While championing the cause of human rights abroad, the United States (US) has been a perpetual violator of human rights at home. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the case of Native Americans and African-Americans. This paper will focus on the US role in developing the precedent of International Human Rights and elaborate on the latter groups struggle for human rights in the form of equality, dignity, and self-determination against the United States.
To begin to talk about the codification of rights in the American tradition, one good place to start is with the issuance of the Magna Carta Liberatum (The Great Charter of Freedoms) in 1215 by King John of England, usually referred to simply as the Magna Carta. It was in this document that the rights of the people and the limits of the King were clearly delineated. The Magna Carta was precipitated by a revolt undertaken by English noblemen in response to abuses by the King. They demanded that such a document be produced and it subsequently established that no one, including the King, is above the law. One of the most poignant and preserved ideals contained in the charter was the right to habeas corpus[1] and due process.
It was the Magna Carta that provided significant influence and inspiration to the American Colonists who asserted their independence in 1776. This bold act was made clear within the text of another document that has been heralded in American history, the Declaration of Independence. The document begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” The document went on to conclude that it was the responsibility of the government to protect those rights and that whenever the government became “destructive” towards those ends, it was the “duty” of the people to “alter” or to “abolish” it.
The result of the American Revolution was the establishment of a new country and the production of another highly revered document that remains the basis for American jurisprudence, the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution has been amended on few occasions since its ratification, but the first ten amendments, effective December 15, 1791, are known collectively as the ‘Bill of Rights’. Among these rights are the right to freedom of speech and religion, security against illegal search & seizure, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, and due process. Furthermore, the ninth amendment makes clear that, the “enumeration” of certain rights explicitly noted in the document does not “deny or disparage others [rights] retained by the people”.
The history of “human rights” as a recognized legal term in a contemporary context could be said to begin with the United Nations (UN) ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (UDHR) in 1948. This was a tumultuous period of American, and indeed World, history. The Great Depression and the Second World War had recently reached its end and it was in front of this back drop that Eleanor Roosevelt[2] chaired the UN Human Rights Commission which had the responsibility of enumerating these rights into a concrete framework.
The UDHR would proclaim that, “disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind” and further that, “it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”. Many of the rights contained within this document are mirrored in the US Constitution, however, some are not, such as the right to work, including “just and favorable remuneration” and the right to form and join unions (Article 23), protection from slavery (Article 4), “economic, social, and cultural” rights, a right to social services and necessities including food, clothing, shelter, and medical care (Article 25), and also a right to leisure (Article 24).
The UDHR is not a legally binding document, even for those countries that signed on to it, but it is a standard of ideals that the State Parties agree to “strive” to adhere to. However, since its inception, other international treaties have developed that put the ideals contained within the UDHR into more elaborate and practical detail, they will be discussed later. It is a given that a law is only as good as the mechanism to protect and enforce it and it is towards that end that judiciaries with international jurisdiction have been formulated. Currently, that body is the International Criminal Court (ICC)[3].
Another event with implications for development of international law was the Nuremburg Trials which were designed to prosecute the Nazis after Germany’s loss in World War II. This was done with the creation of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) by the London Agreement of August 8, 1945. The purpose of the IMT was to prosecute certain identified Nazis for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit the aforementioned crimes (Nurnburg Trials 2009). The result of the Nuremburg Trials laid the groundwork for and set the necessary precedent for not only the UDHR, but also the Geneva Convention[4], the Genocide Convention[5], the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity[6], and for permanent international courts, rather than ad-hoc tribunals.
As noted earlier, since the inception of the UDHR, several international conventions have been held and subsequent treaties produced. Collectively, some of them have been referred to as the ‘International Bill of Rights’. The United States has signed and ratified some of them (often with reservations) and they have refused to sign others. The refusals and the reservations are indicative of the United State’s true positions on the issues. In order to monitor compliance with the treaties, the United Nations established the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). That office subsequently established several committees to monitor each of what the OHCHR refers to as the “core international human rights treaties”.
