The reports from Haiti are more tragic everyday. The loss, the devastation, the aftershock, the grief and the suffering. Today, there are reports of losses to the women’s human rights movement- Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan are Haitian women’s human rights defenders who were victims of the earthquake. This tragic loss will be mourned throughout the global women’s rights community but the impact will be felt deeply as Haiti rebuilds.
Women’s rights and gender equality must be promoted during the humanitarian relief process but also during the rebuilding process. On the Dianne Rehm show yesterday, academics and relief organizations spoke about the importance of recognizing the risk of gender based violence in refugee camps and the threat of violence against displaced women.
Amnesty recently reported on sexual violence against school girls in Haiti. The women’s rights leaders who lost their lives spoke out against the issue of gender violence in Haiti before the earthquake. The people of Haiti, and all of us, relied on human rights defenders like these to take a stand. My thoughts go out to the families of them and all of the victims of this disaster.
This afternoon Janet Napolitano, Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, announced that the administration will extend temporary protected status to Haitians in the US. Providing work authorization through a TPS designation empowers Haitians to share responsibility for the relief and rebuilding of their own country, and it enables the US to meet its human rights obligations under international law and standards. AIUSA commends the administration for its generous and prompt humanitarian response to the disaster that is unfolding in Haiti. Haitians fleeing persecution or other serious human rights violations have a right to seek protection in the US. Accordingly, we hope that in the coming days the administration will also suspend the policy on interdiction during this time of crisis.
Satellite images of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince show the effect of the major earthquake that hit the island earlier this week. In addition to destroyed houses, the images also capture displaced people gathering in open spaces – like soccer fields – as there is no place left to go (and to be safe from aftershocks). The previous blog post outlines our human rights concerns, and urges President Obama to grant temporary protected status to all Haitians in the United States. The satellite images only provide one more piece of evidence why no-one should be returned to Haiti at this point.
In a different example of how geospatial technologies are being used to respond to the crisis in Haiti, our colleagues from Ushahidi have put out a Haiti platform in order to track developments on the ground and to support relief efforts. Check it out (works best with Firefox at this point).
According to media reports, the earthquake has resulted in thousands of deaths, more injuries, and likely countless people missing and displaced. Amnesty International researchers are monitoring the situation. The US government quickly reacted on Wednesday by pledging humanitarian, technical and financial support to the people of Haiti, and this is to be welcomed. The Department of Homeland Security stated that it is temporarily halting all deportations to Haiti, which will provide some relief to the Haitians already here, and their family and friends in Haiti who will likely rely on them for financial support.
At the same time, however, there has been no move to provide protection or secure status to Haitians in the US, or suspend specific immigration policies that discriminate against Haitian nationals. Haitians fleeing persecution or other serious human rights violations have the right to seek protection in the US, but in flagrant violation of international law, the US government stops them on the high seas and returns them to Haiti (interdiction).
President Obama Should Extend Temporary Protected Status to All Haitians in the United States
Temporary protected status (TPS) is a form of protection provided to foreign nationals whose countries have experienced environmental disasters or armed conflicts posing a serious threat to the personal safety of foreign nationals if returned. By definition it is temporary in nature and provides protection and work authorization.
TPS also provides a critical lifeline to the family and friends of people remaining in the home country because TPS beneficiaries can work legally and provide financial support overseas. The US government has made very clear that Haiti is in critical need of financial support. Ensuring that Haitians in the US have the opportunity to work complies with US human rights obligations under international law and standards, and by enabling them to support their families in Haiti, helps indirectly to provide financial assistance to that country.
This past weekend, the New York Times reported on the widespread and coordinated cover up of deaths in immigration detention. One such case, highlighted in our 2009 report on immigration detention, Jailed Without Justice, involved Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had lived in the US for ten years when he was detained. Newly available video shows him begging for help while handcuffed on the floor in solitary confinement. After four months in a coma, he died in detention.
The deliberate and coordinated dehumanization of the 107 people known to have died in immigration detention is shocking and shameful. For the last seven years Amnesty has monitored, investigated and advocated on the mistreatment of immigrants in detention, some of the core problems seemed to stem from incompetence and mismanagement. But it seems clear now that officials involved in immigration detention were regrettably quite competent at re-framing deaths due to neglect, and that detention facilities were in fact well coordinated in the cover up of ill-treatment and disregard.
Independent oversight and accountability is crucial to reforming a cruel detention system that is overused, under-scrutinized and where impunity is the rule and transparency the rare exception. While the US government has publicly stated its intent to reform the detention system, it has specifically rejected calls for enforceable rules as to the treatment of people in detention. According to the government, they are not necessary. The government is wrong. In Jailed Without Justice, Amnesty called for the adoption of enforceable human rights standards in all detention facilities coupled with independent oversight and accountability for transgressions. Until this occurs, ICE will have the ability to arbitrarily deprive people of their liberty, abuse them without repercussion, and label them as criminals as some sort of justification for the mistreatment they are forced to endure in silence.
This week, on December 15, 2009, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law held the first ever Congressional hearing on U.S. implementation of its human rights treaty obligations. The hearing examined what the U.S. government is doing and should be doing more of, to fulfill its obligations to protect and promote human rights domestically and abroad.
