparison to other places," she says. "Indeed, citizens of truly repressive regimes, from North Korea to Iraq to Yugoslavia, are clamouring at the gates to get into the US, where they stand a chance of living free of fear and intimidation. For Amnesty to target the US puts in jeopardy America's continued support against the true brutes of the world. Why would it jeopardise its own good work to take on a campaign that in the end might do more damage than good?"
The US press has been more open to the criticism. In an editorial, the Atlanta Journal said that "Americans' concerns about crime are legitimate, but we must not lose sight of the downside to harsh approaches to law enforcement. The Amnesty report is a good reminder that the scales of justice have to be kept in balance."