Those treaties are as follows (in this paper, I will not elaborate on the status and implications of all of them):
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966
- International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 1966
- United Nations Covenant to End Racism and All Forms of Discrimination (CERD), 1965
- Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Woman (CEDAW), 1979
- Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane, or Degrading Treatment (CAT), 1984
- Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989
- International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICRMW), 1990
- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), 2006
The first treaty to be enacted was CERD in 1965. In the US, this was right in the middle of the turbulent 60s and just a year after the Freedom Summer in 1964 that featured the “Freedom Rides”[7]. During the 1960s, several prominent Black leaders were killed, such as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. respectively. Some leaders, like Marshall ‘Eddie’ Conway who was the Minister of Defense for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, were targeted and remain in prison up to this day.
Many groups rose up to challenge the racism of the status quo, but they were targeted by the US government and destroyed. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was labeled ‘public enemy #1’ by, then Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover. It was under Hoover’s leadership that the FBI initiated the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “disrupt, destroy, or neutralize” what they defined as “militant Black Nationalist groups”, as well as other groups, such as the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Puerto Rican independence movement, and the White Left. Interestingly enough, they even infiltrated White hate groups and incited them to commit racially motivated crimes; “During the 1960s, the FBI’s role was not to protect civil rights workers, but rather, through the use of informants, the Bureau actively assisted the Ku Klux Klan in their campaign of racist murder and terror”
CERD was ratified by the Unites States, but with several notable reservations, such as Article 2 which called for condemnation of racial discrimination and for immediate action to be taken against it; Article 3 which was explicit in its call against segregation and apartheid[8]; and Article 22 which called on states to refer their disputes in these matters to the International Court of Justice[9]. The practice of ratifying with reservations can be viewed as typical of the US. Moreover, the development of human rights ideals and the treaties that elaborate them were not considered by the US to be a process of guaranteeing human rights for its citizens. Rather, the US attempted to manipulate the process of the UN’s development from the very beginning.
“…the Chinese had proposed incorporating human rights, justice, and especially racial equality in the UN Charter. The Soviets immediately denounced the idea and refused to even consider it during the first phase of the conference. The British and the Americans were also vehemently opposed to the idea, but realized that they had to be more circumspect in their denunciation……although the United States would concede that human rights deserved some recognition, under no circumstances would America support an explicit reference to racial equality.”
Together with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights make up the “International Bill of Rights”. President Jimmy Carter signed both the ICESCR and the ICCPR on October 5, 1977. The US Senate has yet to ratify the ICESCR. However, the ICCPR was ratified 15 years after its signing in 1992, but with several reservations, understandings, and declarations. One of the declarations was “the United States declares that the provisions of Articles 1 through 27 [the entire document] of the Covenant are not self-executing”. This means that the Covenant does not automatically become a part of domestic law. The reservations of the Senate upon ratification included reservations against Articles 7, 20, 10, and 14.
Article 7 was a prohibition against torture, cruel, and inhumane or degrading treatment. Furthermore, it stated explicitly that “no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation”. In Harriett Washington’s book, Medical Apartheid, she documents the long history of medical experiments on Black Americans, including some done since the 1992 ratification of the treaty. One in particular was a study conducted in New York between the Department of Probation and Columbia University. The idea was to experiment on the younger siblings of juvenile offenders to determine if there was a genetic predisposition to violent behavior. “A 2004 study revealed that the fenfluramine experiments may have damaged more than these children’s physical and legal rights. A relatively low single dose of the drug has been implicated in brain damage in humans as well as animals.”
