Maryland on May 2, 2013, became the sixth US state in six years to abolish the death penalty, continuing a trend to end this inherently cruel punishment in the United States. Maryland’s governor should commute the sentences of the five men who remain on the state’s death row.
Gov. Martin O’Malley on May 2 signed a bill abolishing the state’s death penalty and replacing it with the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, the law does not directly affect the five inmates in the state awaiting execution. O’Malley has said he will determine on a case-by-case basis whether to commute their sentences.
“By repealing the death penalty, Maryland joins a growing group of states in rejecting a cruel and inherently unjust practice,” said Alba Morales, US criminal justice researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Governor O’Malley should build on his tremendous leadership on this issue by commuting the death sentences of the five men still on death row.”
Maryland’s repeal of the death penalty is just the latest sign of growing momentum against capital punishment in the United States. With the addition of Maryland, 18 states and the District of Columbia have rejected the death penalty. Legislatures in several other states are considering bills to repeal capital punishment. Parallel with these developments, the number of executions in the United States has declined in recent years – with a total of 43 executions nationwide in 2011 and again in 2012, compared with 85 in 2000.
Human Rights Watch [and this blogger] strongly opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an inherently irreversible and inhumane punishment. Furthermore, the death penalty is inevitably plagued with arbitrariness, racial disparities, and error. In the US, 142 people have been released from death row since 1973 after presenting evidence of their innocence. Kirk Bloodworth, the first person in the United States to be released from death row by DNA evidence, was at the May 2 signing ceremony.
In Maryland, as in many US states, application of the death penalty has been marred by significant racial disparities –four of the five men on Maryland’s death row are African-Americans whose victims were white – and wide discrepancies between jurisdictions. People were far more likely to be sentenced to death, for example, if they committed their crimes in Baltimore County as opposed to the neighboring city of Baltimore.
Since the repeal bill makes no provision for the five men on death row, they could still be executed after exhausting all their appeals. Under the Maryland constitution, the governor has the power to commute sentences. O’Malley should ensure that the death penalty is never again used in Maryland by immediately commuting the sentences of all five death row inmates, Human Rights Watch said.
The new law’s failure to make the repeal of the death penalty retroactive is contrary to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the US is a party. All state governments are bound to abide by its provisions. The covenant states that if a law reduces a criminal penalty, that law should be retroactive. The US included a reservation when it ratified the treaty in 1992 that it would not adhere to this provision, stating that, “US law generally applies to an offender the penalty in force at the time the offense was committed.”
“Maryland did the right thing by ending government-sanctioned killing,” Morales said. “The 32 states that still allow the death penalty should follow Maryland’s lead and end this inhumane practice.”
By a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court of Mississippi this afternoon halted the scheduled execution of Willie Manning just hours before the convicted murderer was to be put to death by lethal injection at the Parchman prison in Sunflower. In their brief order, which you can read for yourself here, the justices did not give any reason for blocking the execution, and it is unclear at this time exactly how the case will proceed from here.
Manning, who is black, was convicted in 1994 for the murder of two white university students in 1992. He has maintained his innocence ever since, amid troublesome (and growing) questions about the accuracy and reliability of the evidence on which his conviction and death sentence are based. Manning’s long-ago trial was marked by racial bias in jury selection, for example, and a jailhouse informant, who incriminated Manning in 1994, has since sought to recant his trial testimony.
But the Mississippi court’s order Tuesday is likely based upon the scientific evidence that was and was not introduced at trial. Manning’s attorneys have long argued that state officials should test DNA and fingerprint evidence from the crime scene — evidence that has never been tested and that would either incriminate Manning definitively or perhaps identify someone else who may have committed the crimes. The state has consistently refused to undertake this testing even though the FBI has offered to do it, and Mississippi has a remarkable recent record of exonerating criminal defendants in such a fashion.
As a matter of law, the absence of this testing from a shaky case like this was likely enough to warrant a stay of Manning’s execution. But the state’s refusal to test its DNA evidence was made even more pronounced over the past few days by the intervention of federal officials. Since May 2, the Justice Department has sent three letters to the attorneys in the case announcing that the feds now are backing away from the “ballistics” and “hair fiber” testimony their so-called “expert” testified about at Manning’s trial. State prosecutors heavily relied on that now-discredited evidence at trial — as have state court judges ever since — as proof that Manning’s conviction was secure enough to warrant his execution.
