ACLU Accuses U.S. Of Human Rights Violations

Posted on June 21, 2006

Yesterday, the ACLU released a report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee condemning the U.S. government for failing to comply with its treaty obligations to protect and preserve a range of human rights protections at home and abroad.

The report, Dimming the Beacon of Freedom: U.S. Violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, documents the U.S. record on human rights in five areas: national security, women’s rights, racial justice, immigrants rights and religious freedom.

The Human Rights Committee is the U.N. body of experts charged with monitoring countries compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the primary human rights treaty. The United States ratified the treaty in 1992. The committee will review the official submission of the U.S. government on July 17 and 18 in Geneva. The ACLU will send a delegation to present the report and monitor the proceedings.

Dimming the Beacon of Freedom provides a detailed description of human rights violations in the United States. In addition to the impact of these rights violations on other vulnerable groups in the U.S., the report highlights how in the wake on September 11, 2001, Arabs, Muslims and South Asians, and to some extent all immigrants, were victims of discriminatory targeting by the government. It draws attention to the erosion of the right to privacy, discussing expanded surveillance and the government’s growing use of the states secret privilege to avoid accountability for abuses.

The ACLU goes on to list their recommendations to the UN to urge the United States on. The list includes trials or “judicial remedies” for all persons detained in the war on terror. Andrew McCarthy discusses this very issue today in his column. He also discusses how the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Al Qaeda.

Well, the treaty’s provisions call for protecting civilians and civilian infrastructure. Al Qaeda targets civilians for mass murder and intentionally destroys civilian infrastructure.

The provisions call for membership in a regular military force which carries its arms openly. Al Qaeda’s idea of a weapon in open view is a hijacked jumbo jet in the seconds before it crashes into a building. Otherwise, it favors roadside bombs or high explosives concealed in vans burrowed in underground garages beneath bustling civilian skyscrapers.

The provisions call for wearing uniforms in order to distinguish members as authentic soldiers. Al Qaeda’s jihadists dress and conduct themselves ostensibly as civilians — the better to hide from real armies and lull actual civilians to their deaths.

The provisions call for treating captured enemy soldiers with the dignity and respect accorded to honorable prisoners of war: accounting for them, keeping them safe, allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross access to ensure their proper treatment.

Al Qaeda tortures and slaughters them.

When it comes to the prisoners they capture, al Qaeda doesn’t much care about the Geneva Conventions, the approbation of the ICRC, or Kofi Annan’s latest grandiloquence on the post-sovereign alchemy of international law.

All it cares about is “the verdict of the Islamic court.” It was that verdict, and no other, that the Mujahedeen Shura Council — Iraq’s thugs-in-chief — announced had been “carried out” against our fallen heroes by their new Zarqawi, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. Needless to say, the deed was done “with God Almighty’s blessing.”

The list also includes putting a stop to the current NSA surveillance program, curtailing secrecy, and to end secret prisons which the ACLU have no evidence even exist. So the big question is why are these organizations set out against America so much in this war? Why are all of these Human Rights groups so silent on the many violations from the other side? Michelle Malkin calls the silence deafening and points us to Jeff Emanuel who tackles the topic.

Privates First Class Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker were members of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)’s “Strike” Brigade, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Both Menchaca and Tucker volunteered to be members of the US Army. Both volunteered to be infantrymen. Both knew, as do all members of the US Armed Forces, that they could end up in harm’s way as a result of their volunteering—doubly so since both initially enlisted well after the Iraq War (and postwar process) had begun. In a written statement, Tucker’s family said that their son had joined the military in part out of a desire to “do something positive.” They also released to the press the text of a message he left on their answering machine less than a week before his capture, in which he reaffirmed his commitment to, and belief in, his mission. “I’m defending my country,” he said, and he asked his mother to be proud of him.

Interestingly silent on this and other atrocities carried out by the insurgents in Iraq are the “human rights” groups who seem to spend every day accusing the United States of torture, war crimes, and various human rights violations. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called the Iraq war “illegal,” and John Pace, former UN chief of Human Rights for Iraq, has said that human rights conditions are “as bad now as they were under Saddam,” but was it America that filled mass graves with hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians? Last month, Human Rights Watch again accused the US of “brutalizing Muslim suspects in the name of the war on terror,” but how many times have Americans strapped bombs to their own chests and purposely detonated themselves in a large crowd of civilians? Amnesty International’s website highlights America’s use of “torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” against terrorist captives, but how many prisoners—Muslim or otherwise—have Americans brutally beheaded?

Indeed, the silence speaks volumes. These very groups that are so quick to accuse America are the same ones that defend the terrorists from even worse accusations and attrocities.

Update: Amnesty International breaks the silence. Still no word from the ACLU.

Expose The Left has a video of Laura Ingraham and Bill O’Reilly discussing the issue of how anti-American organizations are emboldening terrorists.

Gateway Pundit thinks President Bush needs to speak up. We totally agree. Meanwhile Andrew Sullivan uses the torture and death of our own soldiers to speak about moral equivalence, and compare us to the terrorists. E.D. Hill was outraged on FOX and Friends.

» Filed Under ACLU, News, War On Terror

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One Response to “ACLU Accuses U.S. Of Human Rights Violations”

kerwin_brown on June 21st, 2006 6:35 pm

What do you expect the ACLU and most if not all of those human right organizations are NGO’s of the UN and they are caring out it’s designs or their NGO status would be terminated. The ACLU is guilty of treason according to the definition of the U.S. Constitution as they are aiding and abetting a foreign power against the interests of the United States and against The U.S. Constitution. I doubt we will see any thing done since the “naturalized” citizen George Soros who helps finance both them and the Democrat party. He has also been known to finance “moderate” Republicans.