Our ad in the Farragut West Metro Station, Washington DC

Last month I had the opportunity to meet with Tamil human rights defenders working to protect the rights of Tamil civilians displaced by the Sri Lankan government’s military campaign against the violent Armed Group known as the Tamil Tigers.

Displaced Tamils are confined to government run camps where conditions are harsh and there is no end to their detention in sight. Tamil and Sri Lankan human rights defenders are operating under great threat from the authorities and Sinhalese nationalist paramilitaries.

Journalists have been killed and activists have disappeared. An unmarked white van has been associated with several disappearances, evoking memories of the dirty wars of Latin America. The atmosphere in Colombo is increasingly one of fear and intimidation.

This is the context in which we learned earlier this month of a visit to Washington DC by the Sri Lankan Attorney General, Mohan Peiris, to meet with his American counterpart Eric Holder. (more…)

The bad news is that the United States is still among the top executioners in the world.  The good news is that the numbers are down.  According to an Amnesty International report released today, the U.S. remains in league with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iraq as the countries responsible for the most executions in 2008.  But the 37 executions that took place in the U.S. in 2008 was the lowest total since 1994. 

This is partly due to the moratorium imposed on executions while the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of lethal injection, but it is also due to the steady erosion of support for capital punishment in our courtrooms, our jury rooms, our state legislatures and among the general public.  Death sentences have been declining steadily for several years.  Public support is down 15 to 20 points.  When alternatives are offered, polls show that the public is often evenly divided between supporting the death penalty or preferring sentences like life without parole.  And more and more states are engaging in serious death penalty abolition debates, including in New Mexico, where Governor Bill Richardson signed death penalty repeal into law last week.

This decline of capital punishment is mirrored internationally, where, as of the end of 2008, more than two-thirds of the world’s nations had either ceased practicing capital punishment, or had abolished it altogether.  A UN General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate worldwide moratorium on executions passed in December with 106 yes votes, and only 46 no votes, with 34 abstentions.

In both the U.S. and the world, capital punishment is increasingly a regional phenomenon.  In the U.S. the vast majority of executions take place in the South, with most of those occurring in Texas.  Globally, the vast majority of executions take place in Asia and the Middle East, with most of those occurring in China.

Since 1977, when Amnesty International first adopted the death penalty as a fundamental human rights issue, we have seen a slow but steady decline in its use worldwide; since the turn of the new century we have begun to see a similar decline here in the U.S.  While Amnesty International’s report clearly reveals deeply troubling capital punishment practices in some countries (beheadings in Saudi Arabia, hanging of juvenile offenders in Iran, large numbers of executions after unfair trials in China), the long-term trends are equally apparent, and in favor of abolition.

On Monday, March 9, the Iraqi government announced to Amnesty International that 128 death sentences have been ratified, and that executions would commence soon at the rate of 20 per week.  Exactly who these 128 people are, what crimes they have been condemned for, or how imminent these executions are is not known.  It is also now known how many of these prisoners facing execution might have been transferred to Iraqi authorities from US custody following the Status of Forces Agreement that came into effect at the beginning of this year.

What is known is that Iraqi trials do not always conform to international fair trial standards.

Ironically, a moratorium on executions was in place in Iraq while it was under US occupation, but that came to an end in August of 2004.  It is not known how many executions have taken place since then (at least 65 in 2006, at least 33 in 2007 and at least 34 in 2008).  By any measure, 128 executions, or 20 executions a week, would be a disturbing demonstration of enthusiasm for state killing in a country trying to recover from years of violent upheaval.

Please urge Iraqi authorities to commute these death sentences and reinstate the moratorium on executions.

The death penalty costs money – more money than the alternatives – and, as Wonkette notes “basically every state in the union is broke”.  This is why (or at least one of the reasons why) more states than ever before are having serious death penalty repeal debates.  In Kansas, a Republican Senator has filed an abolition bill, telling FoxNews.com: “This will save significant money — money that could be used toward education programs and toward community corrections programs.”  In Colorado, they don’t have enough money to solve cold cases, and a bill to pass along the savings from death penalty abolition to create a cold case unit has passed its first hurdle.  New Hampshire suspended jury trials for an entire month to save money, and they haven’t executed anyone since 1939 – so why do they still have the death penalty?