The state came within four hours of executing Manning despite the conceded inaccuracy and unreliability of the scientific evidence against him, despite the willingness of a jailhouse informant to recant, despite racial bias in jury selection. It came within hours of executing the man, even though the scientific evidence that could exonerate him was never tested. No matter what happens now — and don’t forget Manning is still a long way from being out of trouble — it is a credit to the eight Mississippi justices who voted for the stay that they were willing to change their minds about this case. Last month, by a vote of 5-4, this same court refused to require the DNA testing.
NEW DELHI — A 4-year-old girl who was raped and dumped near a crematorium in central India died on Monday evening from cardiac arrest, hospital authorities said Tuesday.
The girl, the daughter of day laborers, was lured from her home in the town of Ghansor in Madhya Pradesh State on April 17 and found the next day by her parents, bleeding profusely, the police said.
Her kidnapper seized her after promising to buy her bananas from a nearby shop, a police official said Tuesday. She had been in a coma since April 18, Ashok Tank, a doctor who cared for her at Care Nagpur Hospital, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. She suffered severe brain injuries and severe injuries to her vagina, he said, and had been on a ventilator.
“Her heart and lungs stopped functioning,” Dr. Tank said. “It is very inhuman that such a young girl was subjected to sexual abuse.” The girl was transferred from a hospital in Madhya Pradesh to Care Nagpur, in nearby Maharashtra State, on April 20.
The police have arrested Firoz Khan, 27, a welder who worked at the nearby Jhabua Power Plant, in the attack. They have also arrested a second man, Rakesh Chaudhary, 25, who is accused of bringing the girl to her attacker.
“The investigation is going on,” said Mithlesh K. Shukla, superintendent of police for the Seoni district. “They will be charged soon and we will ensure that they get the strictest punishment.”
Dozens of news vans are again camped in front of a major hospital in New Delhi, jockeying for space behind the yellow police barricades so ubiquitous in the Indian capital in recent months. Inside, the 5-year-old victim of another grotesque rape has been making the first steps in what is sure to be a long recovery after being kidnapped, sexually assaulted and left for dead last week in an apartment one floor beneath her family home. On April 22, doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital told reporters that the girl was showing steady signs of recovery after undergoing several procedures. Two men have been arrested in connection with the attack.
For days, scenes across the capital have recalled the weeks following the Dec. 16 gang rape of a 23-year-old student, who later died of her wounds. Demonstrators have again been gathering by the hundreds, clashing with authorities in their outrage at the failure of the police and the government to better protect India’s citizens and, in particular, its women. Several streets near the government in central New Delhi were barricaded as protesters from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, among others, marched toward Parliament.
Before this most recent attack, the initial outrage over the brutality of the Dec. 16 crime had been slowly fading in New Delhi, in spite of the unnervingly steady stream of violent rapes that have continued to be reported by Indian media across the country. In March, the government passed a new, tougher rape law that, among other things, allows for rapes resulting in fatalities to be punishable by death. But many say that the more systemic problems at the root of India’s rising violent crime — such as chronic police understaffing, poor training and a lack of political will to change either — have not been addressed. Sexual assaults are considered to be vastly underreported, and the ones that are reported often go nowhere. In New Delhi alone, of more than 600 rape cases filed last year, just one resulted in a conviction.
Photo: Manish Swarup/ AP
The police handling of both sexual assault and crime against children came under fresh attack as the circumstances of the 5-year-old’s ordeal emerged. After their daughter had gone missing two days before, the family of the victim heard her crying in a locked ground-floor room in the building they live in. After breaking into the room and rushing the girl to local police, the family told reporters that the officers on duty offered them 2000 rupees — a little less than $40 — to quietly disappear and not register a report, a practice observers say is common in a system ill-equipped to handle its caseload. Over the weekend, protesters stormed police headquarters, calling for the resignation of the police commissioner. In response, police handed out pamphlets promising that both the rape case and the offending authorities would be dealt with swiftly, and on Monday, Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told Parliament that the government had taken action against the officers on duty.
What started out as a case about whether corporations could be held accountable in U.S. courts for human rights abuses against foreigners abroad turned into a case about whether anyone can be held accountable. And on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the answer is, mostly, no.
In a sweeping holding, Chief Justice John Roberts led a splintered court in ruling that several Nigerians alleging an oil company aided an abetted torture, arbitrary killings, and indefinite detention could not sue, because the corporate conduct occurred outside the United States. Roberts reasoned that what is known as the “presumption against extraterritoriality” applies to a 200-year-old statute that authorizes civil lawsuits by “aliens” for “violations of the law of nations,” meaning courts should err against enforcing a law intended to punish egregious foreign conduct in the frequent instances when that conduct takes place in a foreign country.
