SURVIVORS on YouTube

It is official, we have arrived. Survivors of Torture, International agency video (see previous post) is now posted on YouTube on its own non-profit channel.

Check it out!

Anti- Immigrant Attacks

The New York Times reported anti-immigrant violence is sweeping across Johannesberg:

Violence against immigrants, like some windswept fire, spread across one neighborhood after another here in one of South Africa’s main cities this weekend, and the police said the mayhem left at least 12 people dead — beaten by mobs, shot, stabbed or burned alive.

Thousands of panicked foreigners — many of them Zimbabweans who have fled their own country’s economic collapse — have now deserted their ramshackle dwellings and tin-walled squatter hovels to take refuge in churches and police stations.

Read more.

Survivors of Torture, International Agency Video

Survivors of Torture, International Agency Video

Careless Detention Series

The Washington Post's Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein presented an in-depth look at immigration detention in the U.S. The report is thorough and the information is presented through pictures, stories, and video.

I highly encourage you to take a look at the 4 part series. Because of our location, at an international land crossing, many of our clients go through the process of detentions. This report confirms their stories of their time in U.S. detention facilities.

The last part of the series focused on deportation:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

Read the whole story here.

Torture on T.V.

A part of our mission is to educate the public about torture and torture treatment. When we first began our work we found that not many people even thought about torture or had any concept that it existed.

Yet in the fast 5 years we have seen a large increase in torture scenes on prime time television. Shows like 24 or Lost often have torture scenes in which torture yields valuable information.

We know that torture does not work. Often a prisoner will say whatever their torturer wants to hear. Torture is not an interrogation tactic it is a human rights violation and crime.

Human Rights First has created an excellent film entitled Prime Time Torture, showing us how the media portrays torture and the realities of this horrific crime.



Here is what you can do.

60 Minutes Looks at Immigration Detention

Immigration Detention Challenged

The New York Times reports that immigrants held in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit against the Department of Homeland Security demanding regulations be applied to the facilities, here is the whole story:

Immigrants who spent time in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit on Wednesday against Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, demanding that the agency issue legally enforceable regulations for its detention centers.

No enforceable standards now exist for the immigrant detention system, a rapidly growing conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons across the country.

The lawsuit, filed by the immigrants and their advocates in United States District Court in Manhattan, contends that the lack of such regulations puts hundreds of thousands of people a year in substandard and inconsistent conditions while the government decides whether to deport them, leaving them subject to inadequate medical care and abuse.

The suit is based on the Administrative Procedures Act, which allows courts to force agencies to respond to rulemaking petitions. In January 2007, the plaintiffs filed a petition requesting that Homeland Security make its detention standards enforceable, but have received no response.

Homeland Security is one of the largest jailers in the world, “but it behaves like a lawless local sheriff,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

Other plaintiffs include Families for Freedom, a New York-based advocacy group for immigrant detainees; Rafiu Abimbola, a Nigerian who was detained for more than six years while seeking asylum; and Camal Marchabeyoglu, now a legal permanent resident living in Corona, Calif.

“The refusal to adopt comprehensive, binding regulations has contributed to a system in which thousands of immigration detainees are routinely denied necessary medical care, visitation, legal materials or functioning telephones,” Ms. Shah said.

Charles S. Miller, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said the agency had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

In the past, officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees immigration detention within Homeland Security, said the system was held to general detention standards adopted in 1998 and 2000, through provisions in contracts with counties, private companies and other detention providers, and through annual inspections.

The agency “is fully committed to providing safe, secure and human conditions for individuals in our custody,” said Michael Keegan, a spokesman.

The lawsuit contends that those standards are incomplete, do not apply to detained immigrants in all facilities and are not enforceable when they do apply. It cites the findings of Homeland Security’s own inspector general after an audit of five detention centers in 2006, including one in San Diego run by Corrections Corporation of America; the Passaic County and Hudson County jails in New Jersey; the federal government’s Krome center in Miami; and the Berks County Prison in Leesport, Pa.

The audit found all five out of compliance with general standards on health care, disciplinary procedures and access to legal materials. But all five had been rated “acceptable” in the immigration enforcement agency’s annual reviews.

Official brought to trail for involvement in Rwandan genocide

The BBC reports that Callixte Kalimanzira has been brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for involvement in the massacre of thousands of ethnic Tutsis:

Christine Graham, representing the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), said Mr Kalimanzira had played a "key role" in the massacre of Tutsis.

Ms Graham said that in 1994 thousands of Tutsi refugees had approached Mr Kalimanzira - who was then caretaker interior minister - seeking his help.

Instead, she alleged, the accused had participated in their massacre.

Ms Graham said the killings were carried out over several days by soldiers and militia on a hill at Kibuye, in southern Rwanda.

The ICTR was set up by the UN in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, in 1997, to try the most high-profile genocide cases.

Those tried so far include government ministers, members of parliament, and military officers.

Read the whole story.

Google Earth teams with the U.N.

According to the Washington Post the United Nations is teaming with Google Earth to create an interactive map to illustrate the plight of certain populations:

Click on the United Nations' "visit a camp" button in Google Earth, for example, and an online depiction of the globe spins and zeroes in on a satellite view of a refugee camp in Chad. There, visitors learn about the refugees who have fled to that country from western Sudan's Darfur region. Click on a button and users can find out how much money it costs to install, say, a new water source at the camp. Click again and users can donate that amount.

"The great thing about Google Earth is it gives you that ability to be there," said Tim Irwin, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee organization. "We're hoping to take something that might be a little abstract for some people and make it very real."

Read more.