Another phenomenon that has manifested itself relevant to Article 7 is the use of “Control Units” within some prisons; also known as, Special Housing Units (SHU), Management Control Units (MCU), High Security Units (HSU) segregation and solitary, these new ‘prisons within prisons’ are simultaneously cruel/unusual and medical (psychological) experiments. Evidence of that is found in the origins of the control units. In 1961 the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons convened a meeting with leading social scientists and prison wardens. The keynote speaker was Dr. Edward Schein who explained his theories on brainwashing and how certain techniques could be used to modify behavior in inmates[10]. In just a decade control units that utilized his suggestions could be found all over the country.
Two of the most notorious prisons for their use of Schein’s methods are Marion Penitentiary in Illinois for men and Lexington Penitentiary in Kentucky for women. Attorney Jill Soffiyah Elijah writes of them “They are only let out of their cells for one hour [a day] to shower and take recreation on the tier…. The drinking water is contaminated and many of the inmates have developed unexplained tumors and illnesses. The cells at Marion consist of a stone bed and a toilet/wash bowl. No contact visits are allowed….” On Lexington she wrote that “Bright lights stayed on 24 hours a day, all walls were painted off-white, and no interaction with other inmates was ever allowed. Strip and cavity searches by males was commonplace. The physical health of each of these women deteriorated significantly…..”
The reservation of Article 20, which prohibited war propaganda and stated that “Any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law”, was based upon protecting the free speech rights of American citizens. In the field of human rights, the protection of free speech became a paramount objective in the eyes of the US from the beginning. This was a reaction to the reality of hypocrisy between US ideals and reality. Indeed, the State Department wanted the US to have a central role in the formulation of human rights, but the reality of racial discrimination, Jim Crow, and other inequalities made this a difficult task.
“The department therefore tried to stabilize America’s human rights house of cards with the cornerstone of democracy, the First Amendment. The Department’s logic was simple. Without free speech, the oppressed would never be able to bring grievances before the public, and there would be no hope of ever improving the situation. Thus, it was free speech that separated tyrannies like the Soviet Union from democracies like America.”
The reservations of Articles 10 and 14 deal with the treatment of juveniles as adults within the criminal justice system. The United States is the only country in the world that legally allows for the sentencing of juveniles to life and prison as well as executing people for crimes committed as juveniles. Of particular note is the reservation against Article 10, paragraph 3 which states “the penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation. Juvenile offenders should be segregated from adults and be accorded treatment appropriate to their age and legal status.” The question should be asked here, if the aim of imprisonment is not “reformation and rehabilitation” than what is it?
In the American tradition, the theory and history of “crime and punishment” is very unique. In fact, the development of the modern prison system during the 19th century reverberated around the world and changed the way prisoners are warehoused. According to Sasha Abramsky “prisons are such an integral part of state infrastructures around the world that it is hard to imagine what a revolutionary concept they originally were”
The last treaty that I want to elaborate on is the United Nations Covenant Against Torture other Cruel, Inhumane, or Degrading Treatment (CAT). The US Senate ratified it in 1994. In 2002 the UN General Assembly adopted an Optional Protocol to the treaty that would, as stated in Article 1 of the protocol, “The objective of the present Protocol is to establish a system of regular visits undertaken by independent international and national bodies to places where people are deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” There were no explicit reservations to the CAT, but upon ratification the Senate did state that “... nothing in this Convention requires or authorizes legislation, or other action, by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States."
The CAT defines torture in Article 1, paragraph 1 as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person”. By this definition, the United States would be in clear violation of the treaty for its use of the control units within prisons mentioned above. Other abominable prison conditions could also be cited as cruel and unusual. Article 10 demands that States Party to the treaty should ensure that law enforcement, military, medical personnel, and other public officials “involved in the custody, interrogation or treatment of any individual subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment” are educated fully about the contents of the CAT as part of their training. This is not done.