“[T]here is no indication that the ATS was passed to make the United States a uniquely hospitable forum for the enforcement of international norms,” Justice Roberts wrote for the majority inKiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.
Roberts’ conclusion is rebutted by the very conduct the Alien Tort Statute was designed to prevent. Piracy was one of the primary torts targeted by Congress at the time of ATS’ passage – conduct that inherently takes place on the high seas. Justice Stephen Breyer explains in a four-justice concurring opinion that would decide the case on significantly narrower grounds:
As I have indicated, we should treat this Nation’s interest in not becoming a safe harbor for violators of the most fundamental international norms as an important jurisdiction related interest justifying application of the ATS in light of the statute’s basic purposes—in particular that of compensating those who have suffered harm at the hands of, e.g., torturers or other modern pirates. Nothing in the statute or its history suggests that our courts should turn a blind eye to the plight of victims in that “handful of heinous actions.
Now, that handful of heinous actions will have to find remedy elsewhere. This decision not only means that Nigerians cannot sue foreign corporations for their conduct abroad. On this particular point, the four-justice Breyer concurrence agreed that this case did not pass muster. Roberts’ sweeping pronouncement against extraterritoriality may also mean that foreign nationals subject to abuse, for example, at the hands of a U.S. corporation that houses its factories in places whose laws shield it from liability, or an American citizen who commits human rights violations abroad against foreigners, also could not be subject to suit in the United States.
In two recent federal appeals court decisions, lawsuits that challenged torture abroad by two foreign actors were allowed to proceed in U.S. courts because the defendants had lived or were living in the United States. As Justice Breyer points out, Congress is aware that the ATS is the basis for these sorts of lawsuits, and has not sought to amend the act in any way – likely because they recognize that the act was intended to target foreign conduct that is otherwise difficult to reach. But that did not stop the Roberts majority from inferring the narrowest possible congressional intent.
The scope of the opinion will not become clear until it is interpreted by courts. Extraterritoriality is a legal concept that asks not just whether conduct took place abroad, but also whether the claims “touch and concern the territory of the United States” such that a plaintiff can overcome the presumption against them. The only hint the court gives is that lawsuits against corporations will face a particularly heavy burden, noting, “Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far to say that mere corporate presence suffices.”
What is clear is that the presumption is exceedingly difficult to overcome, and that both individuals and corporations have a high chance of skirting liability simply by doing their dirty work elsewhere.
My Two Cents: All the justices agreed the statute was inapplicable to the case at bar but for different reasons. In doing so, the SCOTUS served a major blow to human rights organizations that have used the statute, at least in recent times, to hold multinational corporations (MNCs) accountable for human rights violations committed against foreign nationals in their country of origin. Justice Roberts could have dismissed the case on a number of procedural grounds or simply deferred the case back to the lower court. Instead the majority used the case to redefine the ATS so narrowly as to render it useless. Why, I ask, was necessary to throw out the baby with the bath water? In my opinion, this case was not about policing the world or opening American courts to every frivolous claim of abuse on the planet. This case was about a MNC, with significant ties to the U.S., allegedly committing gross human rights on foreign soil against U.S. foreign nationals. MNCs are now free to set up shop in a foreign country, collude with host countries’ government for precious resources and land rights, pollute the soil and water, poison the air and have those who protest too much (or too loudly) summarily disappeared or executed w/o fear of being sued or held accountable in any meaningful way!
Silver lining: The SCOTUS left open the possibility that it might review other cases that are filed under the statute so long as the new elements and jurisdictional prerequisites are met.
I’m baaaccckkk! I have been extremely busy and thus haven’t had the time to post anything since New Year’s Day. Those of you who follow my blog regularly know that this happens from time to time. And when I am unable to blog for any extended period of time, I don’t just stop caring about human rights issues around the world. How could I? It’s what I do! Instead, I continue to read and save stories to post at a later date. Today’s that day.
The slideshow above highlights some of the human rights stories I would have blogged about but for my demanding schedule. These slides are in chronological order and cover news and events from January through March 2013. You may notice that some slides are not dated. These slides fall outside the date parameters but were included as recommended sources for additional information.
Click on the image above to initiate the slideshow hosted on Sliderocket. The show will run automatically or you can manually advance it. Click on the image under each title to be redirected to the appropriate site. To watch a video slide, pause the show and click the play button.
Today is the first day of the new year, 1 January 2013. Before embarking on the new year, I wanted to share a list compiled by Freedom House that reflects back on some of last year’s human rights developments. How did the world do following an eventful 2011?
