Human rights in the United States
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The human rights record of the United States of America has featured an avowed commitment to the protection of specific personal political, religious and other freedoms. It has sheltered many political and economic refugees in its history and has been a final destination of many immigrants from a multitude of locations around the world.
At the same time, the U.S., like nearly all Western countries, has also had a history of legally permitted slavery, and both de jure and de facto racial and ethnic–religious discrimination, and occasional violation of those freedoms, particularly in times of national security crises.
As with the most developed countries, the government and press attempt to engage in continual public review of alleged human rights abuses. Given that the modern concept of human rights developed primarily out of 20th century liberal Western thought, assessments of the United States human rights record often tend to measure its conformity to that political model.
Overview
The principles of legal egalitarianism underlying the United States Constitution, upon which the United States is founded, were and are tempered with a political pragmatism that has occasionally undercut the human rights ideals that the document espouses. The Constitution created what was, in 1787, a distinguished progressive democracy that guaranteed unprecedented social and economic rights for much of its citizenry. Yet at the same time, the very same founding document implicitly [link] sanctioned slavery, which was not completely abolished until 1865 after the American Civil War, and lynching of blacks was relatively common into the middle 1900s. Only in 1968 did the Supreme Court rule explicitly against racial segregation laws.This mixture of idealism and compromise has produced a paradoxical human rights record. The American system aims at a free society where life, liberty and a host of inalienable human rights are guaranteed by its Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Human rights in the United States of America are built on the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with natural human rights. Some confuse equal rights with equal authority and thus assume that those with less authority lack these rights which gives birth to the mistaken hypothesis that by "men" the Declaration of Independence meant, white males.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, equal suffrage, and property rights. Such affirmations of human rights are the product of nearly four centuries of struggle and social progress aiming for a fair and just society, with its beginnings in 1634 when the first colonies in Maryland were founded on the basis of religious tolerance. However, some Americans attempting to exercise these fundamental human rights have been persecuted at various times throughout the country's history.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
Most citizens tend to be optimistic about the United States Constitution and point out it is still a work in progress and changes to it are continuously under consideration as the needs of the society of the United States change. An example of this is how the status of human rights in the United States recently have come under scrutiny for the government's positions on capital punishment, 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, campaign finance in the United States preventing a "fair" election, details of the justice system minimum sentencing guidelines, coercion into plea bargains and inadequate public defenders. Such issues often come up because of different interpretations of what is constitutional by the various authorities. Some rights issues are portrayed as a political split, pitching the rights of one group against another. For example, Americans have the right to form trade unions but some states have passed laws to guarantee an individual's right to work, a right not guaranteed in states with Collective bargaining statutes, and which have made it difficult for unions to negotiate contracts. However, in the vast majority of states, at-will employment (an employee can be fired for any or no reason) is the norm and unions have very little power to fight this. Also, in the more conservative states (red states), generally in the Deep South and Midwest, union influence is limited in general. In regards to abortion, the right of women to terminate a pregnancy is generally contrasted with the rights of unborn children.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, pressure from the government for more surveillance of suspected terrorist cells activities has led to heightened criticism of the government's violation of suspected terrorists' privacy and of control measures that do not respect suspected terrorist prisoners' dignity. In the aftermath of those attacks, there have been signs from the federal government of the United States of a noticeable shift away from United States Constitution safeguards traditionally afforded American citizens, notably:
- Two Pakistani Americans allegedly affiliated with the Islamic militant group Harakat ul-Ansar were arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities and held and allegedly tortured in a Pakistani jail. The two allege that they were interrogated by men flashing FBI agent shields. [link]
- The detention without charge, for months on end, of United States citizens suspected of ties to insurgents in Iraq (for instance, for carrying washing machine timers in their car trunks). [link]. (The Associated Press reported on July 7 2005, that the United States was holding five Americans in Iraq.)[[Citing sources citation needed]]
- The arrest, without charge, of large numbers of Muslim men as "material witnesses" in cases related to Terrorist activities in the United States.[link].
Issues
Please note that whether many of these "issues" are human rights issues is up for debate.