Articles 14 and 15 are designed to ensure that victims of torture receive redress and compensation and that any statements obtained under that kind of duress are not used against them. There is a recent case of former Black Panthers, known collectively in this instance as the San Francisco 8 (SF8), which exposes US disregard for those articles. Several of the plaintiffs in the SF8 case were arrested and tortured in 1971 as law enforcement ostensibly sought answers and retribution to an unsolved killing of a police officer in San Francisco. Eventually, they were acquitted of the charges, though no one was prosecuted or punished for the torture they endured, based upon the inadmissibility of their torture induced confessions. In 2005, with the money and resources made available through the new Department of Homeland Security, a new case with old charges (murder and conspiracy to commit murder) was opened against them. One by one, each of the defendants have had the charges against them dropped for lack of evidence, only one defendant remains and, to date, he has beaten the conspiracy charge. None of the SF8 ever received compensation or rehabilitation (Article 14), nor was a “prompt and impartial” investigation conducted into the police department as called for in Article 12.
This writing is partially premised on the idea that a cursory glance and, verily, an in depth study into the treatment of African-Americans by the United States in the context of human rights would reveal what many refer to now as “American Exceptionalism”. Michael Ignatieff, in an anthology entitled American Exceptionalism and Human Rights defined it this way:
“American exceptionalism has at least three elements. First, the United States signs on to international human rights and humanitarian conventions and treaties and then exempts itself from their provisions by explicit reservation, non ratification, or non compliance. Second, the United States maintains double standards….. Third, the United States denies jurisdiction to international law within its own domestic law…”
Some African-American groups took the budding of international human rights law as an opportunity to bring their collective struggle to the world stage in search of redress based upon the nature of the discussions taking place. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead and went to the State Department and the world to address their concerns. However, the NAACP gave up that struggle in favor of the less meaningful struggle for civil and political rights. One of the reasons for that was the anti-communist climate of the times. Talk of the values of economic and social rights could easily be misrepresented as communist talk and the organization could then be put at the mercy of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)[11]. Another reason was government infiltration and arguably lack of fortitude to carry out such a controversial issue.
In the United States, many of the “rights” and protections enjoyed by minority groups were made possible as a result of struggles waged by African-Americans. On the world stage, America often, for better and for worse, sets the standard by way of example for international action, with respect to economics, politics, and military engagement. Just as America has been forced to adhere (ever so slowly) to the ideas memorialized in the Constitution, similarly, it must be forced to adhere to the human rights that Eleanor Roosevelt led the way in formulating.
However, in this instance, the US will not have as much latitude to hypocritically conform to International Law as it has had to domestic law. Not only because of the inherent outside accountability that the world stage creates, but also because of the narrowing of US power and influence globally. The US cannot keep up this schizophrenic relationship with the world and it’s “reluctant participation places it in a highly paradoxical relation to an emerging international legal order based on human rights principles…..America has promoted human rights norms around the world, while also resisting the idea that these norms apply to American citizens” (Ignatieff 2001). Surely, the plight of African-Americans for the protection, recognition, and respect of their human rights within the bowels of America will undoubtedly reverberate around the world and create a new climate of adherence to International Law and norms.
