|
US grilled on race, brutality
22/02/2008 11:36 - (SA)
Geneva - The United States, in the dock at a UN forum accused of racial discrimination, said on Thursday it was combating hate crimes such as displays of hangman's nooses as well as police brutality against minorities.
A US delegation defended Washington's record at the start of a two-day debate at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The committee's 18 independent experts grilled US officials on issues including racial profiling in the wake of the September 11 attacks, police brutality against minorities, and the high proportion of African-Americans on death row.
"We note that sadly, racial discrimination exists all over the world, including the United States," Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney-general at the US Department of Justice's civil rights division, told the meeting.
"The United States is committed to continuing its hard work to combat racial discrimination," she declared.
Last year, the US launched a "racial threats initiative" to facilitate investigations of nooses and other racially-motivated threats around the country, Becker said.
Hangman's noose
It was prosecuting a case involving nooses hung from the back of a truck which circled around a group of peaceful civil rights demonstrators waiting at a bus stop, she added.
US President George W Bush last week condemned as "deeply offensive" a spate of incidents involving hangman's nooses, a potent symbol of racist lynching and hatred of blacks.
US officials had investigated more than 800 racially-motivated incidents against people perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Sikh or South Asian since the September 11 attacks.
Despite a drop in the number and seriousness of such crimes, identifying and prosecuting them remained a priority.
The Bush administration had been "the first to issue racial profiling guidelines for federal law enforcement officers and remains committed to the elimination of unlawful racial profiling by law enforcement agencies", Becker said.
'Overwhelming evidence'
Linos-Alexander Sicilianos, the UN committee's reporter on the US, replied that instead of ending the practice, the government appeared to be giving guidance to police to show them how to carry out racial profiling.
He also cited "overwhelming evidence" of police brutality against racial and ethnic minorities, including African- Americans, Latinos, Arabs and Muslims.
Experts also raised questions on the rights of Native Americans, the disproportionate number of people of colour in prison, juveniles serving life sentences without parole, and the estimated 5.3 million felons who have lost their voting rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union, in its own shadow report issued earlier this week, blasted what it called "the persistent structural racism and inequality" in the country.
- Reuters
|
News
