By William Fisher
You’re going on a business trip abroad. Or a vacation. Or you’re returning to the country of your parents’ birth to visit family there. You check in at the airport, go through security, and find your seat in the plane. Now the engines are at full throttle, you’re rolling, and in seconds, you’re airborne. What you don’t know is that, if your government gets its way, you’ll never be airborne again headed for the US. Even though you are a native-born US citizen or a permanent resident with a green card. Because the moment your flight was wheels up, your name was added to the dreaded No Fly List. But you don’t know any of this. You’re just sitting there, enjoying your flight, blissfully unaware that someone’s put a target on your back. Will you ever know you’ve been put on the no-fly list? Yes. When? When you attempt to board your flight back to the US. You will not be allowed to board. Instead you’ll be taken to a room somewhere in the airport, where you’ll be questioned by officers you’ve never seen before. And questioned. And questioned. And questioned. They think you’re a terrorist. And they want to know all about you, your terrorist associates, what your plans are, who you saw overseas, the whole nine yards. This goes on for days. You’re exhausted. Your family has no idea where you are. They’re frantically phoning anyone they think might have some information, including the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and so forth. And, of course, their lawyers, if they have lawyers. So far, your gracious “hosts” haven’t asked you if you even want a lawyer, and they are not likely to do so. Every evening your hosts let you go – where can you go? -- to the American Embassy or Consulate, where you talk to anyone who will listen and try to find out why you’re stuck in this nightmare. This can go on for weeks or for a month or more. Finally, you manage to reach out to an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union. You tell your story. But they’ve heard it all before – from people in precisely the same predicament as you are in. They’ve learned how to navigate these rocky shoals of counter-terrorism. After what seems an absolutely endless delay, you are unceremoniously put on a plane headed for the US. You have not been found guilty of anything. You have not been exonerated of any crime. You are exactly the same person you were when this awful journey began – except that you are now on the no-fly list and you’re mad as hell. Why did this happen to you? You’ll have to tell me. Because our Government certainly isn’t going to. They won’t even confirm that you are on a no-fly list, or any list, much less why. Now the ACLU represents 15 US citizens and permanent residents who have received this kind of inhumane treatment. Most of these folks didn’t know one another. Today they are bonded by the Keystone Kops antics of our counter-terrorism programs. And bonded even more tightly by the adventure on which they are about to embark. Ten of them are suing the U.S. government. With the help of the ACLU, they have filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit on behalf of 10 U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are prohibited from flying to or from the United States or over U.S. airspace because they are on the government's "No Fly List." None of the individuals in the lawsuit, including a disabled U.S. Marine Corps veteran stranded in Egypt and a U.S. Army veteran stuck in Colombia, have been told why they are on the list or given a chance to clear their names. "More and more Americans who have done nothing wrong find themselves unable to fly, and in some cases unable to return to the U.S., without any explanation whatsoever from the government," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "A secret list that deprives people of the right to fly and places them into effective exile without any opportunity to object is both un-American and unconstitutional." The ACLU, along with its affiliates in Oregon, Southern California, Northern California and New Mexico, filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the Terrorist Screening Center in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. According to the ACLU's legal complaint, thousands of people have been added to the "No Fly List" and barred from commercial air travel without any opportunity to learn about or refute the basis for their inclusion on the list. The result is a vast and growing list of individuals who, on the basis of error or innuendo, have been deemed too dangerous to fly but who are too harmless to arrest. "Without a reasonable way for people to challenge their inclusion on the list, there's no way to keep innocent people off it," said Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "The government's decision to prevent people from flying without giving them a chance to defend themselves has a huge impact on people's lives – including their ability to perform their jobs, see their families and, in the case of U.S. citizens, to return home to the United States from abroad." She added: “The infuriating thing about this whole episode is that when each one of them tried to correct the problem through the existing redress system, the government refused to tell them why they were put on the No Fly List and to provide them a reasonable chance to defend themselves. Denying people such fundamental rights in complete secrecy and without due process is unconstitutional.” So for all you travelers: Next time you’re planning a trip, pray you’ll be able to return to ‘the land of the free’. And don’t forget to take your Frequent Interrogation card with you. This article was originally published on the website of Prism Magazine.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
FOIA: Honored in the Breach!