Unfortunately, the bad seemed to outweigh the good this year, as many authoritarians held on to power and continued upheaval in the Middle East threatened to derail any democratic progress. Internal conflicts in a number of African countries boiled over, and the bulk of the former Soviet Union appeared to be moving in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, widely hailed political achievements in countries like Burma, Egypt and Georgia were complicated by negative twists.
Ongoing ethnic conflicts in Burma have undercut a recent democratic opening that was significant enough to allow the first visit by a U.S. president. Relatively free and competitive elections in Egypt have been overshadowed by continued unrest and authoritarian maneuvers by President Mohamed Morsi. In Georgia, what was considered a historic democratic transfer of power has been potentially jeopardized by what some regard as politically motivated prosecutions of former ruling party officials.
Though this list is far from exhaustive, the following were some of the best and worst human rights developments in 2012.
BEST
LGBTI Victories in the Western Hemisphere:
There were several important victories in the battle for LGBTI rights in 2012, particularly in the United States and Latin America. A U.S. president voiced public support for gay marriage for the first time, and three states — Washington, Maryland and Maine — passed laws allowing same-sex marriage, bringing the total number of states with such rules to nine. In addition, the first openly gay woman was elected to the U.S. Senate. In Argentina, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2010, the Senate passed legislation that allows gender to be legally changed without medical or judicial approval, and includes sex-change surgery and hormone treatment in government health insurance plans. The same month, Chile passed an anti-discrimination law that penalizes all forms of discrimination. Although not specifically written to protect LGTBI rights, the measure was spurred by the brutal killing an openly gay man. Even Cuba has jumped on the bandwagon, electing its first transgender person to municipal office. Same-sex marriage is also legal in Canada and some parts of Mexico. Sadly, for all of the progress seen in this hemisphere, the situation for LGBTI people has actually worsened in much of Eurasia and Africa.
Passage of the Magnitsky Act:
Russia’s human rights decline made it an easy choice for this year’s “worst” list, but one development is worthy of celebration — the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Magnitsky Act. The legislation is named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in jail after exposing a multi-million dollar fraud by Russian officials. It will place visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials involved in human rights abuses. The bill received overwhelming bipartisan support as part of a larger measure that normalizes trade relations with Russia and Moldova. President Obama signed the legislation on December 14 despite harsh objections from the Kremlin. This law could set a precedent for how the United States and other free societies address gross human rights violations around the world. The European Parliament has endorsed the adoption of similar legislation.
Conviction of Charles Taylor:
In April, former Liberian president Charles Taylor became the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes since World War II. He was sentenced in May by a UN-backed special tribunal to 50 years in prison for his role in a decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone. He was specifically found guilty of aiding and abetting the “commission of serious crimes including rape, murder, and destruction of civilian property” by rebel forces in that country. Taylor stepped down as Liberian president in 2003 amid serious domestic challenges to his rule and international calls for his resignation. His departure ended 14 years of intermittent civil war that had killed some 200,000 Liberians. He sought asylum in Nigeria, but was eventually handed over to the special tribunal.
Survival of the Tunisian Revolution:
While the freely elected transitional authorities in Tunisia have been buffeted by public frustration with high unemployment and pressure from conservative Islamists, the country has not yet suffered the fate of many of its neighbors in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring. Varying degrees of instability and repression persist in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and particularly Syria, but Tunisia has made slow if uneven gains in its democratic transition. The constitutional drafting process is creeping forward without the bitter conflicts seen in Egypt, and the ruling Ennahda party, which was at one time a radical Islamist faction, has largely followed through on its commitment to govern moderately and work peacefully with secular parties. As the country approaches the two-year anniversary of the revolution, however, economic struggles have led to anti-government protests, one of which left nearly 200 people wounded, and support for the ruling coalition has definitively waned. The constitution is two months overdue, and there have been some concerning violations of press freedom. Despite these challenges, Tunisia continues to provide a positive example to the wider region.
WORST
Civil War in Syria:
The civil war in Syria is the worst human rights and humanitarian catastrophe in the world today. The latest estimates put the death toll at 42,000, with no end in sight. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an alarming number of reporters — 28 — have been killed while covering the conflict in 2012. President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been on the verge of collapse for months, with many of his top advisers defecting or fleeing the country, yet he has vowed to remain in Syria, dead or alive. It is not even clear that his removal alone would end the fighting. Meanwhile, attacks by government forces on civilians in rebel-held areas are unceasing, and there are now concerns that the military is arming missiles with chemical weapons. Some rebel groups in the fragmented opposition have resorted to kidnapping and retribution killings, raising serious questions about postwar governance. No amount of diplomacy or international pressure has succeeded in convincing Russia to stop providing arms to government forces, or China to back broad-based demands for al-Assad to step down. And there is simply no political will within the United States or the rest of NATO to hasten the end of the conflict through direct intervention.
