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Amnesty International:
Global Racism Denies Human Rights to Millions
US Justice System Discriminates, Fails to Remedy Widespread
Bias
Human Rights Group
Calls on Bush Administration to Provide Leadership
in Upcoming UN Conference on Racism
(Washington, DC) -- In a report released today, Amnesty
International criticized US federal and state justice
systems as riddled with racial discrimination. The report,
Racism and the Administration of Justice, cites as evidence
the disproportionate rates of minorities incarcerated,
sentenced to death, and executed in the US. In advance
of the UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR), Amnesty
International USA (AIUSA) urged the Bush Administration
to increase its commitment to the conference by appointing
a delegation led by Secretary of State Colin Powell
and assuming a leadership role in the pre-conference
preparation.
In a letter sent to President Bush on July 23, AIUSA
called on the administration to resolve controversies
that have marred preparations for the WCAR. Disagreements
among governments over reparations for slavery, as well
as issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
risk undermining the conference. AIUSA urged President
Bush "not to allow current controversies over draft
language to serve as a pretext for non-participation.
We believe that such problems can be best addressed
by a senior delegation representing the US at the conference,
and not through a boycott."
"The Bush Administration must participate in efforts
to eradicate racism at home and abroad, and must seize
the opportunity to move beyond the empty rhetoric on
race of previous administrations by vigorously joining
the debate at the World Conference against Racism,"
said Gerald LeMelle, AIUSA Deputy Executive Director
for Advocacy and delegate to the WCAR.
In its report, Amnesty International cited cases of
racial profiling, unlawful use of force, unlawful shootings,
and deaths in custody affecting minorities from at least
10 states in the US. The laws and policing of the 'war
on drugs' have targeted poor minority urban neighborhoods,
with African American men the majority of those arrested
and convicted, despite evidence that the majority of
illegal drug users are white.
The report, which reviews the role of racism in the
administration of justice worldwide, cites from the
United States the following federal, state and local
examples:
African Americans and other minorities suffer disproportionate
rates of incarceration, accounting for 60 percent of
the 1.7 million people currently in jail or prison in
the US. African American men are imprisoned at more
than eight times the rate of white men, and one third
of all young African American men are in jail or prison,
on parole, or on probation.
African American women are imprisoned at eight times,
and Hispanic women at four times, the rate of white
women.
Children of racial and ethnic minority backgrounds
are greatly over represented at all stages of the
general and juvenile justice systems, making up 15
percent of the population aged between 10 and 17,
but accounting for around 31 percent of youths arrested,
44 percent of youths held in custody in juvenile facilities,
nearly half of all juveniles tried in adult criminal
courts, and 58 percent of all juveniles confined in
adult prisons.
The overwhelming majority of victims of police brutality,
unlawful shootings and deaths in custody are members
of racial minorities. A Chicago Reporter analysis
of police shootings in that city found that of 115
civilians shot dead between 1990 and 1998, 82 were
black, 16 Latino, 12 white and 2 Asian.
In April 1998, New Jersey State troopers shot at
four young unarmed African American and Latino men
travelling to basketball trials, wounding three of
them. Two of the troopers, who were later charged
with attempted murder and assault in the case, had
been indicted months earlier on 19 misdemeanor charges
of falsifying records to conceal the number of minority
drivers they had stopped. In April 1999 an interim
report by the New Jersey Attorney General's office
concluded that state troopers had been using race
as a basis for stopping drivers, thereby confirming
complaints made over many years by minorities.
In Kentucky, every death sentence before March 1996
was for the murder of a white victim, even though more
than 1,000 homicide victims had been black. A study
of 2,000 murder cases in Georgia found that the odds
of a death sentence in cases in which blacks murdered
whites were as much as 11 times higher than when whites
murdered blacks. A study found that in Philadelphia
a black defendant is four times more likely to receive
a death sentence than a white defendant.
"Racism that perverts the course of justice is
a daily fact of life for many in the United States,
yet this plague of bias is overlooked, ignored or openly
tolerated by police chiefs, prison wardens, judges and
our political leaders," LeMelle said. "The
Bush Administration and state and local policy makers
must make a true commitment to ridding the nation's
justice system of any form of racism."
Amnesty International USA will be represented by Julianne
Traylor (former Chair of the AIUSA Board of Directors),
Tanya McClary (AIUSA Board Member) and Jodi Longo (Mid-Atlantic
Regional Director) at WCAR.
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For a copy of the report "Racism and the Administration
of Justice," or to schedule an interview, contact
Amnesty International USA at 202 544 0200 x302.
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