Torture and abuse
Certain practices of the United States military, civilian agencies such as the CIA, and private contractors are widely criticized, with some practices allegedly amounting to torture. It should be noted that fierce debate regarding non-standard and enhanced interrogation techniques exists within the US civilian and military intelligence community, with no general consensus as to what practices under what conditions are acceptable. These practices include: extended forced maintenance of "stress positions" such as standing or squatting; psychological tricks and "mind games"; sensory deprivation; exposure to loud music and noises; extended exposure to flashing lights; prolonged solitary confinement; denigration of religion; withholding of food, drink, or medical care; withholding of hygienic care or toilet facilities; prolonged hooding; forced injections of unknown substances; sleep deprivation; magneto-cranial stimulation resulting in mental confusion; threats of bodily harm; threats of rendition to torture-friendly states or Guantánamo; threats of rape or sodomy; threats of harm to family members; threats of imminent execution; prolonged constraint in contorted positions (including strappado, or "Palestinian hanging"); facial smearing of real or simulated feces, urine, menstrual blood, or semen; sexual humiliation; beatings, often requiring surgery or resulting in permanent physical or mental disability; release or threat of release to attack dogs, both muzzled or un-muzzled; near-suffocation or asphyxiation via multiple detainment hoods, plastic bags, water-soaked towels or blankets, duct tape, or ligatures; gassing and chemical spraying resulting in unconsciousness; confinement in small chambers too small to fully stand or recline; prolonged underwater immersion just short of drowning (i.e. dunking); and extended exposure to extreme temperatures below freezing or above 120 °F (48 °C). These practices have resulted in a number of deaths. According to Human Rights First, as many as 46 detainees have been murdered or tortured to death in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. [link]Torture and abuse is strictly illegal and punishable within US territorial bounds. The legality of abuse occurring on foreign soil, outside of usual US territorial jurisdiction, is however somewhat murky. Accordingly, the United States Administration creates an ad-hoc category called unlawful combatants, that have no basis in U. S. or international law, to deprive such persons of protection under the Geneva Convention as prisoners of war, and are keep and interrogated them on foreign soil. Both United States citizens and foreign nationals are occasionally captured outside of the United States and transferred to secret US administered detention facilities, sometimes being held incommunicado for periods of months or years. Overseas detention facilities are known to be or to have been maintained at least in Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Cyprus, Cuba, Diego Garcia, and unspecified South Pacific island nation(s). In addition, individuals are suspected to be or to have been held in temporary or permanent US controlled facilities in Indonesia, El Salvador, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Israel, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Germany, and Scotland. There are also allegations that persons categorized as prisoners of war have been tortured, abused or humiliated; or otherwise have had their rights afforded by the Geneva Convention violated. In 2004 photos showing humiliation and abuse of prisoners leaked from Abu Ghraib prison, causing a political and media scandal in the US.
The detention camps at the US Naval base of Guantánamo Bay, hosting over 500 detainees, have gained notoriety in recent years. Some detainees have been held for up to four years without charge or trial. Detainees have included American citizens and children as young as 11 year old. Though often criticized for being denied due process, all detainees have received review before Combatant Status Review Tribunals subsequent to US Supreme Court rulings.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
Freedom of expression
- Main article: Freedom of speech in the United States
- Crimes involving sexual obscenity, solicitation, fraud, specific threats of violence, or disclosure of classified information
- Civil offenses involving defamation, fraud, or workplace harassment
- Federal Communications Commission rules governing the use of broadcast media
- Ordinances requiring mass demonstrations on public property to register in advance, and sometimes to use specific venues (see free speech zone)
In two high profile cases, grand juries have decided that Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller must reveal their sources in cases involving CIA leaks. Time magazine cooperated with authorities after exhausting its legal appeals, and Mr. Cooper eventually agreed to testify. Ms. Miller was jailed for 85 days before cooperating. U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that the First Amendment does not insulate Time magazine reporters from a requirement to testify before a criminal grand jury that's conducting the investigation into the possible illegal disclosure of classified information.
Other journalists who've been legally pressured to provide information to investigators include Tim Russert, who moderates NBC's "Meet the Press," Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, and syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak.
Several foreign journalists including British reporter Elena Lappin who arrived in the USA without an [I-visa] have been jailed and deported since the 2001 terrorists attacks. Citizens of many Western countries are exempt from a U.S. visa requirement intended mainly for tourists. However, they must declare that they are not representing the "foreign information media." This requirement is outside the norms of other democratic countries, and many journalists entering the USA were not aware of it. In 2005, the United States territory was ranked 44th in the annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.
Death penalty
The United States, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore are the only developed nations to use capital punishment in practice. This practice is controversial. Death penalty opponents regard the death penalty as inhumane and criticize it for its irreversibility and claim that it lacks a deterrent effect. Further, opponents often point to overrepresentation of blacks on death row as evidence of the unequal racial application of the death penalty (2003 [link]). It is the official policy of the European Union and of a number of non-EU nations to achieve global abolition of the death penalty. For this reason the EU is vocal in its criticism of the death penalty in the US and has submitted amicus curiae briefs in a number of important US court cases related to capital punishment. While criticism of the death penalty within the United States is strong among activist groups, public support varies regionally. The death penalty has been largely abolished in the Northeast, while the South and West continue to conduct executions. Texas overwhelmingly leads the United States in executions, with 359 executions from 1976 to 2006. The second-highest ranking state is Virginia, with 94. A 2002 Houston Chronicle poll of Texans found that when asked "Do you support the death penalty?" 69.1% responded that they did, 21.9% did not support and 9.1% were not sure or gave no answer.[[Citing sources citation needed]]A ruling on March 1, 2005 by the United States Supreme Court prohibits the execution of people who committed their crimes when they were under the age of 18. Between 1990 and 2005, Amnesty International recorded 19 executions in the United States for crime committed by a juvenile.
