STOP the ACLU Blogburst

ACLU Accuses U.S. Of Human Rights Violations
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.

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.”

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