By Aaron Miller-
A damning report put together by human rights experts from 11 countries is holding the U.S accountable for what they say is a long history of violations of international law, amounting to crimes against humanity.
The commission said its purpose is to establish whether widespread and systematic racist violence in policing against people of African descent in the United States of America (U.S.) has resulted in a continuing pattern of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Highlighting a history of First Nations peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the militarization of the U.S society, and the continued perpetuation of racism , the commission said it found a pattern of racist police violence used by the U.S police force. It added that it had led to gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms..
The report was made possible after the HRC directed the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights to prepare a report on systemic racism and violations of international human rights by police against Africans and people of African descent throughout the world.
It calls on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague to open an immediate investigation with a view to prosecutions.
“This finding of crimes against humanity was not given lightly, we included it with a very clear mind,” Hina Jilani, one of the 12 commissioners who led the inquiry, told the Guardian. “We examined all the facts and concluded that that there are situations in the US that beg the urgent scrutiny of the ICC.”
Among its other findings, the commission accuses the U.S of violating its international human rights obligations, both in terms of laws governing policing and in the practices of law enforcement officers, including traffic stops targeting Black people and race-based stop and frisk; tolerating an “alarming national pattern of disproportionate use of deadly force not only by firearms but also by Tasers” against Black people.
Operating a “culture of impunity” in which police officers are rarely held accountable while their homicidal actions are dismissed as those of just “a few bad apples”.
Torture
The commissioners also charge that African Americans are frequently subjected to torture at the hands of police. They assert that the use of chokeholds and other violent restraints during arrests are tantamount to torture – also a crime against humanity under international law.
Jilani, who is president of the World Organisation Against Torture, said that last week’s guilty verdict in the Floyd killing substantiated the commission’s views. “It clarified for us that the use of force during the arrest of an individual is not just dehumanizing, it clearly amounts to torture and potential loss of life.”
I was taken aback that this country, which claims to be a global champion of human rights, itself fails to comply with international law.
A panel of commissioners from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean was assembled to look into police violence, and the structural racism that underpins it. Virtual public hearings were held earlier this year, with testimony from the families of the victims of some of the most notorious police killings in recent times.
The commissioners found that, within the cases they examined, a disproportionate use of excessive force by police led to the deaths of the 43 Black people in the cases they examined. This unlawful disproportionate use of force included shooting and the use of restraints and Tasers. The Commissioners find a alarming, national pattern of disproportionate use of deadly force not only by firearms but also by Tasers against people of African descent.
She added that as she listened to relatives of police shooting victims relate their stories, “it became clear that this was no longer an account of individual trauma, it was an account of trauma inflicted on a whole section of the US population.”
The commission’s report puts the human impact of systemic discrimination against African Americans in stark terms. It says that the US is operating two systems of law.
“One is for white people, and another for people of African descent,” it said.
In the course of the public hearings held in January and February, relatives gave a more personal impression of what such trauma entails. Nicole Paultre Bell, the wife of Sean Bell, testified: “Imagine living in a world where you must explain to your children that their father, an unarmed bridegroom on the morning of his wedding, can be justifiably killed in a hail of 50 police bullets.”
One of the most moving accounts was given by Dominic Archibald, the mother of Nathaniel Pickett who was gunned down by a police officer in 2018 for doing nothing other than walking unarmed across the street. In her testimony, Archibald began by explaining that “Nate” was her only child.
When [Nate] was killed, every hope and dream in my head was destroyed, taken and relegated to a statistic
“He was my legacy, my faith in the present moment, and my hope for the future. Can I ever put this impact into words? Would anyone ever understand?”, she said.
Answering her own question, she went on: “That answer is no. Nate was my perfect gift from God. When he was killed, every hope and dream in my head was destroyed, taken and relegated to a statistic.”
The report gives its own searing figures. Unarmed Black people are almost four times as likely as their white equivalents to be killed by police.
Demands
The commissioners make a number of demands on the US government and Congress. They want to see demilitarization of local police forces, and prohibition of no-knock warrants that allow officers to raid the homes of Black people like Breonna Taylor’s without warning and often without cause.
They body also calls for an end to qualified immunity through which police officers avoid civil lawsuits. The commissioners say the loophole “amounts to condoning brutal police violence”.
The call for a case against the U.S for crimes against humanity may be a long shot from being translated into anything practical, given the immediate challenges such demand faces. In the first instance, the U.S does not officially recognise the international court, though the charge is in itself serious.
Jilani said she hoped that the US government would see that such an action would support much needed change. “We felt that the US would benefit were individual police officers further deterred from resorting to unjustified force, knowing that some kind of international criminal responsibility might be held against them.”