Of course, the death penalty is a fundamental human rights violation, so even if it were dirt cheap, it would still be wrong and deserving of total abolition.  But it’s not cheap at all … and we can’t afford it.

“I am not asking to be taken at my word and to be released, although I very much want to go home to my family. All I am asking for is to be treated like every other person in the United States who is accused of a crime, including terrorism, and to be given a fair trial in an American court.”

These are the words of Ali al-Marri, a U.S. resident who continues to be held without trial since December, 2001, in the United States. He was arrested in Illinois and is currently held in a military facility in Charleston, South Carolina. The Bush administration accused al-Marri of being an al-Qaeda agent, yet in seven years failed to bring him to trial.

Al-Marri has said he was “subjected to brutal interrogation measures, including stress positions, prolonged exposure to extremely cold temperatures, extreme sensory deprivation, and threats of violence and death. Interrogators, for example, told Mr al-Marri that they would send him to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia to be tortured and sodomized and forced to watch as his wife was raped in front of him.”

Since 2003, Amnesty International has called for al-Marri to either be fairly tried in a U.S. federal court, or be immediately released. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear al-Marri’s case. President Obama ordered an immediate and “prompt and thorough review of the factual and legal basis for al-Marri’s detention.” Al-Marri remains detained.

And, as the New York Times reported yesterday in “Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas,” President Obama may not fully renounce all of the immoral, illegal and ineffective policies and practices of the past–including indefinite detention–that have harmed people like Murat Kurnaz and Maher Arar, and have failed to bring those responsible for September 11th to justice.

We can’t let the failures of the past continue.

Please write urgent letters to those reviewing al-Marri’s detention, calling for al-Marri to either be promptly charged and fairly tried in a U.S. federal court, or be immediately released. Addresses, bullet points and background are here.

And let President Obama know that effective, legal and ethical counterterrorism measures are the right way to ensure security and justice, and that an independent investigation is the right way to make sure the mistakes of the past are never made again.

Larry Swearingen has received a stay of execution.  He was one of 14 prisoners scheduled for execution in Texas between the beginning of this year and early April.  (Of those 14, three – all African American – have already been put to death, and the other ten are all either African American or Hispanic.)

For Swearingen, forensic evidence that now raises serious doubts about his guilt seem to have swayed the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to put the execution on hold and allow him to file a further appeal in Federal District Court.  Several forensic pathologists, including the woman who conducted the victim’s autopsy, are now saying that the time of death occurred when Swearingen was in jail for some traffic violations,  so that he could not have committed the crime.

The 5th Circuit found both that Swearingen’s defense was deficient and that the prosecutors provided “false and misleading forensic testimony.”

Execution witness viewing room (c) Scott Langley

Starting tomorrow (Jan. 14), Texas will embark on a three-month spree of executions in which 14 men (one of them white) will be put to death.  Later this year, perhaps as early as late April, Texas will probably carry out the 200th execution under Governor Rick Perry.  This is an appalling number, particularly given what we have learned about the flawed nature of our criminal justice and capital punishment systems.  Texas accounts for 9 of the 130 death row exonerees, the third highest total of any state, and another 5 men have been executed in Texas despite compelling evidence that they were innocent.

The 19 exonerations from DNA evidence in Dallas County don’t include anyone from death row, but it’s the highest total of any county in America, and is yet another piece of evidence that Texas justice doesn’t always get it right.

Of course, sadly, none of this is really big news, and it all fits in neatly with the violent, shoot-first-ask-questions-later stereotype that Texans often embrace – but it’s at odds with what’s going on in the real Texas.  Real Texans are usually genuinely concerned about justice, and about avoiding uncorrectable, fatal mistakes.  Governor Perry should take his cue from these real Texans, who in 2008 handed down the fewest death sentences (11) of any year since the death penalty was reinstated.  Now is not the time for a shameful and reckless pursuit of executions; now is the time for Texas politicians to finally acknowledge what everybody else already knows:  their death penalty has serious problems.