[1] (Latin, "you have the body") Prisoners often seek release by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences. (Habeas Corpus 2009)
[2] Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933-1945
[3] The International Criminal Court is a permanent international tribunal that will try individuals responsible for the most serious international crimes. One hundred and sixty countries attended a U.N.-sponsored conference in Rome in 1998 to draft a treaty for the establishment of the ICC. After five weeks of intense negotiations, 120 countries voted to adopt the treaty. Only seven countries voted against it (including China, Libya, Iraq, and the United States) and 21 abstained. Before the court can be set up, 60 countries need to ratify the treaty. 139 states signed the treaty by the 31 December 2000 deadline. The treaty entered into force on July 1, 2002. As of July 18, 2008, 108 states have ratified it. The ICC will prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, all defined in the court's treaty. The ICC will help ensure that these serious crimes, which have long been recognized by the international community, no longer go unpunished because of the unwillingness or inability of individual countries to prosecute them. (Questions and Answers about the ICC 2009)
[4] The Geneva Conventions which were adopted before 1949 were concerned with combatants only, not with civilians. Some provisions concerning the protection of populations against the consequences of war and their protection in occupied territories are contained in the Regulations concerning the laws and customs of war on land, annexed to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. During World War I the Hague provisions proved to be insufficient in view of the dangers originating from air warfare and of the problems relating to the treatment of civilians in enemy territory and in occupied territories. The International Conferences of the Red Cross of the 1920's took the first steps towards laying down supplementary rules for the protection of civilians in time of war. The 1929 Diplomatic Conference, which revised the Geneva Convention on wounded and sick and drew up the Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, limited itself to recommending that "studies should be made with a view to concluding a convention on the protection of
civilians in enemy territory and in enemy occupied territory." A draft convention containing forty articles prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross was approved by the International Conference of the Red Cross in Tokyo in 1934 and is generally referred to as the "Tokyo Draft". It was to be submitted to a diplomatic conference planned for 1940, but this was postponed on account of the war. The events of World War II showed the disastrous consequences of the absence of a convention for the protection of civilians in wartime. The Convention adopted in 1949 takes account of the experiences of World War II. It contains a rather short part concerning the general protection of populations against certain consequences of war (Part II), leaving aside the problem of the limitation of the use of weapons. The great bulk of the Convention (Part III - Articles 27-141) puts forth the regulations governing the status and treatment of protected persons; these provisions distinguish between the situation of foreigners on the territory of one of the parties to the conflict and that of civilians in occupied territory. The Convention does not invalidate the provisions of the Hague Regulations of 1907 on the same subjects but is supplementary to them (see Article 154 of the Convention). (International Humanitarian Law - Treaties and Documents 2009)
[5] The Convention on Genocide was among the first United Nations conventions addressing humanitarian issues. It was adopted in 1948 in response to the atrocities committed during World War II and followed G.A. Res. 180(II) of 21 December 1947 in which the UN recognised that "genocide is an international crime, which entails the national and international responsibility of individual persons and states." The Convention has since then been widely accepted by the international community and ratified by the overwhelmingly majority of States. Furthermore, in Article 2, it describes Genocide thusly:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
(International Humanitarian Law - Treaties and Documents 2009)
[6] The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by United Nations General Assembly resolution 2391 (XXIII) of 26 November 1968. Pursuant to the provisions of its Article VIII (90 days following the deposit of the tenth ratification), it came into force on 11 November 1970. The Convention provides that no signatory state may apply statutory limitations to war crimes as they are defined in the Charter of the Nürnberg International Military Tribunal of 8 August 1945 or to crimes against humanity, whether committed in time of war or in time of peace, as defined in the Charter of the Nürnberg International Military Tribunal, eviction by armed attack or occupation, inhuman acts resulting from the policy of apartheid, and the crime of genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. As of July 2007, 51 UN member states were parties to the Convention. (Wikipedia 2009)
[7] The Freedom Rides were engineered by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Council On Racial Equality (CORE), along with a less influential coalition of other groups including the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which were represented under the banner of COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations. The objective of the Freedom Rides was to encourage voter registration and participation and to establish ‘Freedom Schools’. The targeted area for both prongs of the initiative was Mississippi. The organizers had identified the state as one that most other organizations had shied away from due to the intense overt racism and the threat of violent backlash by the White inhabitants of the area. (Rachal 1999)
[8] the United States does not accept any obligation under this Convention to enact legislation or take other measures under paragraph (1) of article 2, subparagraphs (1) (c) and (d) of article 2, article 3 and article 5 with respect to private conduct except as mandated by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
[9] That with reference to article 22 of the Convention, before any dispute to which the United States is a party may be submitted to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under this article, the specific consent of the United States is required in each case.
[10] 1. Physically remove the prisoner to an area sufficiently isolated in order to break or seriously weaken close ties. 2. Segregate all natural leaders. 3. Prohibit group activities that do not fit brainwashing objectives. 4. Systematic withholding of mail. 5. Create a feeling amongst the isolated group of prisoners that they have been abandoned by and totally isolated from the community. 6. Undermine all emotional supports. 7. Preclude access to literature which does not aid in the brainwashing process.
