RIGHTS: Amnesty International Condemns US Abuses

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 9 2000 (IPS) - The human rights organisation Amnesty International asked the United Nations (UN) Committee against Torture on Tuesday to condemn the United States for the continued increase in institutionalised cruelty there.

Amnesty presented the committee with a 45-page document outlining the numerous cases of torture and mistreatment of men, women and children in custody in the United States.

According to the human rights group, the United States’ “increasingly punitive approach towards offenders has continued to lead to practices which facilitate torture or other forms of ill-treatment prohibited under international law.”

The committee, a specialised agency of the UN, will begin Wednesday to study the United States’ first report on its compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment since Washington ratified the agreement in October 1994.

In its charges against the United States, Amnesty mentions increased police brutality and unjustified use of firearms, physical abuse in prisons and the cruel use of restraints, pepper spray and electric shocks.

Amnesty also emphasises the growing number of prisoners subjected to long-term isolation in “super-maximum security” units.

Women prisoners suffer mistreatment, including sexual abuse by male prison guards, children are incarcerated and subjected to excessive punishment, and asylum-seekers are detained and held under cruel and degrading conditions, according to Amnesty.

The international human rights organisation also decries the increased application of the death penalty in the United States, the execution of minors who are convicted as adults, and the cruel conditions that predominate on the “Death Rows” of the country’s prisons.

The London-based Amnesty charges that racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately the victims of police brutality and unjustified use of force.

The US report of its human rights record is to be presented Wednesday by the president of the Committee Against Torture, Canada’s Peter Thomas Burns.

Washington maintains that torture does not occur in the United States except under highly unusual circumstances and never as a government policy.

But, says a US report released last year, no government can ensure that it has a perfect record in each of the areas covered by the Convention against Torture: “Abuses occur despite the best precautions and strictest prohibitions.”

Amnesty criticised the Washington report, particularly where it recognises the existence of abuse committed by police and prison guards, yet continues to assert that it promotes adherence to the Convention through strict orientation and implementation policies.

The human rights group says the US government is a long way from promoting international human rights laws in certain areas.

“The US government, which so often labels itself as champion of human rights, must take serious steps to ensure that international standards are respected throughout the country,” said Amnesty.

The UN Committee against Torture is comprised of 10 experts who act as independents, but are designated by the committee’s member countries – who do so with an eye to maintaining an equitable geographical distribution in the committee’s composition.

The Convention against Torture stipulates that these experts must have great moral integrity and recognised competence in human rights issues.

The UN Committee against Torture, which is meeting in Geneva through May 19, will announce its conclusions and recommendations in the US case next Monday.