Again and again we’re told that closing Guantanamo is “complicated.” I don’t see what’s complicated about it. Flying a chunk of metal with people in it to the moon? That’s complicated. Following U.S. and international law? Not so much. Try the detainees in federal courts or release them. If they are tried and found guilty, then incarcerate them in the US. I’ll help build a special prison in my neighborhood. If they are found not guilty, then release them. I have a room for rent. The “complicated” rhetoric serves as a stalling tactic and a justification for the whole mess. I don’t buy it. As always, I’m open to being convinced by a logical argument, but the burden of proof is on those who claim it’s hard to follow the law.

Which brings me to Obama’s comments on investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by members of the Bush administration. Since when is  moving “forward” in tension with investigating and prosecuting people who broke the law? If we are going to move forward, then investigating and prosecuting crimes is exactly what we have to do. If we are going to move forward, Obama and Congress must commit this country to the rule of law.

As a New Yorker who saw the Towers fall, as an American who is ashamed that his tax dollars have gone towards murder and torture, and as a citizen of the world who wants his family and friends to be safe, happy and free, I am so, so very ready for those responsible for 9/11 to be held accountable, for those responsible for torture to be held accountable, and for a U.S. President to follow the law and uphold human rights. Is it really so hard to do the right thing?

Yesterday, the U.N. General Assembly marked Human Rights Day by unanimously adopting the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR). This historic step fills in a crucial gap in the human rights framework; former High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has described the OP-ICESCR as making human rights whole.

But to the media this looks like U.N. inside baseball, and they haven’t so much as mentioned it. (ReliefWeb, a U.N. humanitarian information portal, covered it; and here’s AI’s press release.)

So what’s it all about? In a word, it provides a means for redress for violations of economic, social and cultural rights.

One way of dividing up human rights obligations is like this:

• To prevent human rights violations from happening.
• To stop human rights violations that are currently happening.
• To offer redress for human rights violations that have already happened.

The Counter Terror With Justice campaign’s call to the Obama administration in its first 100 days is a good illustration:

• announce a plan and date to close Guantanamo;
• issue an executive order to ban torture and other ill-treatment, as defined under international law;
• ensure that an independent commission to investigate abuses committed by the U.S. government in its “war on terror” is set up.

That is, the call is to stop (close Guantanamo), prevent (ban torture), and begin to redress (set up an independent commission) human rights violations committed by the U.S. government in the “war on terror”. (You should, of course, sign the 100 days petition!)

Anyone who’s suffered a violation of his or her civil and political rights — like freedom of expression, freedom from torture, and the right to a fair trial — can file for redress with the United Nations. This is a matter of international law, and it empowers people in countries whose domestic courts won’t recognize their civil and political rights. That mechanism was established by the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966.

But there’s never been an analogous system for economic, social and cultural rights – until yesterday. The OP-ICESCR finally provides a means for redress, under international law, for violations of the rights to water, food, health, housing, education and decent work.

This is a new tool for justice for refugees forcibly returned to North Korea and punished by starvation; for Roma children systematically segregated in Slovakia’s schools; and for poor families forcibly evicted from their homes in Angola to make way for new development projects.

Or, in other words:

For more, see the OP-ICESCR Coalition (which included AI).

Yes.  It happened most recently in Nebraska, where 6 men were sentenced to various prison terms for involvement in a murder they had nothing to do with, because some of them “confessed” after being threatened with the death penalty.  DNA tests have ultimately exonerated them all, revealing that, according to the Lincoln Journal Star, the state’s case was a “complete fiction” and “entirely fabricated.”

The death penalty is often touted by prosecutors as a useful tool for convincing suspects to confess or to plead guilty.  Here, it is clear that the results can just as easily be false confessions or erroneous guilty pleas.  As with torture, the information obtained by this approach is just not reliable.

Threatening someone with the death penalty is no more a useful tool for eliciting an accurate confession than torture, and it is just as odious, immoral and flagrant a violation of human rights.  And the fact that some investigators still believe they can rely on it is all the more reason to abolish it once and for all.