AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ADMITS
U.S. a prime violator of human rights
By John Catalinotto
As the UN Human Rights Commission opened its annual session
in Geneva on March 21, Amnesty International broke from its
usual priorities to denounce police brutality and executions in
the United States.
Amnesty has usually avoided criticism of the imperialist
powers, especially the U.S., and instead has focused on
socialist and Third World countries.
But this time Amnesty Secretary General Pierre Sane said
that "Human-rights violations in the United States of America
are persistent, widespread and appear to disproportionately
affect people of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds."
This is really only acknowledging what thousands of groups
and mobilizations in the U.S. have been saying about police
brutality, the death sentence and the outrageous rate of
incarceration.
Sane said Amnesty would risk its credibility if it stayed
silent about the U.S.
Although most countries worldwide--
especially the industrialized countries in Europe and
Japan--have eliminated capital punishment, here more than 350
prisoners have been executed since 1990 and another 3,500 are
on death row.
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