Author: mopress

“Justice abhors punishing an innocent person; and if they are innocent why shall they not enjoy their natural rights as fully and absolute as the rest of mankind. Or is it their being born of a different colour from ourselves that gives us this prerogative of dealing with them as we please…”

–Anthony Benezet

From the remarkable recent collection of Benezet’s anti-slavery writings: To Be Silent Would be Criminal: the Anti-Slavery Influence and Writings of Anthony Benezet. Edited, with extensive prefatory notes, by Irv A. Brendlinger. Revitalization: Explorations in World Christian Movements. Pietist and Wesleyan Studies, No. 20. The Scarecrow Press; Lanham, MD; Toronto; and Plymouth, UK. And The Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization and Movements. 2007.

“we Christians introduced the Traffick of Slaves, and that before our coming they lived in Peace; but, say they, it is observable, that wherever Christianity comes, there comes with it a Sword, a Gun, Powder and Ball.”

–William Smith, quoting a 1726 conversation with a European merchant in Africa (cited in Benezet’s 1762 “Short Account of Africa,” edited by Brendlinger 2007).

UNITED NATIONS

Press Release

SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON HUMAN
RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS ENDS VISIT
TO THE UNITED STATES

17 May 2007: The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante, issued the following statement today:

The Special Rapporteur wishes to thank the Government of the United States of America for their official invitation to visit their country and their cooperation during his 18 day visit to the United States from 30 April to 17 May 2007. In the course of his visit, the Special Rapporteur met with senior government officials in charge of migration and human rights issues at the federal level.

While in the country, the Special Rapporteur traveled to the border areas in California and Arizona, witnessing firsthand the operations of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He also met with migrants in South Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, New York and Washington DC and had the opportunity to speak with and hear from representatives of the civil society working on the human rights of migrants at the local, state, regional, and national level.

The Special Rapporteur had the opportunity to visit the Florence Detention Center in Florence, Arizona, taking note of the conditions of migrant detainees in that facility.

He was disappointed, however, that his scheduled and approved visits to the Hutto Detention Center in Texas and the Monmouth Detention Center in New Jersey were cancelled with no explanation.

His visit has shed light on a range of concerns regarding the rights of migrants, including arbitrary detention; separation of families; substandard conditions of detention; procedural violations in criminal and administrative law proceedings, racial and ethnic discrimination; arbitrary and collective expulsions and violations of children’s and women’s rights.

The Special Rapporteur especially noted his concern that there is no centralized system in the United States to obtain information regarding those arrested by immigration officials or where individuals are detained. Families may spend prolonged periods without information as to the whereabouts of detained relatives. Transfers of individuals in custody also may occur without notice to families or attorneys and may result in detention in remote locations, far from families and access to legal support.

Mandatory detention of individuals who are neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community causes family separation and economic, emotional, psychological hardship for family members, particularly children.

The Special Rapporteur further noted that accompanied and unaccompanied children are temporarily detained in adult detention facilities which do not adequately protect the rights of child migrants.

The Special Rapporteur noted that migrants undergoing removal proceedings do not have the right to appointed legal Counsel and must therefore represent themselves in complex legal proceedings.

The Special Rapporteur also had the opportunity to hear the testimonies of many migrant workers affected by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, including guest workers and migrant workers. Human rights issues raised with the Special Rapporteur included the lack of adequate housing available to migrant workers, inhuman and degrading treatment of workers, disparate treatment of workers based on ethnic or national origin, coerced labor and the lack of a fair living wage for all workers. Of particular concern are migrant workers who were being exploited by subcontractors of US government offices in charge of cleaning and repairing tasks. These US government offices ignore labor grievances about violations of migrants? labor rights including wage theft, and they deny their responsibility and pass it on to the subcontractors.

The Special Rapporteur encourages the United States Government:

– to ensure that domestic laws and immigration enforcement activities are consistent with its international obligations to protect the rights of migrant workers within the context of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture and All Forms of Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (CAT), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

– The Special Rapporteur encourages the United States Government to sign and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families

The Special Rapporteur calls upon the U.S. authorities to promote and enforce national policies and practices that protect human rights and public welfare of migrants. He noted that an over-reliance on, and delegation of authority to local level law enforcement may compromise the ability of the U.S. government to effectively address issues affecting migrants, and to comply with its human rights obligations under International Law.

The Special Rapporteur will provide the results of his fact finding mission and his recommendations in his report to the Human Rights Council.

Professor Jorge Bustamante was appointed Special Rapporteur in August 2005. The mandate on the human rights of migrants was established in 1999 to examine ways and means to overcome the obstacles existing to the full and effective protection of the human rights of migrants, including obstacles and difficulties for the return of migrants who are undocumented or in an irregular situation.

The TUFF Coalition has a new website with a focus on the campaign to close the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant children — a campaign they started in Dec. 2006:

www.texansunited4families.com

A Sunday Sermon

OpEdNews

By Greg Moses

Studying recent Congressional debates over the Department of Homeland Security reminds us why we much prefer covering activists and social issues rather than policymakers and policy. But clearly, activism meets policy somewhere. And the better we understand where policy is coming from, the better activists we can be. So we work through the eye burn.

As a basic set of working hypotheses, we first like what the Kelleher report says about Homeland Security leadership — that the department is run by a cadre of Bush appointees who will soon find themselves out of power.

Next we add the survey showing DHS employees to be the most demoralized workers in federal employ — telling us that the cadre of Bush appointees won’t find their doors hitting them fast enough on the way out, insofar as the rank and file are concerned.

On top of these happy hypotheses we note that the agency of 200,000 employees exceeds the recent ability of Congress to comprehend it. The authorization bill for 2006 never passed the Senate, while the 2007 bill never even passed the House.

Without authorization bills, Congress has funded the agency by a process that Rep. Farr of California calls a “hold your nose and vote” approach. Which has only, we assume, increased the demoralizing power of Bush appointees to issue orders as they please.

As a big-picture assumption, therefore, we shall say that the Department of Homeland Security deserves as much respect as one would give to any cadre of Bush appointees who have broken free of civil service and Congressional traditions.

In recent Congressional debates over the 2008 program at DHS, we see that at least the House has passed an authorization bill, and that minimally, House leadership has attempted to restore the checks and balances of civil service and Congressional oversight, to some degree.

We are not distracted, therefore, by Republican denunciations regarding “earmarks”. Yes, we would like to see more transparency, but on balance the current trend of Democratic leadership appears to be perforating a cuticle that was only thickening under Republican rule.

Republicans complain that Democratic leadership is acting like the new machine in town, as if that old cadre of Bush appointees weren’t trying to rumble like the old one.

Republicans also complain (with some apparent Democrat collaboration) that the xenophobic border barriers are being bogged down in committee. To which we say, oh, no kidding?

And so, on the basis of these very general and hasty hypotheses, we have a few hopes to share.

With respect to the workings of DHS in the Dallas area, we would like to see Congressional powers and civil service forces stiffen their civil resistance against the demoralizing effects of Bush appointees, boldly treating them like the lame ducks they are.

But what about Homeland Security, is it not a national concern?

Here we find the Congressional debates helpful. If we think of Homeland Security as hometown security, as suggested by California Congressman Sam Farr, then it becomes obvious to observers of the Texas scene — especially lately in Dallas — that the effective priorities of the Bush cadre appear to have little to do with making our neighborhoods more comfortable places for people to live.