Devastation in Congo:
Over the past century, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most resource-rich countries on the African continent, has been gutted by a combination of colonialism, corrupt and ineffective government, ethnic conflict and a succession of armed militias and rebel groups that have raped and pillaged their way through the countryside, often using conscripted child soldiers. As many as five million people have died since the late 1990s. The fraudulent 2011 reelection of feckless president Joseph Kabila was followed by the mutiny of hundreds of ethnic Tutsi soldiers, who then formed the March 23 (M23) rebel movement, widely believed to be funded by neighboring Rwanda. In November, M23 invaded and took control of Goma, a provincial capital with a population of 1 million, leading nearly 140,000 people to flee their homes. The international community has largely turned a blind eye to the country’s seemingly endless crisis, perhaps because there does not appear to be an easy solution. On a positive note, international pressure forced M23 to vacate Goma after just a few weeks, and the United States and Britain, which had long tolerated Rwanda’s denials that it was contributing to the unrest, cut military aid to the country as a result of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But these steps on their own appear unlikely end the fighting.
Coup and Extremism in Mali:
As in Congo, the horrific human rights situation in Mali was not caused by any single event. Rather it was a cascade of disasters that included a military coup, a reinvigorated Tuareg separatist movement, an influx of hard-line Islamist militants and the combined effects of long-term drought, poverty and corruption. This perfect storm has created a humanitarian crisis that demands international action. Northern Mali is now controlled by militant groups that blend radical Islam with transnational crime. These militants have quickly introduced a crude imitation of Sharia, banning music, destroying historic sites deemed “un-Islamic,” and summarily punishing alleged crimes like alcohol use and adultery. There are widespread reports of rape and forced marriage, as well as the recruitment of child soldiers. According to the latest UN report, over 200,000 people are currently displaced. The international community, deeply concerned by these violations as well as the broader security threat posed by such a sizeable haven for terrorists, has pressured what remains of the Malian government to overcome its internal divisions and prepare for an international invasion to reclaim the rebel-held north.
Russia’s Precipitous Decline:
Since Vladimir Putin’s tightly controlled reelection as president in March, the political situation in Russia has become increasingly dismal, with some experts comparing it to the Soviet era. As part of an escalating clampdown on anti-corruption activists and political opponents, the government has enacted numerous pieces of legislation that will have a harmful impact on human rights and the functioning of civil society. Most disturbingly, one new law requires civil society organizations that receive foreign funds to register as “foreign agents” or face possible criminal charges. In a related development, USAID was forced by the Russian government to withdraw from the country. Expanded definitions of “treason” and “espionage” in the penal code have opened the door for authorities to round up government critics as well as citizens who consult with foreign firms or simply monitor human rights abuses. Other repressive measures have recriminalized libel, curbed Internet freedom, outlawed “homosexual propaganda,” and imposed additional restrictions on public gatherings. Independent voices, some within the government, who have tried to speak out against this wave of legislation have been expelled, arrested or otherwise muzzled.
Repression in Bahrain, Other Gulf States:
After an independent report commissioned by Bahrain’s King Hamad uncovered widespread human rights abuses committed during the violent suppression of a protest movement in February 2011, the government promised to implement the recommended reforms. That was a year ago. Not only has the regime failed to enact anything other than minor cosmetic changes, seemingly designed to mollify the international community, it has also continued on a path of repression. Impunity for the security forces and censorship persist, and dozens of human rights activists remain imprisoned, including 2012 Freedom Award winners Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and his daughter Zainab. In recent weeks, the government has stepped up the pressure, banning “unlicensed” demonstrations and stripping 31 opposition members of their citizenship. Journalists and human rights groups, including Freedom House, have been repeatedly denied entry to the country to report on these abuses. Sadly, Bahrain is not the only Gulf state in decline. Several neighboring governments have begun to make some alarming moves to silence their critics. Deportations, travel bans and unexplained detentions, as well as disturbing new legal restrictions freedom of expression, have been seen in the United Arab Emirates. A ban on “unlicensed” peaceful demonstrations was passed in Kuwait. And Oman has jailed dozens of people for making critical comments about the regime.
