Human rights in the United States
The United States has had a chequered history of civil rights. Its founding document, the United States Constitution and in particular the Bill of Rights, provided for certain guaranteed rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to trial, right to a jury, right against self-incrimination, right against unwarranted search and seizure, and the banning of cruel and unusual punishment. However, those rights only applied to white citizens. The same document permitted slavery and provided that negroes were to be counted as three-fifths of a white man in censuses. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed in 1857 in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford that under the constitution no Negro, free or enslaved, could ever become a citizen on the United States. This was later reversed by constitutional amendment, but only after a divisive civil war which saw the pro-slavery Southern states briefly secede from the Union.
Critics point to what they see as hypocrisy in both the domestic and the foreign policies of the United States government. Indeed, the American South, like South Africa, actively promoted apartheid legislation as recently as the 1960s.
The United States continues to lead the world in executing juvenile offenders: since 1990 Amnesty International has recorded 38 executions of child offenders – 19 of them in the USA. Along with Somalia, the United States is one of the two sovereign states in the world not to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits use of the death penalty against child offenders. [1],The United States also contradicts standard Western norms in allowing juries of largely self-selected Americans decide sentences rather than impartial judges, and continues to support legislation that deliberately seeks to disenfranchise large portions of the black population.
Other areas where the United States has been found failing include: police brutality, the "War on Drugs", and sexual morality. Finer points which are sometimes debated are a perceived media concentration that might drown out voices of dissent, and the details of the justice system (minimum sentencing laws, coercion into plea bargains, inadequate public defenders, etc.).
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, pressure from the government of the United States for more surveillance of the general population has led to heightened criticism of the government's violation of citizens' privacy and of control measures that do not respect prisoner dignity.
Issues
Death penalty
The use of the death penalty is controversial both in the United States and outside it. Although blacks form only 13% of the total American population [2], 42% of those on death row are black (2003 statistics [3]). Also, it has been shown that erroneous convictions have led to many executions and incarcerations of innocent people, which by their nature are irreversible. [dubious – discuss]
Recently the governor of Illinois placed a moratorium on all executions due to these concerns.
Prison
The US has one of the highest percentages of people in prison of any modern nation—as of 2004, the second-highest in the world. [4] Roughly 2 million, or roughly 2 out of every 300, Americans are in jail at any moment. Prisoners who are released often have difficulty finding jobs and, for felony offenses, may be banned from voting.
Racial minorities, notably Blacks and Hispanics, are overrepresented in the US's prison population. According to Human Rights Watch, "black men [in 2000] were eight times more likely to be in prison than white men". [5] However, others note that these groups commit crimes at a far higher rate than white Americans.
Sexual abuse in US prisons is believed by many to be widespread. It has been fought against by organizations such as Stop Prisoner Rape, some of whom allege that some wardens use sexual abuse as a control tool in the prisons.
"National security" exceptions
The US government has on several occasions claimed exceptions to guaranteed rights on grounds of protecting national security. These exceptions are often invoked in wartime or during international conflicts short of war (such as the Cold War). In some instances the federal courts have allowed these exceptions, while in others the courts have decided that the national security interest was insufficient.
Sedition laws have sometimes placed restrictions on freedom of expression. The Alien and Sedition Acts, passed by president John Adams during an undeclared naval conflict with France, allowed the government to punish "false" statements about the government and to deport "dangerous" immigrants. They were used by the Federalist Party to harass supporters of the Democratic-Republican Party. Another broad sedition law was passed during World War I by Woodrow Wilson. Its provisions were so strict that one Hollywood director was imprisoned for making a film about the American Revolution because it depicted the British unfavorably. These laws lapsed or became inactive at the end of the conflict.
Presidents have claimed the power to imprison summarily, under military jurisdiction, those suspected of being combatants for states or groups at war against the United States. This power was invoked by Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War to imprison Maryland secessionists. In that case, the Supreme Court protested that only Congress could suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the detainees were released. During World War II, thousands of Japanese-Americans were interned on fears that Japan might use them as saboteurs. In the recent campaign against terrorist groups, the government has detained suspected al Qaeda affiliates like Yaser Esam Hamdi, who also had his citizenship revoked.
