By Norm Dixon
The United States government is "a major and flagrant human rights violator" which is "perpetrating terror on its own citizens" through its frequent use of the death penalty, Rick Halperin, chairperson of Amnesty International USA, told Green Left Weekly on March 18.
Alabama-born Halperin, who coordinates AI's campaign against the death penalty in the US, was in Sydney at the start of a 12-day Australian visit to inform and update Australians on the nature and extent of capital punishment in the US.
The statistics are chilling. Since 1977, the US has "killed 194 people, including a record 31 last year and six already this year. There are 36 states with a death penalty; 21 have used it. There is also a US military death penalty and a federal death penalty, so there are 38 different death penalties."
Five different methods of execution are employed: electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, hanging and lethal injection.
Halperin reports there are now about 2700 people on death row. "This includes 44 women, and 40 people below the age of 18 at the time of their alleged crime. Most executions have occurred in the states of the south. Texas is the worst. It's got the largest death row with 371 people waiting to be killed. It has executed the most. In a little more than 10 years, it has killed 54 people, including 12 last year alone.
"Florida is the second worst with 29 executions [since 1977], Louisiana is third at 21. The bulk of executions and the bulk of death row inmates are concentrated in three or four southern states."
Racism in the US extends to the death penalty. Halperin explained that there "is a vastly disproportionate number of black people being executed. [African Americans] only make up 12% of the population, but they make up 44% of death row, nationally. In some states they make up half of death row.
"Race is an overwhelming factor as to who gets to death row. No whites are on death row for killing a non-white. It doesn't happen. Yet if you are non-white, and you kill a white person in a death penalty state you are 11 times more likely to get the death sentence" than a white who kills a white.
Another area of great concern for Amnesty in the US is widespread police brutality. "We've issued reports about police brutality in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in the federal
prisons and against blacks. We issued a very critical report recently on human rights violations against our indigenous people, the Native Americans. We have had about 23 'suicides' in Mississippi of black inmates over the last few years.
"Following the Rodney King bashing, we issued a very lengthy and critical report in LA blasting police brutality, not just the King beating — that was just the tip of the iceberg — but about police brutality in the LAPD."
The US is violating international treaties and covenants, Halperin explained. "The US is violating international law by executing its mentally ill or retarded inmates and juvenile inmates. These are both in flagrant contravention of global human rights documents, some of which the US has signed, some it won't sign."
Politicians in the US lack the "morals, ethics and qualities of leadership on this issue", he said. "To prevent people becoming victims, rather than killing those who perpetrate these crimes, would involve hundreds of millions of dollars, attacking crucial problems like poverty, racism, crime, drugs and hand gun availability. No politician has the guts to that in America."
Halperin doubts that the election of Bill Clinton as president will change things. He described Clinton's human rights record as "pathetic" and "abysmal". "When Clinton was
governor of Arkansas, he signed 79 death warrants. He is very pro-death penalty. Hillary Clinton is pro-death penalty. His cabinet is pro-death penalty. He [promised] to reverse Bush's policy on not allowing Haitian refugees into the country, then one week after his inauguration he reversed that and now we continue to send Haitians back to Haiti to be killed.
"Bill Clinton presents himself as a very humane, compassionate person compared to what Reagan and Bush offered, and Americans fell for this because Reagan and Bush's human rights record was so abysmal that almost anybody could look better. Clinton's not a compassionate person! If compassion fails for 2700 people on death row, if a leader believes it's okay to hang, burn, inject and gas people, that is not compassion, that is evil."
Halperin agreed that Amnesty International's reports on human rights violations by Iraq in Kuwait had been misused by the Bush administration to justify its massive assault on Iraq in 1991. Amnesty did not condemn that war. He denied that Amnesty International was naive. "Amnesty for years has issued very critical reports of all countries in the Middle East, bar none. We certainly issued a stinging report prior to the Gulf War about Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait.
"It was shamelessly used by Bush, who selectively took that single report ... The shamelessness wasn't on AI's
part, it was on Bush's part for seizing on this as a reason to justify defending American interests in the Middle East and smashing Iraq out of Kuwait.
"It was despicable. I don't feel Amnesty was naive; I think Amnesty was used, misused and abused. We have never heard Bush hold up any other report we ever did. We were politically used, but that's the risk any human rights organisation runs."