Amnesty: US Human Rights Abuses on Display in Ferguson

In a report released on Friday, Amnesty International roundly condemns the excessive force used by local law enforcement agencies in Ferguson, Missouri earlier this year and called for 'accountability and systemic change' in order to curb the kinds of human rights abuses increasingly seen in U.S. communities when it comes to regulating street protests and use of force by police.

The report—entitled On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson (pdf)—documents the human rights concerns witnessed first-hand by Amnesty investigators dispatched to Ferguson following initial protests in the city spurred by the shooting death of an unarmed African American teenager, Michael Brown, by a police officer Darren Wilson on August 9. The Amnesty team arrived and documented public protest and the behavior of local law enforcement from August 14 to August 22.

Amnesty's report makes takes no position or determination on the killing of Brown, but says the shooting and his death "highlighted on a national level the persistent and widespread pattern of racially discriminatory treatment by law enforcement officers across the United States, including unjustified stops and searches, ill treatment and excessive, and sometimes lethal, use of force."

Focused on both the community response to Brown's death and the subsequent police reaction to protests, the report's authors present what they witnessed first-hand in Ferguson in order to highlight some of the national trends of human rights abuses that often, though with less attention, take place in U.S. communities.

"What Amnesty International witnessed in Missouri on the ground this summer underscored that human rights abuses do not just happen across borders and oceans," said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "No matter where you live in the world, everyone is entitled to the same basic rights as a human being – and one of those rights is the freedom to peacefully protest. Standing on W. Florissant Avenue with my colleagues, I saw a police force, armed to the teeth, with military-grade weapons. I saw a crowd that included the elderly and young children fighting the effects of tear gas. There must be accountability and systemic change that follows this excessive force."

According to the report:

The rights of peaceful assembly, freedom of association and freedom of expression are basic human rights. These rights are also guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the state of Missouri. The vast majority of those participating in the demonstrations in Ferguson that spontaneously grew in the days and weeks following the shooting Michael Brown have been peaceful - as noted by government officials such as the President of the United States, the Governor of Missouri and Attorney General along with the Missouri Highway Patrol. However, the responses by state officials and law enforcement to the violent actions of a limited number of protestors have impacted the rights of all participating in peaceful protests.

Overall, said Hawkins, "This is about accountability."

"The events in Ferguson sparked a much-needed and long-overdue conversation on race and policing in America," he said. "That conversation cannot stop. In order to restore justice to Ferguson, and every community afflicted by police brutality, we must both document the injustices committed and fight to prevent them from happening again. There is a path forward, but it requires substantive actions on the local, state and federal levels."

In addition to documenting the abuses witnessed in Ferguson, the Amnesty report also puts forth a series of recommendations for local, state, and national agencies that include: better policies on use of force: calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into Brown's death; improved policing standards of public protests; and a plea to end the unnecessay militarization of local police departments. More

 

 

 

© 2014

Granted by whom? - George Galloway MP on Israel, Britain & Palestine

George Galloway MP addresses a Zionist caller and asks him "what right did Britain have to grant you somebody elses country?

© 2014

Ebola and Climate Change: ‘We Are Running Out of Time,’ says World Bank President

Not acting on climate change could have the same results as the inaction on Ebola with significant human and economic impact, warned World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim in a speech Friday to the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group annual meeting. He said that addressing both would further the World Bank’s goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.

Jim Yong Kim President World Bank

“In a world where natural disasters, conflict, financial shocks and epidemics are becoming more frequent and destructive, we at the World Bank Group must do everything we can to become even more relevant,” he said. “Indeed, we’ve been fully engaged lately in fighting two of these global threats: the Ebola epidemic and climate change.”

“Ebola and climate change have a few things in common,” he said. “Most importantly, we are running out of time to find solutions to both. Also, until very recently, the plans to fight them were either nonexistent or inadequate. And inaction is literally killing people–one because of the rapid spread of a deadly virus, the other from the poisoning of the atmosphere and the oceans. And finally, perhaps most critically from our point of view, resolving these problems is essential to development, whether from the perspective of human suffering, economic growth or public health.”

Kim, an infectious disease physician, called the initial global response to Ebola “inadequate and slow” but said “Once engaged, we’ve moved with creativity, speed and purpose.” He said that the World Bank’s world on climate change over the last two years provided a blueprint for its response to Ebola.

“Soon after I started at the World Bank [July 2012], I asked my team a simple question: What’s the plan to fight climate change?” he said. “The responses received from our staff and even from leaders in the climate change community were mostly tactical: new technologies here, some efficiencies there. While important, they were not equal to the challenge of keeping a global increase in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. So, working with others, we developed our own strategy that we hoped could take us a long way toward achieving this objective.”

That five-part plan including carbon pricing, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, building cleaner cities, encouraging climate-friendly agriculture, and investing in renewable energy sources. He described in detail the World Bank’s campaign on carbon pricing: building a coalition of cooperating governments and businesses.

“At the start of the campaign, we counted 22 countries that would support this goal,” said Kim. “With lobbying, the number kept climbing. Less than a week before the deadline, China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, agreed to support carbon pricing. It became the 54th country to endorse the statement. In the four days before the [UN Climate] summit, 20 more countries signed on. At the time of the announcement, 74 governments and more than 1,000 companies and investors had agreed to put a price on carbon. Together, the countries account for up to 54 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, 52 percent of the world’s GDP and nearly 50 percent of the world’s population.”

“Later today, ministers, CEOs and the World Bank Climate Group will join me to turn this pledge into action,” he said.

“We must maintain this commitment because increasing global fragility and volatility will challenge us more and more every day,” he concluded. “In our march to end extreme poverty, conflict, typhoons, floods, droughts, financial shocks and epidemics may at times slow us. But they will not stop us. The Bank will be aggressive and creative and apply large-scale solutions to help states manage, prepare for, recover from and conquer these risks, so they can grow and flourish.” More

 

© 2014

Global Inequality Reaches Levels Not Seen in Nearly 200 Years

Global income inequality has returned to levels recorded in the 1820s—when the Industrial Revolution produced sizable wealth gaps between the rich and poor—according to a new report released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The sweeping study, "How Was Life? Global Well-Being Since 1820," uses historical data from eight world regions to present for the first time "systematic evidence" of trends in areas such as health, education, inequality, the environment, and personal security over the past 200 years.

The report reveals that great strides have been made in some areas such as literacy, life expectancy, and gender inequality. "People's well-being has generally progressed since the early 20th century across a large part of the world," it reads.

But while income inequality, as measured by pre-tax household income among individuals within a country, fell between the end of the 19th century until around 1970, it began to rise markedly at that point, perhaps in response to globalization.

"The enormous increase of income inequality on a global scale is one of the most significant—and worrying—features of the development of the world economy in the past 200 years," the authors write. "It is hard not to notice the sharp increase in income inequality experienced by the vast majority of countries from the 1980s. There are very few exceptions to this."

In a speech Wednesday in Strasbourg, France before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, OECD secretary-general Angel Gurría called on world leaders to "strengthen our efforts to reduce inequality."

He declared:

The financial and economic crisis has exacerbated rising inequality and fueled a social crisis. In OECD countries the income of the top 10 percent of the population is 9.5 times that of the bottom 10 percent, up by more than 30 percent in 25 years. Anchored poverty has increased by approximately 2 percentage points between 2007 and 2011, with much larger increases in countries that have experienced the deepest and longest downturns. The number of those living in households without any income from work has doubled in Greece, Ireland, and Spain. And worryingly for our future, the youth have now replaced the elderly as the group experiencing the greatest risk of income poverty. More

 

© 2014