[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 98 (Wednesday, June 27, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1158-E1159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 AMERICA'S SHAMEFUL HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 27, 2012

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I submit a timely op-ed from Former 
President Jimmy Carter on the ramifications of drone strikes on 
America's human rights record.

[[Page E1159]]

                [From the New York Times, June 24, 2012]

                       A Cruel and Unusual Record

                           (By Jimmy Carter)

       Atlanta.--The United States is abandoning its role as the 
     global champion of human rights.
       Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be 
     assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only 
     the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation's 
     violation of human rights has extended. This development 
     began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has 
     been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and 
     legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. 
     As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral 
     authority on these critical issues.
       While the country has made mistakes in the past, the 
     widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has 
     been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from 
     the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
     was adopted in 1948 as ``the foundation of freedom, justice 
     and peace in the world.'' This was a bold and clear 
     commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to 
     oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of 
     all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal 
     protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary 
     detention or forced exile. The declaration has been invoked 
     by human rights activists and the international community to 
     replace most of the world's dictatorships with democracies 
     and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global 
     affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening 
     these principles, our government's counterterrorism policies 
     are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration's 30 
     articles, including the prohibition against ``cruel, inhuman 
     or degrading treatment or punishment.''
       Recent legislation has made legal the president's right to 
     detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with 
     terrorist organizations or ``associated forces,'' a broad, 
     vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight 
     from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being 
     blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to 
     freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until 
     proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.
       In addition to American citizens' being targeted for 
     assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have 
     canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence 
     Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of 
     our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and 
     government mining of our electronic communications. Popular 
     state laws permit detaining individuals because of their 
     appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate.
       Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is 
     declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent 
     women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 
     30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, 
     President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, 
     but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and 
     Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don't know how many 
     hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these 
     attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in 
     Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous 
     times.
       These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top 
     intelligence and military officials, as well as rights 
     defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation 
     in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward 
     terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against 
     us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions 
     to justify their own despotic behavior.
       Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 
     now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for 
     release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their 
     freedom. American authorities have revealed that, in order to 
     obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in 
     military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more 
     than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, 
     power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. 
     Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the 
     accused, because the government claims they occurred under 
     the cover of ``national security.'' Most of the other 
     prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried 
     either.
       At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, 
     the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, 
     basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in 
     the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of 
     making the world safer, America's violation of international 
     human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.
       As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to 
     reverse course and regain moral leadership according to 
     international human rights norms that we had officially 
     adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.
       Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the 
     Carter Center and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace 
     Prize.

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