Human rights at home

Published in the Connection to the Americas, November/December 2006

 

Torturing prisoners. Spying on political dissidents and religious minorities. Suspending constitutional protections. Infiltrating peace groups. Instituting a national identity card system. Restricting the rights of immigrants. Imprisoning more than two million people, making us number one in the world: the nation with the highest percentage of our population in prison.

 

Today, 230 years after colonial leaders rebelled against “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” the American Civil Liberties Union warns that Americans are suffering “serious setbacks in the protection of civil and political rights.” The descendants of the rebels who escaped the tyrannies of King George III have now virtually crowned King George II, and handed over our freedoms to his corrupt administration.

 

The Declaration of Independence was a powerful indictment listing specific violations of rights by King George III. The signers complained of a government “depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.” The 2006 Military Commissions Act gives King George II the same abusive powers, taking away the right of trial by jury for anyone accused of being an “unlawful enemy combatant.” That includes citizens as well as non-citizens, and anyone who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” The president determines who is covered by this law.

 

Habeas corpus protection was enshrined in common law even before the founding of the United States. The writ of habeas corpus is used to demand that a prisoner be brought before a judge and that the judge determine whether or not the person is legally detained. Under the Military Commissions Act, the prisoner has no right to habeas corpus, no right to a speedy trial, and no access to a court until after conviction.

 

In 1776, the colonists complained of King George III “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” King George II maintains a prison camp at Guantanamo, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Other prisoners are shipped to secret prison camps abroad or simply turned over to foreign governments for interrogation in a process called “extraordinary rendition.”

 

Torture

The U.S. Constitution, in the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, prohibits torture. International prohibitions on torture and cruel treatment abound, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Geneva Conventions.

 

King George II and his minions in Congress disagree. They insist on the government’s right to use “alternative interrogation methods.” These methods include waterboarding. Waterboarding involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet and then either submerging the head in water or pouring water over the head so the victim cannot breathe and believes that he or she is in imminent danger of drowning. When waterboarding was used in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, it was called the “ submarino.” In a 2005 Senate hearing, then-CIA director Porter Goss characterized waterboarding as a “professional interrogation technique.”

 

Other “alternative interrogation methods” approved under the reign of King George II include sleep deprivation, withholding of food, and prolonged detention at very cold temperatures. Murder and mutilation, however, are still forbidden. Although today “alternative interrogation methods” might be acceptable only for “unlawful enemy combatants” … or maybe for prisoners of war … or maybe for non-citizens, Once torture is approved for one kind of prisoner, no one is safe.

 

Patriot Act

Prisoners may be the most vulnerable to violations of human rights, but every person is at risk. The Patriot Act requires businesses (such as libraries and banks) to turn over information about individuals to the government, and prohibits them from telling anyone that the information has been turned over. “Sneak and peek” provisions allow secret searches of homes and businesses. Wiretaps and data mining routed through three “secret rooms” touch uncountable millions of people and transactions. And, even though the Patriot Act and its progeny made it much easier for the government to get warrants for searches or wiretaps, King George II insists that federal snoops have the right to conduct warrantless searches, without regard to the Fourth Amendment.

 

Illegal infiltration and spying tactics were used by the FBI, COINTELPRO and other intelligence agencies against civil rights organizations and the Black Panthers in the 1960s, against anti-war movements in the 1970s, against anti-intervention movements in the 1980s. Now they are back. (Or maybe they never really went away.) Today’s targets include everyone from Arab-American groups to student, anti-war, anti-globalization, animal rights and environmental activists.

 

Immigrants

During World War I, the U.S. government cracked down on anarchists, unionists, leftists – and immigrants. President Woodrow Wilson denounced “hyphenated Americans.” Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, with prison terms for anyone encouraging “disloyalty.” Some anarchists responded with bombs. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer organized a series of raids. The Palmer Raids collected data on all kinds of leftist organizations and also arrested at least 10,000 people. Immigrants were special targets for both arrest and mass deportations.

 

Today, prison construction is moving ahead in tandem with the other “anti-terrorist” and anti-immigrant measures. Early this year, a Halliburton subsidiary was awarded a $385 million contract to build detention centers to imprison “an unexpected influx of immigrants or to house people after a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” Not surprisingly, both immigrants and dissidents fear that they will become the inmates of the new prisons.

 

Today’s accelerated immigration enforcement includes raids and mass deportations across the country (see p. 15). Political rhetoric stigmatizes immigrants as criminal and disloyal, and characterizes border fences and increased enforcement as anti-terrorist measures.

 

Another law characterized as both an anti-terrorist and an immigration enforcement measure, the REAL ID Act, imposes stringent national standards for state drivers’ licenses. After May 2008, issuance of drivers’ licenses will require strictly-defined proofs of citizenship or immigration status and the licenses must include “a common machine-readable technology, with defined data elements.” Drivers’ licenses (or equivalent identification) will be required for entry into federal buildings and for airport security.

 

Solidarity and Resistance

Today the whole world is watching us, denouncing our government’s torture of prisoners, observing the erosion of our civil liberties and the due process of law. The revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib were only the beginning. Since then, Amnesty International has reported allegations of torture, ill-treatment and deaths of those held in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and elsewhere.

 

For years we have leaned on heroes in other places. We have been inspired by the courage of human rights defenders in Colombia and Central America. We have drawn strength from the persistence of campesinos in Brazil and from the determination of union organizers in Mexico.

 

Now it is our turn to stand up – our turn to resist human rights violations by our own government. The whole world is watching – let’s give them some heroes to watch.

 

Mary Turck is the editor of the Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG.