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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
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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