FIRESTORM FOR U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS!

U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS NETWORK
POLITICAL PRISONERS/STATE REPRESSION WORKING GROUP

The Obama Administration is holding meetings to prepare its list of accepted recommendations from governments at its 11/5/11 Geneva appearance. We must keep Cuba's PP recommendation in the U.S. list of human rights concerns. This group is working towards building a firestorm for US Political Prisoners in preparation of the US's March 18th return to Geneva.

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Monday, March 21, 2011

Oral Statement Regarding the Adoption of the UPR Report on the USA

Oral Statement Regarding the Adoption of the UPR Report on the USA
US Human Rights Network
www.ushrnetwork.org

Oral Statement Regarding the Adoption of the UPR Report on the USA

Submitted by lbaum on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 12:39pm

• Adoption
• Joint Statement
• UPR

On behalf of the US Human Rights Network, a network of civil society organizations and advocates from across the United States committed to the advancement of human rights for all across the United States

Mr President, we acknowledge the US government’s unprecedented level of civil society engagement throughout the UPR. That engagement could and should serve as a model for how civil society and governments can engage effectively in the UPR process. However, it is critical that the UPR be about more than just process – we call on the Administration to take concrete action to implement the recommendations included in the UPR Report, recommendations that reflect long-standing calls for action from civil society within the United States and indeed from the international community.

Mr. President, we are aware of the US administration’s desire to assert its moral and political leadership in the area of human rights enforcement. Human rights leadership on the State level is critically needed as we collectively face the upheavals of the early 21st century. However, State leadership in the area of human rights suggests that a state has acted or continues to act based on a consistent commitment to upholding international norms and standards in its domestic policies and international conduct. Based on that simple supposition, the US cannot can claim for itself exclusive leadership in the area of human rights, nor can any other state.

For the US to assert leadership it must banish to the dustbins of history its claim for US “exceptionalism” that is based on a national narrative that is more myth than reality.

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that the US has not ratified most of the core human rights instruments and continues to embrace reservations, understandings and declarations in the few treaties that it has ratified.

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that in these times of economic crisis, when millions of US citizens and residents are unemployed, lack adequate housing, are hungry, are still without affordable or accessible health care or equally funded education, and when workers are demanding the basic right to organize and collectively bargain; the US administration continues to reject economic, social and cultural rights as human rights, and as such, fails to take responsibility for its affirmative obligations to develop a plan of action aimed at the fulfillment of those rights.

There is nothing exceptional that 60 years after the landmark court decision in 1954 that began the era of dismantling the US Apartheid system - Black unemployment rates among youth are 40, 50, and even 60 precent in some urban areas; that Black, Latino and Native people make up the vast majority of the over two million individuals incarcerated in the world largest penal system. And when they are not being imprisoned, Black and Brown youth are being illegally killed by police across the country.

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that the demands for effective self-determination on the part of indigenous people in the continental US, Hawaii and Alaska are continually ignored by successive administrations, and that Puerto Rico continues to languish in political limbo

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that despite its high-sounding commitment to due process, fair trials and justice, the US administration indefinitely detains, without charge or effective access to justice, dozens of people at its Guantanamo gulag, joining the over 100 Black, Latino, Native and anti-racist White political prisoners still languishing in the inhumane conditions of super-max prisons in the US.

Mr President, while the US government will argue that it has limited ability to address many of the 228 recommendations received from this body, we suggest two concrete things that are within its ability to either implement or advocate for:

• an internal mechanism in the Executive Branch to educate, coordinate and monitor human rights compliance among federal agencies, in the form of an interagency task force;
• the establishment of a national human rights institution, as recommended by many states;
• a permanent mechanism for engaging representatives from US civil society in human rights accountability structures and the development of national plans of action.

Freed from its national self-delusions and committed to objective principles and agreed-on international norms, the US can play a critical role in the ongoing struggle for a new conception and practice of human rights.

Friday, February 18, 2011

ACT NOW! DISTRIBUTE WIDELY! ACT NOW! DISTRIBUTE WIDELY! ACT NOW!

At yesterday's White House meeting on the US's response to the UN UPR Working Group Recommendations, we were told that all comments must be submitted by close of business today. On behalf of all imprisoned COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists, please

TELL White House Rep Scott Busby (ScottW.Busby@nsc.eop.gov ), Legal Adviser Harold Koh (KohHH@state.gov), State Dept Rep David Sullivan (SullivanDB@state.gov),
Asst. Atty General Samuel Bagenstos (samuel.bagenstos@usdoj.gov ),U.S. Atty General Eric Holder (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov)

1. ADOPT UPR Working Group Recommendation Numbers 92-153 and 92-154, and

2. Implement UPR Working Group Recommendation Numbers 92-153 and 92-154 by :
a. President Obama taking concrete steps and using his presidential clemency powers to commute the sentences to time served and release all COINTELRO/Civil Rights Era political activist currently held as prisoners in federal custody;
b. That he direct the Obama-Holder Department of Justice to review the convictions of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody to identify and address civil and human rights violations; and
c. That President Obama use his executive authority to create a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for release and compensation of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights ERA political activists currently held in federal and state facilities.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

CHECK IT: Statement by Cuban Ambassador + More!

PLEASE MAKE CALLS AND SEND IN LETTERS TODAY ON BEHALF OF U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS!
HONOR BLACK HISTORY, FREE THE ONES THAT HELPED MAKE IT POSSIBLE!

SOME OF THE LETTERS THAT HAVE BEEN SENT IN:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48487719 - Nkechi Taifa
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48487717 - Bill Fletcher
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48487716 - Bonnie Kerness

PLEASE PARTICIPATE! Contact ushrnpp@gmail.com and ppfirestorm@gmail.com to report the number of e-mails and letters mailed/faxed.
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STATEMENT BY CUBAN AMBASSADOR

Statement by the Permanent Representative of Cuba, Ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, in the Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America, Human Rights Council, Geneva, 5 November 2010

Cuba recommends the United States:

1. To end the Blockade against Cuba, described as crime of genocide and that seriously violates the human rights of the Cuban people, as well as fundamental freedoms of U.S. citizens and third states.

2. To release the five Cuban political prisoners -- arbitrarily detained, as acknowledged by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions in its Opinion No. 19/2005 --, serving unjust sentences that resulted from a politically manipulated trial in open disregard for the rules of the due process.

3. To prosecute or extradite for trial Luis Posada Carriles and other dozens of well-known terrorists living with impunity in the United States and responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Cubans and for the maiming or other disability caused to over 2,000.

4. To respect the Cuban people's right to self-determination and to cease their interference and hostile actions against Cuba.

5. To put on trial the perpetrators of tortures, extrajudicial executions and other serious violations of human rights committed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, los Camp NAMA and BALAD, and those carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA.

6. To wipe out war crimes from their troops abroad, including the killings of innocent civilians and to prosecute those responsible.

7. To end:

A) the unjust incarceration of political prisoners, including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal:

B) the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples;

C) the violence and discrimination against migrants;

D) the prosecution and execution of mentally-ill persons and minors.

E) the discrimination against Afro-descendants.

8. To ensure the realization of the rights to food and health of all who live in their territory.

9. To put an end to their actions against the realization of the rights of peoples to a healthy environment, peace, development and self-determination.

Thank you very much

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CHECK IT! SUNDAY ONLINE WORKSHOP AT http://www.abibitumikasa.com/forums/afrikan-events-happenings/43282-free-online-talk-u-s-political-prisoners-state-repression.html?referrerid=1
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IMMEDIATE RELEASE - PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
February 3, 2011

CALL TO ACTION:
Demand Obama Administration Respect UPR Process,
Adopt UN UPR Recommendation to Release U.S. Political Prisoners

Atlanta, GA, - The U.S. Human Rights Network Political Prisoner/State Repression Working Group (USHRN PP/SR Wkg Grp) today demands the Obama Administration adopt the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations to release COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists held in U.S. prisons, some more than 40 years.

"The UPR shed global light on the United States' dirty little open secret and propelled to the forefront the unfinished business of the modern U.S. Civil/Human Rights movement. “We are working with activists across the country to put America’s political prisoners on the global human rights priority list alongside other atrocities like the death penalty, racial discrimination, the absence of treaty ratification and the lack of a national institution monitoring domestic human rights practices” Efia Nwangaza said.

Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State dismissed the significance of the recommendations made by the Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review in generally and, specifically, the call for the release of long imprisoned political activists. Harold Koh, put the more than 230 recommendations into "3 categories:

1) Some in line with US policies

2) Some political provocation not to be taken seriously

3) Some to be considered.

Koh promised "all recommendations will be considered and taken back to branches for consideration before March, 2011. Further Koh remarked, “A small set of comments do not make bona fide recommendations for the UPR. These statements, those styled as “recommendations,” are actually political criticisms of U.S. policies or polemical comments about judicial cases, based on unsubstantiated or false allegations, which refer to individual matters that are either ongoing or already completed under court proceedings conducted under due process of law."

1. We call on President Obama to use his presidential powers to grant clemency and commute the sentences to time served and release all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists criminalized and held in federal custody.

2. We call on President Obama to direct U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice to review the convictions of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody to identify and address civil and human rights violations perpetrated.

3. We call on the Obama Administration to create a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the release and compensation of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody.

Demand the Obama Administration Respect the UPR Process and Adopt UN UPR Recommendation to Release U.S. Political Prisoners (Recommendations Numbers 92.153 and 92.154). Please call, fax, write, e-mail, the U.S. UPR Delegation and the Obama Administration to Invite family, friends, neighbors, faith communities, social and professional organizations and elected and appointed officials to join this emergency campaign.

Contact information:
Michael H. Posner, Asst. Secretary of State (Democracy, Human Rights and Labor) T: 202-647-2126/F:202-647-5283/E:PosnerMH@state.gov

Esther Brimmer, Asst. Secretary of State (T:202-647-4000/F: /E: )

Harold Koh, Legal Adviser to State Department (T:202-647-4000 /F:/E:)

Samuel Bagenstos, Principal Deputy Asst. Attorney General (Civil Rights Division) T:202-353-9065/F:202-3072572/E:samuel.bagenstos@usdoj.gov

Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General (T: 202-514-2001/F:E:AskDOJ@usdoj.gov)

President Barack Obama (T:202-456-1414/ 202-456-1111 /F: 202-456-2461/E: )

The US Human Rights Network formed to promote US accountability to universal human rights standards by building linkages between organizations and individuals. We strive to build a human rights culture in the United States that puts those directly affected by such violations, with a special emphasis on grassroots organizations and social movements, in central leadership roles. The Network is further committed to uniting the US human rights movement with the broader social justice movements both in the U.S. and globally. See U.S. Human Rights Network Reports to the UPR Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports.

Contact ushrnpp@gmail.com and ppfirestorm@gmail.com to report the number of e-mails and letters mailed/faxed. Many thanks. FREE ALL U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS, NOW!
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