See also
National security exceptions
The United States government has on several occasions claimed exceptions to guaranteed rights on grounds of protecting national security. It typically invokes exceptions 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. The Federalist Party used these acts to harass supporters of the Democratic-Republican Party. Congress passed another broad sedition law during World War I. Its provisions were so strict that the government imprisoned one Hollywood director 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. Abraham Lincoln invoked this power in the American Civil War to imprison Maryland secessionists. In that case, the Supreme Court concluded that only Congress could suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the government released the detainees. During World War II, the United States interned thousands of Japanese-Americans 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.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
The Fourth Amendment of the United States 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.
National security, as well as other concerns like unemployment, has sometimes led the United States to toughen its generally liberal immigration policy. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 all but banned Chinese immigrants, who were accused of crowding out American workers. Today 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 United States 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 U.S.-Mexico border.
Prison
As of 2004 the United States had the highest percentage of people in prison of any nation. At a rate of incarceration of 726 inmates per 100,000, the United States has the highest reported rate in the world, well ahead of the Russian rate of 532 per 100,000. In 2004, more than 2.1 million Americans, or roughly 1 out of every 138, were in prisons or jails, a figure which represented one third of the world's prison population. To illustrate these figures, if the United States had the same rate of incarceration as Japan or China, only about 100,000 people would be in jail. [link]Because the legal system has imposed liability upon employers for negligence in hiring ex-convicts and in supervising them, many employers now make background checks a mandatory part of the hiring process. As a result, prisoners who are released often have difficulty finding jobs and often return to crime to support themselves.
According to Human Rights Watch, "black men [in 2000] were eight times more likely to be in prison than white men". [link] According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, approximately 40.2% of the prison population is black, while 32.1% of the population is Hispanic, [link] with several enquiries and critics commenting negatively on the use of racial profiling and the overrepresentation of minorities in American prisons.
Sexual abuse in United States 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.
The United States also has supermax prisons, where the most dangerous prisoners are kept in soundproofed solitary confinement for 23 hours a day with almost no human contact. They are often defended as appropriate for mass murderers, but there have been reports that some nonviolent prisoners have been sent to supermaxes.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
In many states, those convicted of felony offenses are banned from voting. These laws have a much greater effect on minorities, especially African Americans, as they are more likely to be convicted of felonies. In some United States cities, for example, half of all black men cannot vote, and in states such as Florida and Alabama, as many as a third of black men cannot vote. For this reason, the constitutionality of this practice is likely to be tested in the United States Supreme Court in due course. (see Count Every Vote Act)
Health and the family
In recent years several human rights issues regarding health and the family have been widely debated across the United States. The first is the question of whether a woman has a right to terminate a pregnancy or, as it is cast by opponents of abortion, whether the unborn child has a right to life. Although a Supreme Court decision (Roe v. Wade) established that most laws against abortion violate a constitutional right to privacy - it should be noted that this "right" appears nowhere in the Constitution - opponents of that decision have been pressing for the appointment of judges who might reverse that ruling.At the other end of life, are the questions of whether a terminally-ill person has the right to decide the time of death (euthanasia) and whether the families of patients who have permanently lost all brain activity can end medical care or stop feeding. Both questions have been hotly contested and families are sometimes forced to endure lengthy court battles.
While some countries such as Canada and Spain have recognized same-sex marriage, the issue remains hotly contested in the United States. There has recently been talk of defining marriage as one man and one woman by directly writing it into of the U.S. Constitution; which would rule out all homosexual marriages. As of 2005, same-sex marriage has official status only in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, though some states offer similar privileges to same-sex couples. (See Same-sex marriage in the United States).
Assessments of human rights organizations
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.
- The Guantánamo Bay detention camp has become a symbol of the United States administration’s refusal to put human rights and the rule of law at the heart of its response to the atrocities of 11 September 2001. It has become synonymous with the United States executive’s pursuit of unfettered power, and has become firmly associated with the systematic denial of human dignity and resort to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that has marked the USA’s detentions and interrogations in the "war on terror".[link]
See also
- Gay rights in the United States
- Censorship in the United States
- Civil rights
- Human rights
- United States and the International Criminal Court
- CIA torture flights
History
External links
- [U.S. Department of State- Human Rights]
- [United Nations- Universal Declaration of Human Rights]
- [United Nations- Human Rights]
- [UN investigator who exposed U.S. army abuse forced out of his job]
- [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, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China):
- ["Human Rights Record of the United States in 2000"]
- ["Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001"]
- ["Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003"]
- ["Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004"]
- [Human Rights Record of the U.S. in 2005]
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