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The New Congress & US Foreign Policy
Thursdays,  January 9, 16, 23, 30,  at 7 pm
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Background Readings on the Congress and Human Rights

Some of these materials were selected by our panelists, others are listed because we think you might find them useful also. It should go without saying that in bringing these materials to your attention we do not necessarily endorse their contents. It should also go without saying that we provide these materials to you as part of a purely educational exercise — please do not re-circulate or re-distribute anything you obtain from this page. (Technical note: many of the readings are provided in "Acrobat PDF" format; some of these files are quite large; if you have trouble downloading them, let us know.)

On International Law & Human Rights

On Specific Human Rights Issues Past & Present

  • As one tries to comprehend the human-rights picture around the world, it is worth recalling the record here in the United States, from the institution of slavery, to the entrenched abuses of the "Jim Crow" era. In his book The Quiet Americans (1969), Bill Hosokawa looks at the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the role played by the Congress in that process. Even today, Amnesty International argues, the US is violating human rights here at home, by imprisoning people illegally on political grounds (e.g., Native American activist Leonard Peltier and African-American activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, not to mention prisoners being held here and abroad since September 11, 2001).

  • Meanwhile, an American citizen and former MIT student, Lori Berenson, is serving a twenty-year sentence in Peru on terrorism-related charges. Journalist Danny Schechter has kindly allowed us to reproduce his article on the way her case has been handled by US mass media.

  • Looking at the treatment of human rights as the US intervenes in Colombia's civil war, MIT Professor Jean Jackson writes:

    The role of the U.S. in the violence is substantial. The U.S. cannot claim publicly to be fighting communism as in its Cold War interventions in Latin America, but it is amply clear that supporting the Colombian government means supporting the security forces' counterinsurgency campaign regardless of their glaring human rights abuses and links to paramilitaries. The U.S. Congress and the Executive branch stress the links between guerrillas and drugs to justify Plan Colombia, up until recently only barely mentioning the paramilitaries' involvement with narcotrafficking and their appalling record of human rights abuses. For the most part, the U.S. mass media has reflected this distortion, although more recently the government and media have acknowledged the major role played by the paramilitaries. However, the fact that in 2000 almost 85% of politically motivated assassinations were carried out by State agents and paramilitary groups, 15% by the guerrillas (according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists), is still rarely mentioned in the U.S. media.

    Prof. Jackson's report was prepared a year ago for the Human Rights Committee of the American Anthropological Association.

  • Burmese dissident and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi writes about the way her political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is persecuted by the military junta in charge:

    [In 1996], U Kyi Saung, secretary of the NLD branch in Myaungmya, a town [in] the Irrawaddy division, was arrested. He had attended a Karen New Year ceremony in a Karen village and there, he had read out the message of goodwill that the NLD had brought out for the New Year. This peaceful, innocuous act of courtesy was reported by the Union Solidarity and Development Association, the "social welfare" organization formed under the aegis of the government, the Myaungmya Township Law and Order Restoration Council and to the local military intelligence unit. The TLORC thereby arrested U Kyi Saung under Section 5 of the 1950 Emergency Act, which has come to be known as the "Can't Stand Your Looks" section as it is used indiscriminately against those whom the authorities cannot abide. An elderly man, U Kyi Saung's health deteriorated rapidly and he died in May 1996 before his trial was completed.

    I have written only about well-known members of the NLD who died in custody but they are not the only victims of authoritarian injustice. Prisoners of conscience who lost their lives during the 1990s represent a broad range of the Burmese political spectrum and even include a Buddhist monk. Of those sacrificed to the misrule of law, the oldest was 70-year-old Boh Set Yaung, a member of the Patriotic Old Comrades' League, and the youngest was a 19-year-old member of the NLD. The exact number of deaths in custody cannot be ascertained but it is not small and it is rising all the time. The price of liberty has never been cheap and in Burma it is particularly high.

    With such atrocities in mind, activists in Massachusetts managed to get a state law enacted in 1996 that made it illegal for the state and its agencies to purchase goods or services from companies doing business with the military junta that rules Burma. The law was challenged in federal court by corporate interests, who argued that it was an unconstitutional intrusion on the foreign-policy (and other) prerogatives of the federal government; this claim was upheld:

    We affirm the district court's finding that the law interferes with the foreign affairs power of the federal government and is thus unconstitutional. We also find that the Massachusetts Burma Law violates the Foreign Commerce Clause. We further find that the Massachusetts Burma Law violates the Supremacy Clause because it is preempted by federal sanctions against Burma. We affirm the injunction issued by the district court.

    There is one matter on which the parties are agreed: human rights conditions in Burma are deplorable. This case requires no inquiry into these conditions.

    and the law was struck down.

  • Does the US Congress take positions based on human-rights considerations, or is human rights overwhelmed by other concerns? Looking at US policy on refugees and immigration, Michael McBride writes:

    US immigration policy has generally responded to economic concerns and domestic pressures, while US refugee policy has reflected foreign policy concerns, especially the desire to embarrass communist systems during the Cold War. These policies have resulted in extensive immigration from Mexico and large numbers of refugees from Cuba and Nicaragua, but limited acceptance of asylum seekers from Haiti, El Salvador and Guatemala.

    McBride's paper, "Migrants and Asylum Seekers: Policy Responses in the United States to Immigrants and Refugees from Central America and the Caribbean," appeared in International Migration, Vol. 37 (1) 1999, pp. 289-317

  • In 2000, the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on U.S.-Cuban Relations in the 21st Century released its second report, arguing that:

    the U.S. government can take many useful steps short of lifting economic sanctions and restoring diplomatic relations. Indeed, this report moves beyond recent congressional action in several important respects, by recommending, for example: selling agricultural and medical products with commercial U.S. financing, though not government credits; travel to Cuba by all Americans; direct commercial flights and ferry services; environmental and conservation cooperation; continued counternarcotics cooperation and low and mid-level exchanges between the United States and Cuban military; working with Cuba to support the Colombian peace process; limited American investment to support the Cuban private sector and to capture the market generated by increased American travel to Cuba; actively promoting international labor standards in Cuba; resolving expropriation claims by licensing American claimants to negotiate settlements directly with Cuba, including in the form of direct joint venture investments; and supporting Cuban observer status in the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.

    One of our panelists, Ms. Micho Spring, served on the Task Force that produced the report.