Human Rights Watch (HRW) is grateful for the opportunity to address the State Duma about human rights violations in the United States. HRW is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization dedicated to defending and protecting human rights around the world. We currently document human rights concerns in more than 90 countries, including in Russia, where we have had a representative office since 1992. As part of this work, HRW conducts significant research and advocacy to secure increased respect for internationally recognized human rights within the United States. Of Human Rights Watch’s six regional divisions, the US Program is the only division that focuses exclusively on one country.
HRW’s US program consists of 17 staff members. In the last four years, HRW has published 35 reports on a wide range of human rights abuses in the United States. These reports often address the rights of people within the criminal justice system and in immigration detention. We have reported on incidences of sexual assault in immigration detention. We have reported on the massive racial disparities among drug offenders sent to prison. And we have documented how low-income people are more likely to be imprisoned pre-trial due to their inability to pay even low amounts of bail. We have also issued reports on human rights abuses against immigrants and refugees, women, children,people with HIV/AIDS, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons. In addition, we advocate against abuses arising from US counterterrorism policies, particularly the United States’ torture and mistreatment of detainees and operation of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
HRW is part of a robust civil society in America and often works closely with a range of other organizations in order to transform domestic policy and serve the common good. American civil society is not monitored or regulated; registration with the state authorities is only for tax purposes. Laws on lobbying, like in many countries, are in place not to interfere with or control civil society’s activities, but to distinguish for tax status purposes between organizations that are predominantly involved in certain types of party political activity and those which pursue charitable purposes, such as the promotion of human rights, but will also legitimately and inevitably engage in some political activity. While some organizations do receive funds from the government, many are funded independently—by a wide range of individuals, grant-making foundations, corporate donors, and even foreign sources. There are no restrictions on who can fund civil society, which helps to create such a broad-based, active, and flourishing community.
As part of this community, Human Rights Watch is able to advocate against a range of abuses in an open political environment. Within the United States, constitutionally protected freedoms and the existence of a vibrant civil society enable citizens and organizations like HRW to operate effectively and without fear. The three separate branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—which all function independently from one another are important avenues for HRW’s advocacy. Similarly, the rights enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution—particularly the freedoms of expression and assembly—reinforcethe internationally recognized human rights obligations that shape HRW’s US program work.
HRW staff members regularly meet with officials from all branches of the US government, obtain government records and data through the Freedom of Information Act and state public records requests, and speak openly and frequently about their concerns and findings in the US media. For example, while examining the transfer of immigration detainees between multiple facilities, HRW filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for immigration detention. In response, ICE provided HRW with copies of 158 pages of relevant correspondence and a disc with 1.16 gigabytes of data on the transfers. This information was crucial to HRW’s publication of two reports on detainee transfers and effective advocacy for better transfer policies. When researching the backlog of untested forensic exams for sexual assault victims in the Los Angeles, California area, HRW requested and was provided with relevant data from 30 cities. This year, in order to examine police handling of sexual assault cases in the District of Columbia, HRW received hundreds of pages of documents from the Mayor’s Office of Victim Services, the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, the Office of Police Complaints, and the Metropolitan Police Department. The police provided us with incident reports for all sexual assaults over a three year period, policies, training materials, and access to an internal database in order to review investigative files for over 200 sexual assault cases.
HRW has faced greater difficulties using FOIA requests to obtain data on US counterterrorism operations, but we have continuously pressed for greater transparency around these issues.
HRW frequently criticizes actions and policies of the United States. So far this year, HRW has issued over 20 press releases criticizing the US federal government and over 10 critical of various US state governments. At the same time, HRW continues to be able to work constructively with officials in both the legislative and executive branches of the US government, as well as members of both major political parties. Given the breadth and depth of civil society in the United States, HRW can often work closely with a range of other organizations, both informally and in formal coalitions. As a result, HRW has had a substantial impact on various policies and practices that affect the human rights of people in the US.
Abuses in Counterterrorism
Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the US government instituted a number of policies that violated international human rights norms, including by authorizing the torture of terrorism suspects and rendition of suspects to countries where they were likely to be tortured, establishing secret detention facilities and imprisoning suspects without trial at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Human Rights Watch worked with other civil society organizations, through the political process and through the United States’ independent courts, to change these policies, and many were changed. We proposed legislation to prohibit torture to the US congress, which it ultimately adopted over the strong opposition of then-president George W. Bush. In response to legal challenges brought by volunteer lawyers for detainees in Guantanamo, the US Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration’s system of military tribunals and ruled that the US government could not deny terrorism suspects their right to habeas corpus. And the day after he took office, President Obama issued an executive order which ensured that the ban on torture would be respected by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and shut down the CIA’s network of secret prisons. He also pledged to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay within one year.
Nevertheless, significant problems remain. The US continues to employ counterterrorism policies which violate human rights, and has yet to offer a full accounting of past abuses in this arena, or hold any senior officials accountable for their actions.
On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2012, which, for the first time, codified indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without charge into US law.
Despite clear international prohibitions on prolonged indefinite detention without charge or adequate due process protections, 166 men remain detained at Guantanamo Bay and most will never be charged. Those who are charged are prosecuted before military commissions that, despite new legislation which provided stronger due process protections, still remain deeply flawed. For example, they lack independence and allow inferior forms of evidence, such as coerced testimony and hearsay. Human Rights Watch closely monitors the military commissions at Guantanamo, and HRW staff attends nearly every hearing. Human Rights Watch continues to advocate that the US government transfer all those detainees charged with crimes to federal civilian courts for trial and repatriate or resettle the remainder.