The Menace of Blasphemy Laws:
The online dissemination of an offensive film that mocked Islam and sparked violent anti-American riots and protests in more than two dozen countries served as a reminder of the pernicious nature of laws that prohibit blasphemy in many parts of the world. These laws, which ban insults to religions and religious figures, not only have a chilling effect on free expression but are often used to justify violence, repress religious minorities, and settle personal grudges rather than combat intolerance. According to a Freedom House special report, there is no evidence that restricting speech reduces religious intolerance. In fact, the evidence shows that prohibitions on blasphemy actually lead to a wide range of human rights abuses. This does not prevent some Islamic leaders from using global bodies like the United Nations to push for international norms that prohibit blasphemy. In 2011, after enormous advocacy efforts by human rights groups and a number of countries including the United States, Canada and much of Europe, the push for this kind of legislation was replaced by a more circumspect call for the promotion of religious tolerance and dialogue. Sadly, these moderating efforts were endangered this year by yet another flare-up of religious outrage.
Just 72 hours ago in the Indian capital of Delhi 14 children were freed from slave labor. They were being held in dark, insanitary conditions and forced to work for up to 15 hours a day making Christmas decorations. Two were just eight years old.
The suffering of these young children, cruelly trafficked into slave labor, is the real Christmas story of 2012. Their plight must become a wake-up call for all concerned about the treatment of vulnerable children around the world. It demands we move immediately to ban all child labor.
The children rescued in Delhi had been beaten and intimidated. Imprisoned in dingy, locked rooms where they were forced to make Christmas goods with no access to light or fresh air. Malnourished and underfed, many had injuries as a result of using glass to make trinkets and because of violent assaults by their gangmasters. All had been sold into slavery and trafficked by middlemen.
The Christmas decorations and seasonal gifts they were making were for export from India to the West. There are near identical items on sale in shops in America and Europe right now.
The courageous morning break-in that freed the children from this slave labor was organized and carried out by Kailash Satyarthi and his co-leaders of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and Global March Against Child Labour (GMACL). They faced violent resistance by the gangmasters and thugs.
Because the gangmasters had received a tip off that a raid would take place, most of the children had been whisked away from the workshop and 12 were incarcerated in a pitch-black cell no bigger than 6ft by 6ft.
Only with police help were the locks to the cell broken and all children rescued. They are now receiving rehabilitative care and arrangements are being made for them to go to school.
The ‘Delhi 14′ are just a few of the thousands of children forcibly conscripted into a multi-billion Christmas sweatshop trade in hundreds of hidden factories and workplaces. The child laborers are just a tiny proportion of the 15 million children under the age of 12 who do not go to school because they are forced to work.
Christmas is supposed to be a festive celebration but for the ‘Delhi 14′ it had become a nightmare of exploitation, cruelty, neglect and violence. Their suffering is amongst the most tragic Christmas tales of our times.
The cry for help of a child should be an international language we all are able to understand and respond to immediately.
We must now demand that before the Indian Parliament finishes its session on December the 20th legislation is passed banning all child labor for under fourteens and outlawing hazardous work for under eighteens.
Our petition on EducationEnvoy.org asks concerned citizens around the world to support our call to end child labor.
The figures of child exploitation makes appalling Christmas reading: of the 61 million children who do not go to primary school one in four work full-time. In Africa child labor is rising.
My report on child labor — published with the help of the Brookings Institution‘s Kevin Watkins and a number of organizations including the excellent Understanding Child Work project demonstrates — many children who go to school part-time also work part-time. In total, 215 million children are in some kind of employment.
More alarming is the number of children aged less than 12 who are involved in hazardous forms of labor, 90 million in total. These children are to be found risking their young lives down narrow tunnels mining for gold in Tanzania. They are working on cocoa farms in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire or in garment factories in South Asia. More than half of these vulnerable children are trafficked, forced into prostitution or armed conflict. The anti-slavery organization Walk Free reports that in some parts of the world children as young as five and six are sold as slaves.
People assume all too readily that child labor will simply die out of its own accord. So we fail to press companies and consumers hard enough to demand the policing and enforcement of anti-child labor laws. For too long governments around the world have stood by and not taken sufficient action to eradicate child labor. That’s why I am now calling on governments, donors and UN agencies to come together and put in place the policies needed to get children out of exploitative employment and into education. Just as universal education was the catalyst a century ago for consigning child labor to the history books of the rich world, so it can free a generation of children today.
