One year ago, the ACLU's Amy Fettig stood before the United Nations Human Rights Council to condemn the use of solitary confinement in the United States. In a written statement also submitted to the Council last year, the ACLU expressed serious concern over the imposition of the death penalty across the nation. Sadly, we find ourselves this year once again at the same body, imploring the U.S. to live up to its human rights obligations with regard to these practices.
By Katie Haas, ACLU Human Rights Program at 3:37pm
In Berlin yesterday, ACLU attorney Steven Watt attended a German parliamentary hearing on human rights and counterterrorism to brief lawmakers on the U.S. targeted killing program, in which thousands of people have been killed, many far from any battlefield. The hearing was held by the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid of the German Bundestag, the lower house of the German legislature and the German equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives. The committee invited the ACLU; Dick Marty, member of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly who authored the landmark 2006 Council report on European participation in the CIA rendition program; Wolfgang Kaleck, attorney with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights; and others to discuss the relationship between counterterrorism and human rights.
By Mitra Ebadolahi, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 10:47am
Artist's Work Keeps Human Realities of Torture Alive
Last autumn, Rajkamal Kahlon, a Berlin-based American artist, joined the ACLU as an artist-in-residence. Working out of our New York headquarters, Kahlon furthered an on-going project of hers called Did You Kiss the Dead Body? Visualizing Absence in the Archive of War. This week, she launched a new website compiling her stunning original images as well as texts and interviews with ACLU staff: DidYouKissTheDeadBody.com.
The Obama Administration recently underwent its first U.N. treaty body review, and the resulting concluding observations made public yesterday should be a cause for alarm. The observations, issued by independent U.N. experts tasked with monitoring compliance with the international treaty on the rights of children in armed conflict (formally known as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict or "OPAC"), paint a dark picture of the treatment of juveniles by the U.S. military in Afghanistan: one where hundreds of children have been killed in attacks and air strikes by U.S. military forces, and those responsible for the killings have not been held to account even as the number of children killed doubled from 2010 to 2011; where children under 18 languish in detention facilities without access to legal or full humanitarian assistance, or adequate resources to aid in their recovery and reintegration as required under international law. Some children were abused in U.S. detention facilities, and others are faced with the prospect of torture and ill-treatment if they are transferred to Afghan custody.
By Matthew Harwood, Media Relations Associate, ACLU at 9:09am
ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Chris Anders appeared on “UP with Chris Hayes” Sunday morning for a 40-minute, in-depth discussion of President Obama’s nomination of his counterterrorism advisor John Brennan to run the CIA.
Anders argued the Senate needs to determine whether Brennan implemented policies such as torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition during his time at the CIA during the Bush administration before deciding whether to confirm him to such a vital, and secretive, national security post.
By Amshula Jayaram, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:07am
Last week, nearly four years after President Obama closed the CIA’s Detention, Interrogation and Rendition Program, the American public is one step closer to learning the truth about a program that sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. To date, it has remained shrouded in secrecy, tarnishing our international reputation and severely damaging our nation’s security. Under the leadership of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has voted to adopt a 6000-plus page report, based on an analysis of more than six million pages of CIA records, detailing the findings of the committee’s three-year investigation into the program. We urge the committee to publicly release the document with as few redactions as possible.
Almost nine years ago, Khaled El-Masri was abducted, forcibly disappeared, and tortured by Macedonian authorities and the CIA. Until today, his well-documented claims of abuse had yet to be affirmed by any authorities responsible for his mistreatment or by a court of law. In a landmark ruling today, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that El-Masri’s treatment at the Macedonia airport by U.S. agents in cooperation with Macedonian officials “amounted to torture.” The court also found that while in CIA custody El-Masri was subjected to abuses including sodomy, forced nudity, total sensory deprivation, solitary confinement, force feeding, physical assault, sleep deprivation, inadequate food and water and denial of medical care in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that his entire period of captivity constituted a “forced disappearance” in violation of international law. According to ACLU Human Rights Program Director Jamil Dakwar, the ruling represents “a huge victory for justice and the rule of law.” He added:
By Katie Haas, ACLU Human Rights Program at 12:07pm
Today is Human Rights Day and the 64th anniversary of the United Nations’ adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As one of the first documents to present the world with a comprehensive vision of human rights, the declaration is fundamental to the work of social justice movements around the world, and to our work at the ACLU. It lays out universal standards for human dignity that all nations should uphold, and its almost unanimous adoption by the General Assembly in 1948 was a landmark moment for human rights defenders everywhere.
By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 4:30pm
Today's utterance by Chief Judge Sandra Lynch, of the First Circuit Court of Appeals, gives me hope that the court will do justice for the victims of human trafficking who will be impacted by how the First Circuit rules in a case argued before it this morning.
By Ramya Sekaran, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 5:23pm
Last Sunday, November 25, the international community observed the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Women's rights activists have marked this as a day against violence since 1981, in memory of the Mirabal sisters, political activists who were brutally assassinated in 1960 on orders of Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo. Many advances have been made in the fight for gender equality since the first International Day, but many more challenges persist.