The US has also continued to hold detainees indefinitely without trial at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch was one of the first civil society groups invited by the US government to observe the administrative review boards conducted for detainees held at Bagram, and provided critiques and suggestions to the officials in charge of the process. While some of those suggestions were incorporated into later versions of the review boards, the boards remain fundamentally flawed because detainees do not have access to lawyers, only a US military “personal representative,” and cannot see all the evidence against them. Human Rights Watch has closely monitored the conditions of persons in US detention in Afghanistan, including through direct interviews with former detainees, and has advocated that the US government ensure the transition of the detention facility to Afghan control takes place under a lawful framework. Unfortunately, the US conditioned the transfer of the detention facility at Bagram on Afghanistan’s adoption of the same flawed review system and the same principle of indefinite detention without charge.
Moreover, the profiling and unsubstantiated surveillance of Muslims by US law enforcement continues unabated. The US Department of Justice continues to explicitly allow for religious profiling for national security reasons in its “Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department (NYPD) have been using investigative practices that require no suspicion of wrongdoing to undertake surveillance of Muslims in the US. One NYPD surveillance operation involved plainclothes officers infiltrating and photographing dozens of mosques, Muslim student organizations, and businesses owned or frequented by Muslims in the greater New York region. Using this information, the police department built databases showing where Muslims live, pray, buy groceries, and use internet cafes. The NYPD also monitored Muslim college students throughout the northeastern United States, including at Syracuse University, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Abuses in the Criminal Justice System
The United States has the largest population of incarcerated persons in the world, and it often employs harsh and extreme criminal punishments. Thirty-three US states allow the death penalty, and 30 people have been executed so far in 2012. The US is also the only country in the world which imposes life without parole sentences on youth, with approximately 2,600 youth offenders currently serving that sentence.These sentences fail to recognize the fact that youth are fundamentally different from adults and are more capable of change and rehabilitation.
Throughout the criminal justice system, racial and ethnic minorities continue to be disproportionately represented.For example, Whites, African Americans, and Latinos have comparable rates of drug use but are arrested and prosecuted for drug offenses at vastly different rates. Andin 2008, African American motorists were three times as likely as white motorists and twice as likely as Latino motorists to be searched during a traffic stop.
Civil society continues to document serious human rights abuses against inmates in jails and prisons. A recent Human Rights Watch report documented the widespread practice of placing youth in adult jails and prisons in solitary confinement, which provokes serious mental and physical health problems and works against rehabilitation. And the sexual assault of inmates remains prevalent in many jails and prisons.
In 2012 advocacy on these issues by civil society, including HRW, has been leading to some progress. This year, the state of Connecticut became the fifth state in five years to abolish capital punishment, and the number of people executed each year is declining. The US Supreme Court this year held unconstitutional the mandatory application of life without parole sentences for youth. And this year the US Department of Justice issued final standards under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) for the detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment of prison rape. If fully implemented, they may help end widespread rape in US prisons.
Abuses Against Non-Citizens
In fiscal year 2012, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported a record 396,906 non-citizens from the United States. A dramatic increase in federal prosecutions of immigration violations and in the number of immigrants held in detention has fed a nationwide detention system comprised of over 200 facilities. In 2011 HRW documented that immigration detainees were often subjected to chaotic, frequent, and recurrent transfers between facilities, interfering with their access to counsel, witnesses, evidence, and family support. After much advocacy by HRW, ICE adopted a new policy this year that could substantially reduce the number of transfers, giving immigrants a fairer chance.HRW is currently monitoring detainee transfers to ensure that the new directive is being implemented.
Immigrants are also subject to abuses while in detention. When the Department of Justice issued its preliminary PREA standards, the Department did not apply the standards to facilities primarily used for immigration detention. Throughout 2011, HRW and many other organizations vigorously advocated for the government to apply PREA’s protections to all confinement facilities, including immigration detention. Likely in response to the concerted pressure, President Obama issued a memorandum along with the final PREA standards that clarifies that PREA binds all federal agencies operating confinement facilities.
Other Abuses
Widespread poverty, its intersections with racial and gender inequalities, and its disproportionate impact upon children and the elderly raise serious human rights concerns in the United States. US state and federal laws often offer inadequate protections for social and economic rights such as health and housing. Low-income persons, non-citizens, women, and minority groups are particularly vulnerable to violations of these rights.
Some US workers continue to face obstacles in forming and joining trade unions, and the federal government and many state governments are failing to meet their international obligations to protect the free exercise of these rights.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the primary federal law providing legal protection and services to victims of domestic and sexual violence and stalking, faces an uncertain future. As of this writing, the congressional process for renewing the law had stalled due to disagreements over protections for immigrant victims, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender victims, and victims on tribal lands. HRW continues to work with allies in Congress to urge the passage of a strong reauthorization of this important law.
US federal law offers no protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Defense of Marriage Act continues to bar recognition of same-sex marriage at the federal level, and only six states and the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage.
Conclusion
Serious human rights concerns persist in the United States, and US forces have been implicated in abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. As noted above, in an effort to end abusive practices, Human Rights Watch meets frequently with officials from all three branches of the US government and openly criticizes government policies and practices in the US media. Human Rights Watch’s mandate is to work toward ending human rights abuses throughout the world, including in the United States, and including in Russia. Among the issuesthat we have focused on and hope will be addressed in Russia are recent legislative amendments that undermine the rights to freedom of association, expression, and assembly and violations committed in the context of the counter-insurgency campaign in the North Caucasus. We look forward to frequent, constructive contact with officials in all branches of the Russian government to address these issues.