By William Fisher
Remember those heady days in January 2009? Obama’s first week as President. We Dems were so disgusted with eight years of George Bush’s “secret governance” that we were ready to believe that anything the Obama Administration did could only be a major improvement.
I remember being particularly joyous that one of our new President’s first-day-in-office pledges was to fulfill his campaign promise to lead the “most transparent administration in history.”
He said: “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” While laying out principles he wished to see his agencies adopt in the proceeding months, he ordered federal officials to err on the side of openness. The President wrote that FOIA should be “administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” That was to be the default position.
Following through on the President’s memorandum, Obama’s new attorney general, Eric Holder, issued a directive to emphasize the importance of the FOIA law’s purpose and “to ensure that it is realized in practice.”
Holder ordered that unless there was a compelling state interest in secrecy, our citizenry was entitled to know what their government was up to. It was to be a real change in mind set. The public was not the enemy!
Like millions of others, I expected full disclosure of Bush’s secret wiretapping, torture of prisoners, the CIA’S secret prisons and its destruction of interrogation videotapes. I also expected an end to the use of the “state secrets privilege” as a way of keeping embarrassing cases out of court.
Well, all I can say is that I, having worked in the Kennedy Administration, should have known better. A lot better. I should have known that many government employees seem to have a predilection for secrecy. Maybe it comes from Bacon’s dictum that “knowledge is power.” Or maybe they think it’s just safer not to call attention to oneself.
Whatever the reasons, I sure wasn’t ready for what came next.
Since Obama’s historic first day in office, numerous studies and surveys have been carried out by researchers in and out of government. The most recentof these has been published by TRAC – the Transactional Records Access Clearing House, a research unit at Syracuse University. Its findings are not pretty.
The Attorney General’s memorandum said the Department of Justice would “defend a denial of a FOIA request only if the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of the statutory exemptions, or disclosure is prohibited by law.”
The FOIA law has been amended many times and it appears that most of the amendments have tilted toward finding more and more reasons NOT to disclose. Even a partial list of exclusions presents information seekers with a formidable task.
The TRAC research considered whether or not a key component of that March 2009 directive which set forth new “defensive standards” for FOIA litigation has been obeyed.
Yet here are two shockers:
TRAC says available evidence indicates that no affirmative steps needed to implement the new defensive standards were ever taken. Further, there is little evidence that these new standards have made any impact on actual Department of Justice practices in defending federal agency withholding. In short, the new defensive standards seem to have become simply empty words on paper.
Furthermore, TRAC and many others charge that, after three years, the Freedom of Information Act – the basic building block of government transparency -- is still in shackles. According to Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Obama Administration “has been just as secretive—if not more so—than his predecessors, and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has become the prime example of his administration’s lack of progress.”
Similarly, TRAC found little evidence that these new standards are actually being followed. In fact, some individuals interviewed by TRAC expressed the opinion that Justice Department attorneys had become even more aggressive in defending anything that federal agencies chose to withhold.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, if an agency does not provide records requested under FOIA, the requestor can file an action in federal court seeking a court order to compel their disclosure. When an agency’s withholding is challenged in court, attorneys from the Justice Department are typically called upon to defend the agency’s action. Therefore the standards used by these attorneys in determining which withholding actions will be defended, and which will not, send a powerful signal to federal agency officials and FOIA staff on the extent to which the agency will have a free hand in withholding government records.
In addition, whatever the ultimate decision of the courts, the sclerotic pace of federal litigation means that the decision to defend an agency’s withholding effectively postpones the need to turn over documents to the public for many years. Thus, agencies can use this tactic to effectively delay access to sought-after records until public interest in their contents dies down.
And delay they have. In 1997, a request was made by The New York Times under the FOIA. It received a response in 2012. The response was sent by Federal Express, Priority Overnight.
The National Archives and Records Administration says its oldest request is from September 1992, asking for information from the White House Office of Science and Technology about nuclear weapons safeguards, testing and disarmament negotiations. The documents requested are from 1961.
Another request from 1992 is for State Department documents relating to nuclear weapons accidents in 1958 through 1960. A third asked, in 1993, for documents dating to the American occupation of Italy after World War II, specifically about the Sicilian Mafia.
The National Security Archive, a non-governmental non-profit group based in Washington that is a heavy user of the Freedom of Information Act, reported last July 4, on the 45th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the law, on some older cases that were still open. Those included a 1995 request for information on Pakistani surface-to-air missiles and a 1998 request to the George Bush Presidential Library for documents relating to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bombing happened in 1988.
The AP's review of annual Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the administration's use of nearly every one of the law's nine exemptions to withhold information from the public increased during fiscal year 2009.
And just this year, in a FOIA case that TRAC filed, and that is now before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department attorney argued that the government was entitled to withhold the names of many political appointees on government employment rolls — extending even to withholding the name of the head of a federal agency — even though names of federal employees had been a matter of public record since 1816.
In that same case, the DOJ attorney also argued that data compiled for statistical purposes containing the county or city where federal workers were located was exempt from disclosure on privacy grounds, whether or not it was possible to associate the data with any identifiable individual.
The White House described Obama’s directive as "historic," but the Office of Management and Budget still has not responded to the AP's request under the Freedom of Information Act to review internal e-mails and other documents related to that effort.
For example, the Federal Aviation Administration cited the “deliberative process exemption “ --- one of the most frequently used exclusions -- in refusing the AP's request for internal memos on its decisions about data showing collisions between airplanes and birds. The FAA initially tried to withhold the bird-strike database from the public, but later released it under pressure.
It is ironic that the “deliberative process exemption” -- which allows the government to withhold documents dealing with its internal decision making process -- is one that Obama explicitly told the agencies not to use.
Yet in Obama’s first year in office, the use of the “deliberative process exemption” rose from 47,395 times in 2008 to 70,779 times in 2009.
This was the exemption claimed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to withhold nearly all records about its approval for Air Force One to fly over New York City for publicity shots – a flight that prompted fears in the city of a Sept. 11-style attack. It also withheld internal communications during the aftermath of the public relations gaffe.
Other exemptions cover information on national defense and foreign relations, internal agency rules and practices, trade secrets, personal privacy, law enforcement proceedings, supervision of financial institutions and geological information on wells.
One, known as Exemption 3, covers dozens of types of information that Congress shielded from disclosure when passing other laws. In provisions often vaguely worded and buried deep in legislation, Congress has granted an array of special protection over the years: information related to grand jury investigations, additives in cigarettes, juvenile arrest records, the identities of people applying restricted-use pesticides to their crops, and the locations of historically significant caves. All can be legally withheld from the public.
The federal government cited Exemption 3 protections to withhold information at least 14,442 times in the last budget year, compared with at least 13,599 in the previous one.
Journalists have been among the most consistent users of FOIA requests. But the obstacles, and the time, money and people-power needed to surmount them, have shown signs of discouraging this constituency.
Trevor Timm of the EFF reports that the Associated Press looked at the administration’s commitment to transparency in 2010 and concluded Obama was using FOIA exemptions to withhold information from requesters more than Bush did in his final year, despite receiving fewer overall requests.
Worse, more than a year after Obama and Holder’s memos, a National Security Archive study found “less than one-third of the 90 federal agencies that process such FOIA requests have made significant changes in their procedures.” Even FOIA requests on transparency were held up:
An Associated Press study concluded that the bottom line was that, one year into its promise of greater government transparency, the Obama administration was more often citing exceptions to the nation's open records law to withhold federal records even as the number of requests for information declined.
Obama's directive appears to have been widely ignored.Major agencies cited the “deliberative” exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year, according to annual reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.
One of the frustrating realities about the FOIA process is the enormous backlog of requests government agencies have to contend with, which means many months or years could pass before a request is finally processed and a response received.. Court calendars jam-packed with FOIA cases are also having the effect of putting civil trials on hold, sometimes for years.
Much of the Obama administration's early effort seems to have been aimed at clearing out this backlog of old cases: The number of requests still waiting past deadlines spelled out in the open-records law fell from 124,019 in budget year 2008 to 67,764 at the end of the most recent budget year. There is no way to tell whether people whose cases were closed ultimately received the information they sought.
The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year, the review found. Over the same period, the number of information requests declined by about 11 percent, from 493,610 requests in fiscal 2008 to 444,924 in 2009. Agencies often cite more than one exemption when withholding part or all of the material sought in an open-records request.
The administration has stalled even over records about its own efforts to be more transparent. The AP is still waiting – after months – for records it requested about the White House's "Open Government Directive," rules it issued in December directing every agency to take immediate, specific steps to open their operations up to the public.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., was so concerned about what he called "exemption creep" that last year he successfully pressed for a new law that requires exemptions to be "clear and unambiguous."
Recently, Attorney General Eric Holder said the government is making progress. In a speech at the start of Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information, Holder noted that the Justice Department turned over all documents in information requests in more than 1,000 more cases than it had the previous year.
"Put simply, I asked that we make openness the default, not the exception," Holder said. "I'm pleased to report that the disturbing 2008 trend – a reduction in this department's rate of disclosures – has been completely reversed. While we aren't where we need to be just yet, we're certainly on the right path."
Scott Hodes, an attorney in private practice who specializes in FOIA litigation, was asked whether there was an effort to change, Hodes was blunt, saying that he believes DOJ attorneys handling FOIA cases don’t consider the documents at the center of a FOIA denial case, and maintain a policy of always defending the cases.
“They will still pretty much defend a ham sandwich in a FOIA exemption case,” Hodes told TRAC.
The reason for this, Hodes said, was because there was no backing for a change from higher up in the agency that provided the support or infrastructure for attorneys handling cases to decide not to defend a case.
“I think the important thing is that there has been no training, specifically for FOIA litigators. There’s no guidelines — there isn’t even discussion of when they should release something. Quite frankly, they’re not serious about it.”
If Hodes has found no change, and instead a stolid insistence on defending cases no matter what, others have seen the opposite — an increased aggressiveness in defending cases.
Jason Aldrich, a staff attorney at Judicial Watch who worked on two lawsuits that were examined by TRAC to see if they were affected by the new policy (neither were), said that in 12 years of litigating FOIA-related cases, extending back to the Clinton administration, he has seen no signs that DOJ attorneys are less likely to defend a case.
“I’m not really seeing any additional openness or willingness to exercise discretion, if anything people are just hunkering down, especially anything that looks like it might be remotely political,” he told TRAC.
The AP's review of annual Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the administration's use of nearly every one of the law's nine exemptions to withhold information from the public increased during fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.
The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year, the review found. Over the same period, the number of information requests declined by about 11 percent, from 493,610 requests in fiscal 2008 to 444,924 in 2009. Agencies often cite more than one exemption when withholding part or all of the material sought in an open-records request.
Proponents of “smaller, leaner government” contend that there are simply to many people involved in the FOIA process. But others contend that fewer hands would only make the delays longer.
It was back in 1966 that Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into law, driven by the indefatigable Bill Moyers, his press secretary.
Unlike Johnson’s much-publicized signing of the Civil Rights Bill, Wikipedia tells us that he had such mixed feelings about the FOIA legislation that he refused to hold any kind of ceremony that would attract the media's attention. His fear was that opening the government's files to the masses might result in the accidental or intentional revelation of national secrets.
Seven years later, Rosemary Woods, President Nixon’s secretary, was reviewing a key Watergate tape, and erased 18.5 minutes of conversation. Wags in Washington, DC, bestowed on her a “virtual” award for Worst Open Government Performance. The “honor” became an annual capitol chuckle.
The winner in 2011 was – wait for it – the US Departmentof Justice.
Federal Prison Sentences Not Uniform
By William Fisher
New research reveals that typical prison sentences handed down by Federal judges for drugs, white collar and other kinds of crimes from 2007 to 2011 can vary widely from sentences meted out by other judges for similar cases in the same district.
Based on an analysis of more than 370,000 cases completed in the nation's federal courts during the last five years, this finding “raises questions about the extent to which federal sentences are influenced by the particular judge who was assigned to decide it rather than just the specific facts and circumstances of that case.”
This first-of-its-kind, judge-by-judge review was carried out by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University and is based on hundreds of thousands of records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act as a result of a series of lawsuits against the Justice Department.
This has been combined with information obtained directly from the federal courts. Together, these data indicate that long-term efforts to improve the consistency of the federal sentences through the adoption of complex sentencing guidelines have not been entirely successful in curtailing large judge-to-judge differences in sentencing practices.
TRAC’S purpose, it said, is to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the courts’ functioning. “With this thought in mind, TRAC has collected hundreds of thousands of required records, analyzed them in a new way and developed a sophisticated online system so that judges, law schools, scholars, public interest groups, Congress and others can easily access them and be better informed about the best ways to achieve the broad goal of improving the federal courts.”
TRAC said,” A key requirement for achieving justice is that the judges in a court system have sufficient discretion to consider the totality of circumstances in deciding that a sentence in a specific case is ‘just’. No set of rules, including the federal sentencing guidelines, can substitute for this necessary flexibility.”
But, TRAC added, “A fair court system also requires ‘equal justice’ under the law. This means that the average or typical sentences of the judges will not be widely different for similar kinds of cases. So the goal of systematically examining sentences is not to develop a lockstep sentencing system. Rather, the goal is to provide both the courts and the public with accurate information so that they can examine whether justice is being achieved.”
Here are a few examples of disparate sentences provided by TRAC involving drug convictions:
In the Northern District of Texas, which includes Dallas and Fort Worth, the median or typical sentence for each district court judge for drug cases for the past five years was calculated. (If a judge had a median or typical sentence of ten, half of her sentences would be below that number, half above.)
Eight judges who had each handed down at least 40 drug sentences are at the low end of this small group. For these federal judges, the median sentence was 60 months.
At the other extreme, however was another judge whose median sentence was 160 months. Nor did the sentences of the remaining six judges cluster together. In fact their typical sentences were also quite varied. Assuming the drug cases handled by these eight judges were assigned on an approximately random basis, this variation is hard to explain, TRAC says.
In the Eastern District of Virginia, which includes Alexandria, Norfolk and Richmond, there were fifteen judges who had each sentenced at least 40 drug offenders. Here the range in the typical sentences of judges was again very broad. The median sentence for three judges was 120 months, four times that of the median sentence of another judge with 30 months, TRAC says.
TRAC explains that “Part of these differences might be accounted for by differences in the composition of cases assigned judges located in different offices within the district. Alexandria judges had median sentences, which ranged from a low of 30 months to a high of 87 months, while Norfolk judges ranged from 79.5 months to 120 months. Thus, even within each office, the range in median sentences was still large.”
While large district-to-district differences were not uncommon, there were other districts where there was relatively strong agreement in the sentencing practices of the judges.
For example, the Minnesota District Court was one where fairly close agreement among judges on sentencing occurred. The nine district court judges there who had handled at least 40 drug cases clustered closely on their median sentences with a low of 52 and a high of 64 months.
Districts with two or three judges often showed more agreement. However, this wasn't always the case. The District of Columbia federal court, for example, had only three judges who had handled at least 40 drug cases. Here there was one judge with a median of only 27 months and another with a median sentence of 77 months, and the third was 51 months.
Similar patterns of differences in judge-to-judge median sentences were observed in other types of cases, including for white-collar crimes. In the Northern District of Illinois that includes Chicago, for example, the records showed there were a total of eight judges who had sentenced 40 or more defendants on white-collar crime charges from FY 2007 through FY 2011. The median sentence of these eight judges ranged from a low of zero -- that is, at least half of the defendants before that judge received no prison time -- to a high of 39 months.
The basis for TRAC's unique analysis was the case-by-case records that included each sentence imposed by federal district judges on defendants convicted of a federal crime during the past five years, FY 2007 - FY 2011. Excluded were cases handled by magistrate judges or special judges sitting by designation.
“To ensure that we only looked at judges who had sentenced a sufficient volume of individuals to make comparisons meaningful, we excluded judges that during this period had not sentenced at least 50 defendants. This left us with sentencing records on 885 district judges who had sentenced a total of 372,232 defendants over the past five years. The average number of defendants each had sentenced was 420,” TRAC declared.
The researchers developed an interactive tool to examine the record of individual judges, carrying out a detailed comparison of how the average and the median sentences for that judge compared with colleagues sitting on the same court.
“Background information on the judge, such as when she or he had been appointed, and their status as a regular versus senior status judge was noted. This tool also allowed us to check on the composition of the cases handled by each judge compared with those handled in that district, and drill in and do sentencing comparisons on subsets of similar cases — for example, similar types of cases (drugs, white collar, immigration, etc.) or similar lead charges,” TRAC explained.
The TRAC research may represent another step in the journey from a “Judge As King” approach, in which the judge is free to hand down significantly varying sentences for essentially the same crime; to Federal Sentencing requirements, in which the judge has virtually no discretion; to the current system of Federal Sentencing as guidelines only, thus allowing judges to take account of material differences between similar cases.
Though the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were originally styled as mandatory, the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in United States v. Booker found that the Guidelines violated the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, and the remedy chosen was excision of those provisions of the law establishing the Guidelines as mandatory.
In the aftermath of Booker and other Supreme Court cases, such as Blakely v. Washington (2004), the Guidelines are now considered advisory only, on both the federal and the state levels. Judges must calculate the guidelines and consider them when determining a sentence but are not required to issue sentences within the guidelines. Those sentences are still, however, subject to appellate review. Above-Guidelines-range sentences are imposed at a rate double that of the rate before Booker.
Last year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission completed a thorough analysis of the application and effects of mandatory minimum sentences. It was the first systematic review of mandatory minimum sentences in 20 years. The Commission said, ”During those two decades the number of mandatory minimum sentences has grown exponentially, and with that growth the number of inmates serving mandatory sentences has ballooned, filling our prisons to bursting.”
Key findings of the report:
In fiscal year 2010, two of every three offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were drug offenders. Almost half of all drug offenders (48.7%) who were convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were convicted of an offense carrying a 10-year penalty.
Hispanic offenders accounted for the largest group (38.3%) of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty, followed by black offenders (31.5%), white offenders (27.4%) and other race offenders (2.7%).
Offenders subject to a mandatory minimum penalty at sentencing received an average sentence of 139 months, compared to an average sentence of 63 months for those offenders who received relief from a mandatory minimum penalty.
The type of drug involved in drug cases significantly impacts the application of mandatory minimum penalties. In fiscal year 2010, the highest rate of conviction of such penalties was in methamphetamine cases (83.2%) while the lowest rate for the major drug types was in marijuana cases (44.3%).
The majority of offenders in nearly every function, including low-level secondary and miscellaneous functions, were convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty, although higher-level functions tended to be convicted of such statutes at higher rates.
The Commission’s analysis found that, for every function, the quantity of drugs involved in the offense resulted in a base offense level that included or exceeded the five-year mandatory minimum penalty.
Furthermore, the Commission’s analysis revealed that the quantity of drugs involved in an offense was not closely related to the offender’s function in the offense.
In fiscal year 2010, drug offenders convicted of a statute carrying a mandatory minimum penalty went to trial more than twice (4.5%) as often as drug offenders who were not convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty (1.6%). