Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project
On Friday, a United Nations expert working group released a scathing report that will be debated at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday. The report noted that police killings of black people in the United States are reminiscent of lynchings and the government must step up to protect them.
The hard-hitting criticism – drawing a comparison between modern police behavior and mob killings of blacks in the 19th and 20th centuries – comes at a time of renewed racial tension in the United States, according to Reuters.
“Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching,” said the report by the U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.
According to Reuters, the U.N. expert report was based on a visit to the United States in January by a five-member group chaired by Filipino law professor Ricardo A. Sunga III.
According to the report, the group is particularly worried about the human rights situations of African-Americans as they are killed at a higher rate than whites.
“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent.
“Impunity for State violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
As the Free Thought Project has pointed out time and again, the lack of punishment police receive for brutality and killing seemingly encourages this violent and irresponsible behavior.
Police killings go unpunished because initial investigations are usually conducted by the police department where the alleged perpetrator works, because prosecutors have wide discretion over presenting charges, and because the use of force is not subject to international standards, the experts’ group said, according to Reuters.
Since the first of the year, 849 people have been sent to an early grave by police in America and this epidemic shows no signs of slowing. Many of these 849 people were unarmed or entirely innocent
For the last 15 years, America has fallen across the board in indices rating the world’s countries by levels of freedom.
Americans are under constant surveillance, our every move under a microscope by government goons, “protecting us” from “terrorists.” We are under the constant threat of violence from the state for possessing a plant, or having a tail light out, or simply walking down the street.
Americans are constantly paranoid of those blue and red lights popping up in the rearview mirror that most always end in extortion and could very well end with a visit to the hospital, being locked in a cage, or worse.
In the Land of the Free, police killed more people in just one month of this year than the United Kingdom has in the entire 20th century.
In the Land of the Free, police kill at more than 70 times the rate of other first world nations.
In the Land of the Free, we are told to “fear the terrorists” but US police kill 58 times more people than all terrorist activity against US civilians since 9-11!
The U.N. group recommends a number of actions to take to correct this problem, including bringing an end to racial profiling, which is “a rampant practice and seriously damages the trust between African-Americans and law enforcement officials.”
To improve race relations, education should be “accompanied by acts of reconciliation” to overcome bigotry and past injustices, while federal and state laws should recognise the negative impact of enslavement and racial injustice, the report added, according to Reuters.
While these recommendations are definitely a step in the right direction, the U.N. report fails to mention the role played by the state’s immoral war on drugs.
America has the largest prison population in the world. It is estimated that victimless crime constitutes 86% of the federal prison population. That means the only reason that these individuals are incarcerated is because the state deemed their non-violent personal choices, “illegal.” The majority of that 86% is for illegal drugs only.
Most of the people who are thrown in prison are non-violent. However, when they are locked in cages with society’s worst and treated like cattle in a factory farm, they come out forever changed. America is breeding a torturous and violent environment, and they have the audacity to call this the “justice system.”
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