The Fourth Amendment of the constitution forbids unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant, but some administrations have claimed exceptions to this rule to investigate alleged conspiracies against the government. During the Cold War, the FBI established COINTELPRO to infiltrate and disrupt left-wing organizations, including those that supported the rights of black Americans. More recently the USA PATRIOT Act has been attacked as eroding Fourth Amendment protections.
The U.S. is unusually liberal in accepting immigrants and visitors. However, foreign nationals can be detained or deported for minor infractions, although deportation is uncommon. The government is sometimes accused of skirting the required legal procedures. Tracking of immigrants has also increased as part of the anti-terrorism campaign, so that foreigners arriving by air are now subject to mandatory fingerprinting and photography. Since 2002, male adults from any of two dozen countries, most of them Muslim, have been subject to Special Registration. The U.S. is sometimes criticized for the effects of its border control efforts; for instance, between 1998 and 2004, 1,954 persons are officially reported to have died along the United States Mexico barrier.
Amnesty International assessment of the human rights record of the United States
Amnesty International states for the year 2000:
- Police brutality, disputed shootings and ill-treatment in prisons and jails were reported. In May the U.N. Committee against Torture considered the initial report of the USA on implementation of the U.N. Convention against Torture. Eighty-five prisoners were executed in 14 states bringing to 683 the total number of people executed since 1976. Those executed included individuals who were children under 18 at the time of their crimes, and the mentally impaired.
Many people disagree with the UN and Amnesty International assessment. Some of the reasons given by those who disagree with various aspects: they do not consider execution to be torture (especially since it is usually administered via lethal injection), they do not accept low intelligence quotient as an excuse for capital crimes, and they feel that some older teenagers should be tried as adults due to the nature of the offense, though it should be noted that no other government in the world takes this view. Not all US citizens who support execution share all of these views.
China's assessment of the human rights record of the United States
Since 2001 (with the exception of the year 2003), the People's Republic of China has been publishing reports on the annual human rights record in the United States of America, as its response to the criticisms from the United States on China's human rights issues. These reports, entitled "Human Rights Record of the United States", and published by the Information Office of the State Council, are scathing attacks on the state of human rights in the United States and have been published subsequently to the "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" for China by the United States Department of State, which all reports cite in the first paragraph.
The 2002 documents attempt to blunt U.S. criticism of the PRC by pointing out both perceived violations of rights and social problems such as crime and poverty. The reports do not significantly criticize the United States for violating freedom of speech or freedom of the press. They do charge that the United States political system is undemocratic (citing the 2000 US presidential election as an example), that the justice system is racially biased and excessive, that workers have little protection against corporate abuse, and that the US "sabotage the world's peace and stability" through international military actions. They further detail the economic and social situation of the US and describe it as a human rights violation, thereby using an expanded definition of human rights.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003, published on March 1, 2004, again criticises the human rights record of the United States from six aspects: personal freedom and safety, political rights, labour conditions, racial discrimination, conditions of women, children and the elderly and US' infringement upon human rights in other countries. The report claims that the USA PATRIOT Act has "encroached upon rights and freedom of citizens, especially the people of ethnic minorities". It also argues that the freedom of press has been neglected, citing examples like the firing of Peter Arnett and limited access to al-Jazeera television broadcasts. The report put an emphasis on the U.S. military actions abroad, including the unauthorised War on Iraq in March 2003. The detention without trial of over 3,000 Taliban and Al-Qaeda suspects is cited as another example of the United States' infringement upon human rights of non-US citizens. The report concludes, as usual, that the United States should "reflect on its erroneous position and behavior on human rights, and stop its unpopular interference with other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of promoting human rights. "
Critics of China's "report" say it contains nothing of substance but disconnected allegations intended to divert attention from China's own troubling record.
See also: Human rights in China
External links
- Current US-related reports from Amnesty International
- China section of "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices -- 2001" (United States Department of State)
- China's report on U.S. human rights records (all from People's Daily):
- Human Rights Watch: [6]