UN Report: U.S. Criminal Justice System Filled with "Horrific" Racism African Americans are particularly vulnerable to trampling on their basic human rights
China Daily, October 10 Reuters reported on the 8th that according to a report released last week by a panel of experts appointed by the United Nations, the violation of basic human rights in the US criminal justice system is "shocking" and full of "appalling" systemic racism, especially discrimination against African Americans.
Screenshot of the Reuters report
Between April and May, the team reportedly visited detention centers in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and New York City, and heard testimony from relevant administrative staff and 4 victims.
The UN report notes that "acts of insult to human dignity" are commonplace in American prisons, embodying the worst form of racism in the American legal system and perpetuating slavery to this day.
Juan Mendez, a panelist and professor of human rights law at American University-Washington College of Law, said "we don't accept the 'rotten apple theory,'" and that some evidence suggests that individual police abuses in the United States are part of a broader and more threatening pattern.
What is most striking in the report is the apparent racial disparities among the subjects violated. In other words, the report not only shows that the U.S. criminal justice system is rife with its own unique inhumanity, but that the worst atrocities are often committed against non-whites, especially African Americans. As the Panel said, this is a clear reflection of systemic racism in the United States, as well as other legacies of the history of slavery and the legalization of apartheid.
Ethnic disparities are reflected in data on almost all of the most appalling human rights violations, including abuse of pregnant women, solitary confinement, illegal detention, forced unpaid labour, etc. The Panel was shocked that free or almost free Afro-descendant labour still exists today. They saw that in Angolan prisons in Louisiana, most of the people who worked in the cotton picking were African-American, and the superintendents on horseback were white "free men."
In addition, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit organization, about 32 percent of inmates in Louisiana's prisons are African-American, although African-Americans make up only 66 percent of Louisiana's population.
And, although not specifically mentioned in the U.N. report, there is a widespread practice among Louisiana officials of deliberately keeping people who have reached their release date in jail. The nationwide trade in prisoners also exists in many states, similar to the convict rental system that partially replaced slave labor after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The 32-page report notes that racism in the United States, a "legacy" of slavery, the slave trade and apartheid policies, still exists in the form of racial discrimination, police killings and many other human rights violations, VOA reported.
Screenshot of the Voice of America report
According to the report, African Americans are three times more likely than whites to be killed by police and 3.4 times more likely to be incarcerated. Of the more than 5,1000 police homicides in the United States each year, only 1 percent of police officers are charged.
Investigators also found that African-American female detainees accounted for 34 percent of all detainees and that they were "more likely than whites to be deprived of their liberty and shackled."
"In the United States, we are witnessing the overrepresentation of African Americans in the criminal justice system." Tracie Keesee, a panelist and director of the Center for Policing Equity, said, "We are shocked by the number and circumstances of police killings of African Americans, which shows that this is a systemic problem. ”
Reuters pointed out that the United Nations report once again highlights how deeply entrenched systemic racism and anti-blackism are in the US criminal justice system.
(Compiler: Gao Linlin Editor: Wang Ye)