The United Nations issued a damning report Friday decrying the human rights record of the United States. The report urges the U.S. to close its secret detention centers, reduce its usage of the death penalty, ensure that minorities are adequately aided in relief efforts such as those after Katrina, and more, the Associated press reported.
The report, issued by the UN Human Rights Committee, aimed to cover both international and domestic abuses of human rights by the U.S. Focusing primarily on the secret prisons the U.S. allegedly uses to detain suspected terrorists, the committee called on the U.S. to shut down such facilities — urging the US to detain prisoners only in facilities where they can “enjoy the full protection of the law” — and in the meantime allow the International Red Cross expansive access to prisoners detained there. The report cited “credible and uncontested” evidence that such facilities existed, and claimed that the detaining of suspects had been going on for “months and years”.
The report also focused on a number of domestic issues, particularly those concerning the rights of minorities and the poor. The report claimed that, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many people — particularly African-Americans — were “disadvantaged” when it came to relief, urging the U.S. to ensure that “the rights of poor people and in particular African-Americans are fully taken into consideration in the reconstruction plans”, particularly with regard to “housing, education and health care”.
The report also criticized U.S. usage of the death penalty. Claiming that it was used in a discriminatory fashion, with disproportionate amounts of minorities and poor people being sentenced to death, the committee stated that there should be a moratorium on the issue — in keeping with the UN’s attempts to see a global eradication of the death penalty.
The report was the result of last week’s two-day hearing in Geneva, which investigated U.S. compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and comes just two months after the UN Committee against Torture called for the closing down of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The U.S. government has not yet commented on the report, but the American delegation to the UN stated that issues of terrorism were “beyond the scope” of the 1966 treaty — something that the UN denies, urging the U.S. to approach the findings in good faith.
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Karl Marx would love the popular moves among politicians in various state governments and the federal government to ban so-called "junk" food in schools, and to "put healthy food in" convenience stores and on the tables of those they define as poor. It's a very elitist and arrogant mindset that promotes this ideology, and it needs to be addressed.
Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
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Michael Hampton
Jul 31, 2006
In this same report, I read, these idiots go on about how Washington, D.C., doesn’t have any representation in Congress. It wasn’t supposed to: no one was supposed to actually be living in the District. But that’s a story for another day…
This is the same UN which thinks “human rights” means everyone has the “right” to an oppressive government which provides everyone a place to live, good health, high taxes, and indoctrination to convince everyone that this is somehow all good. And if you don’t like being forced at gunpoint to pay for providing all these “rights” to your neighbor, you have the “right” to be thrown in jail.
No thanks. I think I’d rather get the U.S. out of the UN and then throw them out of the country.
Dana
Aug 01, 2006
Yeah, well, they have their convention on the rights of the child, too. And while we have forced female circumcision, honor killings in which courts formally turn a blind eye, and signs threatening consequences if Afghanis don’t stop sending their girls to school in much of the world, it is England that gets in trouble for being in violation.
If we ever pass this thing (which we’ve already signed and already have had judges cite in rulings), we might as well give it up.
It isn’t about human rights for children, but about controlling how what is left of the free world raises its children.
Jeff
Sep 01, 2006
While the US is not perfect, why do they not criticize other countries as rabidly as they attack the US?
Are they hypocrites, jealous, socialist, whiners or all of the above?
Do they think they can get the US to do what they want moreso than other countries who are more quick to tell them what to do with their reports?
bezelt
Feb 20, 2007
“Speaker # 1″ seems to believe that the U.N. should follow the dictates of the U.S. It should not. The current Bush administration wants to play king and Mr. Bolton was his contribution to the United Nations.
Mr. Bush tried to drag the U.N. into Iraq. But that did not happen. If Mr. Bush had listened to others, he might have still been seen as a competent president – but not now.
While it may have been good judgment on the part of the U.N.s Iraq war strategy, I question its apparent silence on the continued humiliation of the Tasmanian people.
A British museum wants to mess with the bones of the Tasmanian dead – murdered by those wandering British settlers (including the criminals dumped from British prisons). They are messing with the bones not, of some ancient unknown civilization but known human beings who were murdered by gun toting settlers.
The U.S. under Bush doesn’t even pretend to care. All church denominations don’t seem to care. And the U.N., perhaps frightened out of its wits by Mr. Bush’s representative to the U.N.(Mr. Bolton)
doesn’t seem to have its “groove back”.