Subcommittee Chair Durbin (D-IL), along with Senators Cardin (D-MD), Feingold (D-WI) and Franken (D-MN), expressed deep concern and commitment to ensuring that the U.S. continues to lead by example on the international stage, by prioritizing and addressing the numerous human rights issues that currently exist within the U.S., including issues around detention, child trafficking, Indigenous rights, and discrimination, to name just a few. Amnesty International submitted written testimony for the hearing, which included expert testimony by key members of the administration as well as representatives of top domestic and international human rights organizations. A copy of this testimony is available if you are interested.
The Obama administration’s announcement that it intends to move “War on Terror” detainees not cleared for release to the Thomson Correctional Facility changes very little beyond enabling President Obama to honor the letter, if not the spirit, of his pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
What this decision in fact demonstrates is a lasting commitment to two ideas that President Obama rejected as a candidate: Military Commissions and indefinite detention without charge.
Military Commissions amount to little more than a cynical attempt to create a trial format with a sufficiently low burden of proof that it will admit evidence that could not be used in a real court. The concept of indefinite detention violates one of the most fundamental tenets of American – and international – justice that every defendant has a right to challenge his accusers in court. Both set disastrous precedents.
The decision to move the detainees will also have little positive impact on the position of the detainees themselves – indeed it will most likely further retard cases already unconscionably delayed. Nor will their day-to-day lives be improved, it is likely to be quite a while before the recreational facilities at Thomson match those now on offer at Guantanamo.
The bottom line is that the Obama administration is not fooling anyone either at home or abroad. Changing Guanatanmo’s zip code does not make indefinite detention any less palatable or military commissions any more legitimate.
Sadly, the good citizens of Thomson, Illinois, should get used to the idea that the name of their hometown will soon join Guantanamo and Abu Garaib as a shorthand term for American double standards and that it will likely become as effective a recruitment tool for Al-Qaeda as its predecessors.
On December 3, 2009, Chrysler launched a major new television ad dedicated to human rights, democracy champion and Nobel Laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a prisoner of conscience imprisoned in Myanmar for the last 14 of 20 years. While most see it as a brand new era in Chrysler’s image, others either applaud its efforts in highlighting the inspirational message connoted with her image, or they seem to resent the ad’s choice of hero, arguing that it does not seem to resonate with the average American television viewer – perhaps true. However, for Amnesty International activists and others concerned with the state of human rights in Myanmar, the sentiment was certainly appreciated.
Just last month, hundreds of Amnesty International activists throughout the U.S. Northeast region gathered in Boston to launch our “I Stand with Aung San Suu Kyi” campaign to call for her immediate and unconditional release. Amnesty activists have access to poster images of Aung San Suu Kyi featured with some of Myanmar’s additional 2,100 political prisoners. Our activists have taken pictures with poster-size images of Aung San Suu Kyi in front of local and national monuments and other places of interest in a symbolic effort to “stand with Suu Kyi”. (more…)
Amnesty International does. It looks like Human Rights Watch does too. So do countless family members of those who have been “disappeared”, arbitrarily detained, tortured, or well, all of the above.The new report just released from AI includes some emblematic cases of human rights violations committed by the Mexican military….just in the past year. Keep in mind this report is in by no means exhaustive either. Many other NGOs have been documenting these types of cases for years, and it doesn’t look like things are getting better.
The Calderon Administration does have a tough job to do. Between combating the organized crime and drug cartels that have left some cities in a state of almost lawlessness, to working through the economic hardships that any current administration has felt, to dealing with high profile US/Mexico border issues… it’s a difficult task. Human rights have no borders though, so why has it been such a struggle to put human rights at the core of any and all governmental initiatives?
The National Human Rights Commission (of Mexico) received nearly 2,000 complaints of abuse by the military between January 2008 and June 2009. By comparison, there were 367 complaints in 2007 and 182 in 2006. An improvement? You tell me.
Kerrie Howard, Deputy Director of the AI Americas Program in London stated: “The cases that we have been able to investigate are truly shocking, but what is more shocking is that we know that this is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Anyone who does work on, or pays attention to anything going on in Latin America would know that it is the season for meetings and hearings to be held at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in DC. I had never attended anything at the commission, well, until last week. I had no idea what to expect walking in, I just knew I was there as an AIUSA observer.
The building itself is really big, and nice. Spanish is one of the working languages of the Organization of American States, (OAS) along with English and Portuguese, but it may as well be THE working language. Everything was conducted in Spanish.
One of the hearings I was asked to observe at, was a public hearing including two cases regarding the human rights abuses committed by the Mexican military. AI has been following these cases closely, and they will most likely both be included in a report that AI will be releasing at the end of November addressing how flawed the military justice system in Mexico is, and how relatively easy it is for military personnel to get away with committing human rights violations.
Amnesty International works to protect human rights worldwide. We have more than 2.2 million supporters, activists and volunteers in over 150 countries, and are completely independent from government, corporate or national interests.
Learn more about us at AmnestyUSA.org »
Govind Acharya is a member of the South Asia Co-Group for Amnesty International USA and on the newly constituted Terrorism Task Force aimed at addressing AI's response to terrorist attacks around the world. See all »
