Rajpal's Column

11th October 1998

A resounding shot for the US

By Rajpal Abeynayake

The government of the United States , the government that prides itself being the "giver of freedom'' to the free world, was officially accused last week by Amnesty International, the Nobel prize winning human rights organization of gross abuse of human rights in the form of violent and regular abuse of the nation's prisoners.

Some American lawmakers were livid, as livid as many world leaders have been when they were accused by the US government of human rights violations in the past. But, this sudden solar plexus punch on the world human rights champions has to be both important and hilarious.

Important, because it gives a body blow to the credibility of the US government, which will henceforth not be able to hector other nations and other governments on human rights violations, when a credible organisation such as Amnesty International has made a formal documented case that the United States has been guilty of human rights abuse of its own citizens.

AI called on U.S. authorities to abolish the death penalty for juveniles, ban restraint devices such as stun belts, stop jailing asylum seekers and set up independent bodies to investigate allegations of police brutality.

In "Rights for All," a 153-page report released for the campaign launch, Amnesty said it saw a "persistent and widespread pattern of human rights violations, reported Reuters. "

"Across the country thousands of people are subjected to sustained and deliberate brutality at the hands of police officers. Cruel, degrading and sometimes life-threatening methods of restraint continue to be a feature of the U.S. criminal justice system," the report added.

"In U.S. prisons and jails, inmates are physically and sexually abused by other inmates and by guards... Sanctions against those responsible for these abuses are rare," it said.

A State Department official answered that the United States welcomed scrutiny by Amnesty but believed that its political and judicial systems were "the envy of the world."

The report said prison guards restrain the inmates with electric shock stun guns, leg irons, and pepper spray and restraint chairs. Some women prisoners have given birth in shackles, Reuters reported quoting the AI report. Amnesty International said it calculated that U.S. prisons for adults also hold at least 3,500 child convicts in violation of an international convention on civil rights.

The State Department officials reaction that he thinks "that the US judicial and Penal systems are the envy of the world,' is typical of jingoistic US estimation of itself in the world arena. What's pertinent is that the United States has been making accusations against violations of human rights in other countries with just such a mindset, and with just such a set of very hypocritical double standards.

These accusations against other countries have been made, most often with the threat of sanctions hanging over them. In other words, the US has made alleged human rights violations in other countries a tool of leverage to be used against these countries whenever it is convenient to the US. It is good that Amnesty has been instrumental in calling off this bluff , in quite a formidable way by issuing a strongly worded well documented case against the human rights abuses that take place in the US.

Incidentally, this shores up also, indubitably the credibility of Amnesty International as a human rights organisation. There was a time in history in which the credibility of AI itself was suspect to a certain degree at least, when wittingly or unwittingly, AI looked only at one side of a conflict and apportioned blame only on one of the protagonists. For example, in Sri Lanka, there were times when newspapers editorially condemned AI for not seeing LTTE atrocities in the same way that the organisation saw atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan government. But, since, AI has mended its ways, and is not hesitant about naming the LTTE when it blames the organisation for human rights violations committed in the North, and (via civilian bombings) in the South.

No international organisation or NGO is sacrosanct, and in this column for instance, the downside of NGO's and do gooders have been exposed when the need arose, and therefore, by extension, there is no expectation here that even AI be treated as a sacred cow. But, at a time when the AI record is shining, and at a time when it has established a reputation for being non-partisan in its assessment of human rights situations, it is heartening that AI has enhanced its credibility even further by making a critical forthright assessment of human rights violations in the United States.

"Human Rights violations in the US? What violations?'' The US had constructed its image as the premier human rights activist state to such a degree that any suggestion that the US violates human rights would have been met with an incredulous reaction in the past among the uninitiated. Amnesty with its report has succeeded in bursting this bubble, and should be lauded for its forthright stand, albeit a little belated.

What the AI report has done is to bring out in the open, in the respectable circle as it were, the fact that has always been known to the initiated and the non-gullible. This is that the US has not been the paragon of human rights, and that the US government therefore looks absurd when it sets itself up for championing the cause of human rights in other countries. But, it also gives rise to some searching questions which need be asked. Why does the international media, the international NGO network for instance insist on insulating the United States from any damage that could be done to its credibility, when it was always known that the US system contained such violations. For example, the Amnesty report speaks of violations of the human rights of women prisoners, who have been repeatedly raped by guards, and who were raped again if they complained. These types of violations almost have a Bosnian colouration to them, but in spite of the several revelations in many documented works by authors about the condition of US prisons, there has been no serious reck -oning that the US is a regular violator of human rights. Until now that is. The AI verdict therefore clearly sounds us out to the fact that what we already know cannot be ignored; that we cannot turn our eyes away from human rights violations in the US just because the US is the self - appointed champion…. US citizens have rights too, and we in the world have to be the watchdogs.

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