The new exposé of the children denied schooling because of child labor comes just six weeks after the Taliban’s shooting of Malala Yousafzai simply because she wanted to go to school. The world is discovering that in 2012 millions of children are forcibly prevented from attending lessons because of child labor, child marriage, child militias, child trafficking and the brutal discrimination against girls. In total 32 million girls and 29 million boys are denied their right to education.
We now know from these appalling new revelations the sheer scale, severity and depth of inhumane treatment visited upon young children, it is time for the U.N. to draw up a plan to end child slavery.
The education of all children cannot of course start to happen until we end the exploitation of children. 2012 must be the year when the casual complacency about the plight of 61 million out of school children ends, 2013 must be the breakthrough year that ushers in urgent and practical action. Let this year’s grim Christmas tale lead to a New Year resolution the world will honor – the end of child slavery once and for all.
About 10 million people are jailed each year for crimes large and small. Most – two thirds of the 750,000 in jail on any given day – stay long periods without conviction at great cost to the public and to themselves because they can’t afford bail.
New Orleans
The teenager opened her neighbor’s unlocked car, grabbed the iPhone off the armrest and ran home, a few doors away in her downtown neighborhood here.
Perchelle Richardson still isn’t sure why she took the phone. Just five days earlier, for her 18th birthday, her mother had given her a standard, no-frills cellphone. But she loved the way iPhones looked, and her little brothers had seen this one through the car window as they played outside.
The high school student, with no previous criminal record, was arrested and, because her family couldn’t raise the $200 to spring her, would spend 51 days in jail, missing school, before she got her day in court. Her public defenders unsuccessfully asked the judge to release her without court fee and after that could do little beyond bringing her school worksheets, which she craved, she says, because they helped to break her boredom. Ms. Richardson is symbolic of a little-known criminal-justice crisis that affects the millions of low-income Americans each year who languish behind bars in city and county jails. On any given day, three-quarters of a million people are jail inmates and two-thirds of them haven’t been convicted of anything, according to US Department of Justice statistics. They are awaiting trial, and an estimated 80 percent of them cannot afford to pay bail.
Most won’t go to prison: Overall, 95 percent of those booked into local jails in 2010-11 were not subsequently sent to prison, says Timothy Murray of the Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI). And 75 percent of felony defendants will be judged innocent, given probation, or sent to rehabilitation programs and never end up being sentenced to prison, says longtime correctional researcher James Austin.
Richardson’s stay would have been longer, but an aunt helped the family put together the court fee. She was released two weeks before she was arraigned in court.
Many defendants, like Richardson, serve more time waiting for trial than the sentence they receive for their charges – particularly for petty or probation-worthy offenses. Yet in New Orleans, like other cities across the nation, there are countless stories about how the lives of poor people were set back while they sat in jail, all for the lack of a relatively small sum of money. There’s the dishwasher stopped on a traffic-ticket warrant who lost his job while waiting for trial; the jailed fast-food worker who couldn’t reach her landlord, was evicted, and lost her possessions, which were stacked on the curb.
“Every case of unnecessary pretrial incarceration is much more than simply an effective and unjustifiable waste of taxpayer money – it has direct and tragic human costs,” says Judge Truman Morrison III, who has sat on the Washington, D.C., Superior Court bench for 30 years and is PJI’s board chairman. Judge Morrison says that even though courts have in recent decades developed pretrial programs in which most defendants return to court without problem, the ways that the justice system sets bail haven’t changed. “Most judges spend their days saying, ‘$200, $500, $1,000.’ They have no idea if these people are getting out,” he says.
And for the local jurisdictions who pay for those jail beds, needless pretrial incarceration costs billions each year, according to Justice Department estimates.
The Idaho Correctional Center is shown south of Boise. A gang war that appears to have taken over parts of an Idaho private prison is spilling into the federal courts. A group of inmates at the Idaho Correctional Center is suing Corrections Corporation of America, contending the company is working with a few powerful prison gangs to control the facility and save money on staffing (Photo: Charlie Litchfield/ AP).
BOISE, IDAHO • A gang war that appears to have taken over parts of an Idaho private prison is spilling into the federal courts, with some inmates contending prison officials are ceding control to gang leaders in an effort to save money on staffing.
Eight inmates at the Idaho Correctional Center are suing the Corrections Corporation of America, contending the company is working with a few powerful prison gangs to control the facility south of Boise.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in Boise’s U.S. District Court, paints the prison as a place where correctional officers work in fear of angering inmate gang members and where housing supervisors ask permission from gang leaders before moving anyone new into an empty cell. The inmates also contend that CCA officials use gang violence and the threat of gang violence as an “inexpensive device to gain control over the inmate population,” according to the lawsuit, and that housing gang members together allows the company to use fewer guards, reducing payroll costs.