[11] House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a committee (1938–75) of the U.S. House of Representatives, created to investigate disloyalty and subversive organizations. Its first chairman, Martin Dies, set the pattern for its anti-Communist investigations. The committee's methods included pressure on witnesses to name former associates, vague and sweeping accusations against individuals, and the assumption of an individual's guilt because of association with a suspect organization. Witnesses who refused to answer were cited for contempt of Congress.
Works Cited
Abramsky, Sasha. American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007.
Anderson, Carol. Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Elijah, Jill Soffiya. "Conditions of Confinement: Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Black Political Prisoners." The NOBO [Network of Black Organizers] Journal of African-American Dialogue, 1995: 137-148.
"Habeas Corpus." Lectric Law Library. 2009. http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm (accessed November 18, 2009).
Ignatieff, Michael. Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Ignatieff, Michael. "Introduction: American Exceptionalism and Human Rights." In American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, by Michael Ignatieff (editor), 1-26. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
International Humanitarian Law - Treaties and Documents. 2009. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/380?OpenDocument (accessed November 18, 2009).
"International Humanitarian Law - Treaties and Documents." International Committee of the Red Cross. 2009. http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/INTRO/357?OpenDocument (accessed November 18, 2009).
"Nurnburg Trials." Encyclopedia Brittanica Online. 2009. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/422668/Nurnberg-trials (accessed November 16, 2009).
"Questions and Answers about the ICC." Human Rights Watch. 2009. http://www.hrw.org/legacy/campaigns/icc/qna.htm (accessed November 18, 2009).
Rachal, John R. ""The Long, Hot Summer": The Mississippi Response to Freedom Summer." The Journal of Negro History, 1999: 315-339.
Washington, Harriett A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Anchor Books, 2006.
Wikipedia. 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Non-Applicability_of_Statutory_Limitations_to_War_Crimes_and_Crimes_Against_Humanity (accessed November 18, 2009).
Wolf, Paul. "COINTELPRO: The Untold Story." Report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights at the World Conference Against Racism, 2001.
[1] (Latin, "you have the body") Prisoners often seek release by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences. (Habeas Corpus 2009)
[2] Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933-1945
[3] The International Criminal Court is a permanent international tribunal that will try individuals responsible for the most serious international crimes. One hundred and sixty countries attended a U.N.-sponsored conference in Rome in 1998 to draft a treaty for the establishment of the ICC. After five weeks of intense negotiations, 120 countries voted to adopt the treaty. Only seven countries voted against it (including China, Libya, Iraq, and the United States) and 21 abstained. Before the court can be set up, 60 countries need to ratify the treaty. 139 states signed the treaty by the 31 December 2000 deadline. The treaty entered into force on July 1, 2002. As of July 18, 2008, 108 states have ratified it. The ICC will prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, all defined in the court's treaty. The ICC will help ensure that these serious crimes, which have long been recognized by the international community, no longer go unpunished because of the unwillingness or inability of individual countries to prosecute them. (Questions and Answers about the ICC 2009)
[4] The Geneva Conventions which were adopted before 1949 were concerned with combatants only, not with civilians. Some provisions concerning the protection of populations against the consequences of war and their protection in occupied territories are contained in the Regulations concerning the laws and customs of war on land, annexed to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. During World War I the Hague provisions proved to be insufficient in view of the dangers originating from air warfare and of the problems relating to the treatment of civilians in enemy territory and in occupied territories. The International Conferences of the Red Cross of the 1920's took the first steps towards laying down supplementary rules for the protection of civilians in time of war. The 1929 Diplomatic Conference, which revised the Geneva Convention on wounded and sick and drew up the Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, limited itself to recommending that "studies should be made with a view to concluding a convention on the protection of
