U.S.-POLITCS: African Americans Seek World Focus on Human Rights

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 1996 (IPS) - The United Nations should take up a decades-old call to focus on the human rights of African and Latino Americans, argue a group of black leaders who are planning a demonstration here this week.

“We believe the United Nations and its various committees should receive our petition, our plea for justice and human rights,” argued the Rev. Ben Chavis, former director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).

The U.S. record on human rights, he added, “leaves a lot to be desired.”

U.S. black leaders have tried to bring the problems of the country’s now 30 million African Americans to the attention of the United Nations since the 1950s, when the noted actor and athlete Paul Robeson and his colleague William Patterson petitioned the world body about segregation and other human rights violations.

Activists from Malcolm X in the 1960s to Chavis himself a decade ago have brought similar petitions, accusing the United States of detaining black political prisoners and allowing alleged police brutality in black communities to go unpunished.

Chavis is now organising a demonstration, to be led by Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (NOI), that will take place outside the United Nations on Wednesday. The event, a ‘Global Day of Atonement’, is intended to put a spotlight on human rights abuses by governments around the world, Chavis said at a press conference Tuesday.

The United States, he added, will not be exempt. “There are human rights violations in the United States … (and) there are still political prisoners in the United States,” Chavis said.

Referring to the acquittal last week in New York of a white police officer who had been accused of the murdering a Puerto Rican youth last December, Chavis charged, “That is terrorism.”

The human rights group Amnesty International, in a report released in June, detailed more than 90 cases of alleged use of excessive force by New York police over the past two decades. “The evidence suggests that the large majority of the victims of police abuses are racial minorities, particularly African Americans and people of Latin American and Asian descent,” the report noted.

The U.N. demonstration comes exactly one year after hundreds of thousand African American men marched on Washington in what the NOI dubbed the ‘Million Man March’. Following the success of the march in drawing attention to black concerns — and enhancing Farrakhan’s own stature as a black leader — NOI and its allies intend to take their concerns to a global stage.

“We’ve developed, for the first time in African American history, a stance on international affairs,” said the Rev. Anthony Sampson, a Methodist minister in Chicago.

The impetus for the black leaders’ new international interests comes partly from a controversial world ‘Friendship Tour’ — to such countries as Nigeria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq — by Farrakhan, Chavis, Sampson and other black activists.

But it is also fueled by concerns about the increasing number of black youths serving in the U.S. armed Forces, according to Sampson, who warned, “Soon, it will be African American kids shooting people in Africa.”

Chavis added that Washington’s policies toward the United Nations also must be improved. In particular, he objected to the U.S. failure to pay some 1.5 billion dollars in U.N. dues and to statements by President Bill Clinton’s administration that it may use its Security Council veto to block the renewal of Secretary- General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian.

“The United States should not be putting pressure on Boutros- Ghali to leave the United Nations,” Chavis said. He added, “We don’t want big superpowers pushing their way around” in international organisations.

Despite the visibility conferred by the Million Man March, the NOI has been criticised for its international stance, especially following Farrakhan’s Friendship Tour.

During the trip, the NOI leader defended Sudan’s Islamist regime of charges, made by many human rights groups, that it has allowed slavery to continue, and he praised Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha. He also visited most nations under U.S. sanctions, including Libya, Cuba, Iran and Iraq.

“Personally, I believe that what he has done and said is just completely outrageous,” U.S. Vice President Al Gore said this week on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ television show. He added the U.S. government is investigating whether Farrakhan has done anything illegal, following charges that Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi offered the NOI millions of dollars.

Farrakhan countered, in an interview with CNN, that “history will record that this was one of the greatest trips ever taken by an African American on behalf of justice and peace.”

But many black activists have also been bewildered by Farrakhan’s support for African dictators. “You can make the visits and be tough on the regimes,” said one activist, “but some of the comments made by Minister Farrakhan have been disturbing… implying support (for the leaders).”

Mwiza Munthali, a spokesman for the Washington-based foreign policy group TransAfrica, added that comments by Farrakhan in support of Gen. Omar al-Bashir’s government in Sudan did not reflect Khartoum’s own poor human rights record, including allegations of slavery.

“We have got some credible reports, from highly respected human rights groups and some Sudanese, that this practise goes on,” Munthali said of the alleged enslavement of prisoners of war in Sudan’s ongoing civil war. “This regime, with or without slavery, is an undemocratic regime, which is destroying the biggest country, in terms of geography, in Africa.”

Still, Farrakhan has proven with last year’s march that he is one of the few black leaders capable of mobilising African Americans.

Chavis says that the NOI leader and his supporters intend to take a more direct role influencing U.S. politics by enrolling thousands more black voters and ensuring that the black vote in U.S. elections is not taken for granted.

Although U.S. politicians remain largely wary of Farrakhan, other leaders seem to be interested in his growing influence. According to Farrakhan, Qaddafi and Cuban President Fidel Castro issued messages in support for the Day of Atonement, while Winnie Mandela intends to attend the Wednesday demonstration.