“The complaint alleges that CCA fosters and develops criminal gangs,” attorney Wyatt Johnson, who along with T.J. Angstman represents the inmates, said in a statement. “Ideally, the lawsuit should force this to come to an end.”
The inmates point to investigative reports from the Idaho Department of Correction that suggest gangs like the Aryan Knights and the Severely Violent Criminals were able to wrest control from staff members after prison officials began housing members of the same gangs together in some cellblocks to reduce violent clashes.
The power shift meant a prison staffer had to negotiate the placement of new inmates with gang leaders, according to the department reports, and that prison guards were afraid to enforce certain rules.
Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private prison company, says its top priority is the safety and security of its prisons, employees and inmates.
“We take all allegations seriously and act swiftly if our standards have not been met,” spokesman Steve Owen said in a statement. “… At all times, we are held to the highest standards of accountability and transparency by our government partners, and expect to be.”
Owen said the Nashville, Tenn.-based company has operated the Idaho prison in partnership with the state correction department for more than a decade, providing housing and rehabilitation for “some of the state’s most challenging inmate populations.”
Both Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s spokesman Jon Hanian and state Corrections Department spokesman Jeff Ray declined to comment because of the litigation, though neither the state nor the department is named as a defendant. The Idaho Correctional Center is the largest prison in the state, with an operating capacity of 2,080 beds.
The inmates also cite security footage of a violent gang attack carried out in May, which they say shows CCA staffers failed to follow basic safety and security policies.
The video, filed with the lawsuit, shows six members of the Aryan Knights prison gang jumping out of a janitor supply closet to attack seven members of a rival gang. The Aryan Knights in the video are armed with knives and other weapons made out of toothbrushes, drawer pulls and other materials.
Just one guard appears to be nearby at the time, and that guard tries to pull away one inmate who is repeatedly stabbing another. Other guards soon arrive and jump in to separate the offenders, deploying pepper spray and ordering the inmates to the ground.
After the attack the state Department of Correction completed a series of investigative reports, which showed CCA staffers weren’t following basic safety and security policies at the prison.
The reports said prison staff failed to take such basic steps as making sure other inmates didn’t go near the weapons used in the fight. As a result, the chain of evidence wasn’t preserved, according to the reports, and it’s unclear if any of the inmates were ever criminally charged.
The reports also include details from an interview with CCA’s unit manager at the prison, Norma Rodriguez, who told department investigators that the gang members essentially were running some of the cellblocks.
Rodriguez said sex offenders can’t be housed in those units because they’re at risk of attacks by gang members, and inmates without gang affiliation can’t be moved into the pods because it would force them to join the gangs or be targeted themselves.
Rodriguez told the corrections investigators that as a result, she had to negotiate new inmate placements with gang leaders. She also said prison guards were afraid to enforce basic safety rules, such as keeping inmates from covering over the small windows on their cell doors. Rodriguez said that when she tries to enforce the rules, gang members warn her that she’s only making it “hard on” the other guards, implying her staffers will be attacked in retaliation.
The corrections department documents also imply that guards may have helped the inmates plan for the attack shown in the security footage, or they at the least looked the other way.
A similar incident, with a group of gang members hiding in a closet to attack rivals, happened less than a year ago, according to the reports, so CCA guards knew such an attack was a possibility.
In the May attack, only one guard was on hand because the other had gone to get candy bars and sodas for the inmates in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, according to the reports, and cell searches were sometimes skipped or shoddily done, allowing the inmates to build and store weapons.
Guards apparently also failed to take the basic security measure of doing a head count as offenders moved from the cellblock to the dining and recreation areas, so it wasn’t immediately clear that the six inmates were hiding in the janitor’s closet.
Jackie and Mike Bezos have donated a personal gift of $25,000 to "The RaiseForWomen challenge," a fundraising initiative supporting nonprofits doing work to empower women and girls around the world. The donation, combined with $75,000 from The Skoll Foundation, brings to $100,000 the total in prizes going to the causes that raise the most funds. Ja […]
We are thrilled to announce a very successful first week in the RaiseforWomen Challenge, with over $126,000 raised! We would like to thank everyone who has participated in the challenge so far. We have under five weeks left –– until June 6 –– to raise as much as possible! Half the Sky Movement will be giving out weekly prizes to individuals participating in […]
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After an 
