US State Department makes baseless claims against Iran (6)

The US regime, which claims to champion human rights in all scenes, in many cases violates human rights, such as mistreatment of detainees, and implementation of unjust rulings, including the execution of mentally-disabled individuals.

Nonetheless, the US State Department, in its annual report, expresses concern over the punishment of murderers and execution of drug traffickers in Iran, baselessly claiming that Islamic Republic of Iran doesn’t comply with human rights.

The US has the highest number of inmates in the world.

In that country, there are more than two million prisoners. According to latest figures, the US courts annually issue dozens of death penalties. There are also secretly run prisons in the US, while the precise figures on number of detainees and executed inmates are never released. Meanwhile, although only 5% of the global population lives in the US, a total of 25% of the world’s prisoners are incarcerated in US jails. The high number of inmates in the US has led human rights organizations to focus on the compliance of the rights of prisoners. In the meantime, out of every 100,000 Americans, 716 are kept in jails. The high numbers of mentally ill convicts; the injustices imposed by prison wardens on inmates; solitary confinement of mentally-disabled prisoners; and the surging number of private prisons, have all and all stirred appalling conditions for the inmates, especially children, raising many eyebrows in relation to the injustices that inmates face in US dungeons.

One of the problems that have generated concerns in the US is the brutality of US police force toward the African Americans, whom are considered as suspects. According to latest figures, the victims of US police brutality have been more than a thousand in numbers, in every given year. According to latest figures, one African American is killed by US police, in every 36 hours. Meanwhile, roughly a million of the 2.4 million inmates in the US are African Americans, while the number of white drug addicts is five times more than the black drug addicts.

The US Judicial system has breached the rights of African Americans and treats them like second class citizens. The rate of murder, imprisonment without notification of charges and without trial, baseless detentions, and violation of the social rights of African Americans have significantly risen throughout Barack Obama’s presidential term.

One of the other human rights concerns in relation to executions in the year 2014 in the US has been the terms of execution of some of the convicts. Thirty-three people have been executed with lethal injections in the US in the year 2014, stirring major controversies, and prompting some human rights organizations, in and out of the US, to react to these executions. In regard to executions with electrical chairs, in some cases technical faults arose, which dealt several shocks on the convicts.

The study of executions in the US in the year 2014 showed that a high number of convicts on the death row are from racial minorities. Only eleven of the thirty-three convicted who were executed in the year 2014 were Whites, while 17 of these convicts were African Americans and five others were Hispanics. This comes while African Americans constitute 13% of the American community.

The report released by the UN anti-torture committee also expressed concerns over the recurring cases of US police shootings, targeting unarmed African-Americans. This committee especially refers to the excessive brutality of Chicago’s police force against racial minorities, especially African Americans and Hispanics.

This report also slams the conduct of US intelligence, and security forces, as well as the agents of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), such as detention of suspects without notification of charges or trials, in addition to detention of immigrants, including children, in appalling conditions, as well as expulsion, mistreatment and torture of immigrants by the US army personnel, and solitary confinement of teenagers and mentally handicapped individuals for long and indefinite periods of time.

Furthermore, an accredited American institution has released a 233-page report on February 2015, under the heading of gender inequality, which studies the large-scale violation of women’s rights, especially pregnant women, who are jailed in New York. The first part of this report points out until the end of 2013; roughly 2,300 women were jailed in six prisons across the State of New York. Out of these prisons, three of them were women-only jails, while the other three prisons had incarcerated male inmates, too. An analysis of five of these jails revealed that the number of African American and Latino female inmates were twice the number of white female prisoners.

Moreover, the majority of these prisons’ wardens were men, which stirred several tragic incidents, such as a number of rapes. It was also announced that in recent years, an average of 4,000 women have been jailed in New York State every year, and the number of female inmates in the US has mounted by 900% in the past 36 years.

Based on this report, the number of female prisoners in the US has raised sharply from 11,200 inmates in the year 1977 to 111,300 inmates in the year 2013. Although the US has maintained five percent of the global population of women, roughly 33% of the female inmates in the world are incarcerated in the US jails. Women inmates have been denied access to educations on health and first aid kits.

In accordance to this report, in some cases, pregnant female inmates in the US are secretly urged abortion to relieve prison officials from rendering services to pregnant female inmates. On this basis, out of every nine female pregnant inmates jailed in the State of New York, four of them opt for abortion every year. One of the bleak and appalling aspects of this report, which seems as a type of ethnic cleansing, is sterilization of African American and Latino female inmates. The US maintains a horrific and bleak history in sterilization of poor and African American women.

Based on this report, from 2006 to 2010, a total of 110 female inmates in the State of New York were sterilized, the majority of whom were African-Americans and Latinos. Long-term solitary confinement is one of the other cases of breach of the rights of pregnant women in New York jails. Annually, nearly 1600 women are kept in solitary confinement in the prisons of the State of New York, and in average 100 women are kept in solitary confinement in this state, every day.

The Human Rights Watch, in two reports released on March and November 2014, expressed deep concerns over the widespread rape of teenage prisoners by the officers, and adults, in the US, and the refusal of US officials to release on parole the teenage inmates who have been sentenced to life imprisonment. In a report, released on March 25, 2014, in the US, the Human Rights Watch expressed concern over the appalling state of child inmates in US prisons, urging the US administration not to imprison children in the same cells, in which adults are kept.

This report slams the conviction of minors as adult criminals in the US, while referring to this case as the violation of all international norms and regulations.

Meanwhile, in the majority of world countries, minors stand trial in a different manner compared to adult convicts, which is due to the especial emotional and physical conditions of minors.

In the meantime, one has to bear in mind that violation of human rights in the US is not just limited to violation of the rights of inmates and African-Americans.

In the next episode, we will study other cases of breach of human rights in the US.

MR/ME