Special Rapporteur Presents Findings Before U.N. Human Rights Council

NEW YORK – The United Nations special rapporteur on racism offered recommendations for the United States to address ongoing issues of discrimination in a presentation before the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) today. At the invitation of the United States government, former special rapporteur Doudou Diene toured the United States in May and June 2008 to conduct an analysis of ongoing racism and ethnic discrimination. Today, current special rapporteur Githu Muigai presented Diene’s findings. This is the first session of the UNHRC in which the U.S. is participating as a member.

"For the U.S. to lead by example, it should heed the recommendations of this international expert and do more to address ongoing issues of racism and ethnic discrimination in this country,” said Chandra Bhatnagar, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Human Rights Program. “This report offers the Obama administration a path forward toward justice, equality and human rights for all."

While in the United States, the special rapporteur met with representatives of the ACLU and other non-governmental organizations, government officials, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and members of local communities. The resulting report highlights racism in the criminal justice system, the disparity between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine, abuses facing immigrant and African-American workers in the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the overall vulnerability of immigrant workers and the need to meaningfully address the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The report also calls on Congress to pass the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA) and create a bipartisan commission to evaluate the on-going fight against racism.

“The special rapporteur’s visits in Los Angeles with Arab, Sikh, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Native American communities, and his review of the ACLU’s recent report on racial profiling at the Los Angeles Police Department, helped to inform his conclusions about the ongoing and urgent need for racial justice reform in this country,” said Catherine Lhamon, racial justice director for the ACLU of Southern California. “We hope this report will push us locally and as a nation to take concrete steps toward creating meaningful justice for all Americans.”

“Mr. Diene’s report highlights the persistence of racism in the U.S. It focuses on many issues that permeate the lives of so many people who live and work in Florida, including racial profiling, the lack of legal protections for immigrant workers, the housing crisis and homelessness, and the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon,” said Muslima Lewis, director of the ACLU of Florida’s Racial Justice Project. “We are hopeful that the recommendations in this report will be the impetus for meaningful and systemic racial justice reform in Miami, Florida and the entire country."

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – A federal judge today expressed concern that the Los Angeles Police Department continues to be out of compliance with key provisions of a federal consent decree imposed in the wake of the Rampart corruption scandal. Judge Gary Feess stopped short of extending the federal oversight that the decree mandates, but Feess agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California that until the conditions of the decree are fully met, it is unlikely it could be legally lifted. He is expected to render a final ruling in the coming weeks.

The following statement can be attributed to ACLU/SC Staff Attorney Peter Bibring.

"We are pleased the court recognized the progress the LAPD has made but focused on the larger question at hand: Whether it’s appropriate to lift the decree when the department has not complied with all of its terms most importantly the non discrimination provisions."

"Over the past years, the consent decree has been the engine for LAPD reform, so as not to repeat the nightmares of Watts, Rodney King and Rampart. With the monitor’s finding that the department has not yet fully complied with the decree—including specifically its policies and practices toward communities of color—now is not the time to prematurely terminate what is working to bring order to our city. When it can be confidently said that citizens of color are not overstopped, overfrisked and overarrested by the LAPD for no other reason than their race, it will be time to end the decree."

The ACLU/SC is counsel for community groups who intervened in the case.

By Ahilan Arulanantham Director of Immigrants' Rights & National Security for the ACLU of Southern California.

In only two weeks a U.S. citizen will go on trial in the United Arab Emirates. The American man, who lived in Los Angeles for the better part of 20 years and built his family and business there, reports having been severely tortured while in the custody of the State Security forces of the United Arab Emirates. Yet, his own government has said nothing publicly to inquire about or protest his treatment. There is only one plausible explanation for the federal government's silence on the issue: our nation was complicit in the detention and torture that took place.

The case presents a simple yet profound question for the Obama Administration: whether it will actually end the human rights abuses of the Bush Administration, or instead simply stand silent while they continue.

More than eight months ago Naji Hamdan was arrested by State Security forces in the U.A.E. He was detained without charges or access to a lawyer until the ACLU filed a lawsuit in U. S. court seeking his release from incommunicado detention. One week later, he was transferred into U.A.E. criminal custody, officials disclosed his location and the torture stopped.

In criminal custody, Mr. Hamdan told both his family and the U.S. consular officer who visited him that he had been severely tortured: repeatedly beaten on his head, kicked on his sides, stripped and held in a freezing cold room, placed in an electric chair and made to believe that he would be electrocuted, and held down in a stress position while his captors beat the bottoms of his feet with a large stick. During this horrific process, he said whatever the agents wanted him to say, and those statements may now be used against him in a criminal trial in the U.A.E.

Mr. Hamdan's description of the torture and interrogation he endured strongly suggests that American agents have been involved. Although his captors blindfolded him, one of his interrogators spoke native English with an American accent and was not fluent in Arabic. In addition, the agents interrogated Mr. Hamdan on topics about which only federal agents could have knowledge, such as a meeting he had with FBI agents at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi. His interrogators also asked him in extreme detail about his life and activities when he lived in the United States.

Only a few weeks before his arrest, FBI agents from Los Angeles had flown to the U.A.E. and interrogated Mr. Hamdan at the embassy for several hours. This interrogation and the subsequent arrest were only the latest episodes in a two-year period during which the FBI intensively surveilled Mr. Hamdan. Yet throughout his subsequent ordeal in the U.A.E., the U.S. government claimed to know nothing about why Mr. Hamdan was detained or tortured. Indeed, documents filed with the Court show that the federal government has continued to investigate Hamdan's businesses in the U.S. even while it has denied any involvement in his detention in the U.A.E.

It appears that Mr. Hamdan is the latest victim of the U.S. government's practice of asking foreign governments to detain terrorism suspects whom the federal government cannot itself detain and interrogate under U.S. law ''' a practice known as '''proxy detention.' By asking other countries to detain on our behalf, the U.S. government apparently believes it can avoid the constraints of the U.S. Constitution, allowing federal agents to interrogate individuals held in secret, incommunicado detention, without charge or access to a lawyer, and subject to torture. The countries the U.S. partners with in this practice, including the U.A.E., typically have poor human rights records and weak protections against prolonged arbitrary detention. In fact, a document submitted in Mr. Hamdan's case make clear that the United States has used the U.A.E. previously as its proxy to detain people subject to the rendition program. The proxy detention program has also been documented by groups such as the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

An ironic twist in this case is that Mr. Hamdan was more than willing to talk to FBI agents. He voluntarily submitted to their interrogation several times over the last few years. Obviously if Mr. Hamdan has done something wrong, he should be charged with a crime. But the basis for those charges cannot be statements obtained under torture. If there is no evidence against him, he should be released.

The ACLU's lawsuit demands the federal government seek his release and reveal the nature and extent of its involvement. President Barack Obama won election amidst promises to restore our nation's commitment to the rule of law. Surely he believes that our country owes its own citizens the right to learn what role our government has played in detaining and torturing them.