Human Rights Watch today announced it was challenging a subpoena from the Michigan Department of Corrections to reveal confidential information from its research on rape in Michigan women’s prisons. Human Rights Watch investigated human rights abuses in Michigan beginning in 1994 and subsequently published a report, All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons. In September 1998, Human Rights Watch published Nowhere to Hide: Retaliation Against Women in Michigan State Prisons.
"In the 20 years that Human Rights Watch has been investigating human rights abuses throughout the world, the Michigan Department of Corrections is the first governmental agency to attempt to force us to reveal confidential sources," said Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth.
"Michigan is attacking us rather than attacking the problem," said Regan Ralph, director of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "State authorities have failed to stop the abuse of women prisoners and protect them from retaliation." Human Rights Watch investigated human rights abuses in Michigan beginning in 1994 and subsequently published a report, All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons. In September 1998, Human Rights Watch published Nowhere to Hide: Retaliation Against Women in Michigan State Prisons. Within days of the release of Nowhere to Hide, Michigan served the subpoena on Human Rights Watch.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan has agreed to represent Human Rights Watch in challenging the subpoena. "The Michigan Department of Corrections is attempting to intimidate an organization whose function as a watchdog on governmental abuses of power is critical to our democratic system of government," said ACLU of Michigan Executive Director Kary L. Moss.
The subpoena was served in connection to a suit being jointly litigated by private attorneys and the U.S. Department of Justice. After the publication of All Too Familiar, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Michigan for failing to address the many civil rights violations the Justice Department found during its own investigation in 1995.
"It’s not an accident that the Michigan Department of Corrections is attempting to intimidate us rather than to take the relatively simple measures necessary to stop the abuse of these women," explained Ralph, "Despite the corrections department’s claim of zero-tolerance for sexual abuse, women who report abuse are punished and their right to freedom of expression is denied. Now Michigan is trying to silence Human Rights Watch."