civilians in enemy territory and in enemy occupied territory." A draft convention containing forty articles prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross was approved by the International Conference of the Red Cross in Tokyo in 1934 and is generally referred to as the "Tokyo Draft". It was to be submitted to a diplomatic conference planned for 1940, but this was postponed on account of the war. The events of World War II showed the disastrous consequences of the absence of a convention for the protection of civilians in wartime. The Convention adopted in 1949 takes account of the experiences of World War II. It contains a rather short part concerning the general protection of populations against certain consequences of war (Part II), leaving aside the problem of the limitation of the use of weapons. The great bulk of the Convention (Part III - Articles 27-141) puts forth the regulations governing the status and treatment of protected persons; these provisions distinguish between the situation of foreigners on the territory of one of the parties to the conflict and that of civilians in occupied territory. The Convention does not invalidate the provisions of the Hague Regulations of 1907 on the same subjects but is supplementary to them (see Article 154 of the Convention). (International Humanitarian Law - Treaties and Documents 2009)
[5] The Convention on Genocide was among the first United Nations conventions addressing humanitarian issues. It was adopted in 1948 in response to the atrocities committed during World War II and followed G.A. Res. 180(II) of 21 December 1947 in which the UN recognised that "genocide is an international crime, which entails the national and international responsibility of individual persons and states." The Convention has since then been widely accepted by the international community and ratified by the overwhelmingly majority of States. Furthermore, in Article 2, it describes Genocide thusly:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
(International Humanitarian Law - Treaties and Documents 2009)
[6] The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by United Nations General Assembly resolution 2391 (XXIII) of 26 November 1968. Pursuant to the provisions of its Article VIII (90 days following the deposit of the tenth ratification), it came into force on 11 November 1970. The Convention provides that no signatory state may apply statutory limitations to war crimes as they are defined in the Charter of the Nürnberg International Military Tribunal of 8 August 1945 or to crimes against humanity, whether committed in time of war or in time of peace, as defined in the Charter of the Nürnberg International Military Tribunal, eviction by armed attack or occupation, inhuman acts resulting from the policy of apartheid, and the crime of genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. As of July 2007, 51 UN member states were parties to the Convention. (Wikipedia 2009)
[7] The Freedom Rides were engineered by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Council On Racial Equality (CORE), along with a less influential coalition of other groups including the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which were represented under the banner of COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations. The objective of the Freedom Rides was to encourage voter registration and participation and to establish ‘Freedom Schools’. The targeted area for both prongs of the initiative was Mississippi. The organizers had identified the state as one that most other organizations had shied away from due to the intense overt racism and the threat of violent backlash by the White inhabitants of the area. (Rachal 1999)
[8] the United States does not accept any obligation under this Convention to enact legislation or take other measures under paragraph (1) of article 2, subparagraphs (1) (c) and (d) of article 2, article 3 and article 5 with respect to private conduct except as mandated by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
[9] That with reference to article 22 of the Convention, before any dispute to which the United States is a party may be submitted to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under this article, the specific consent of the United States is required in each case.
[10] 1. Physically remove the prisoner to an area sufficiently isolated in order to break or seriously weaken close ties. 2. Segregate all natural leaders. 3. Prohibit group activities that do not fit brainwashing objectives. 4. Systematic withholding of mail. 5. Create a feeling amongst the isolated group of prisoners that they have been abandoned by and totally isolated from the community. 6. Undermine all emotional supports. 7. Preclude access to literature which does not aid in the brainwashing process.
[11] House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a committee (1938–75) of the U.S. House of Representatives, created to investigate disloyalty and subversive organizations. Its first chairman, Martin Dies, set the pattern for its anti-Communist investigations. The committee's methods included pressure on witnesses to name former associates, vague and sweeping accusations against individuals, and the assumption of an individual's guilt because of association with a suspect organization. Witnesses who refused to answer were cited for contempt of Congress.
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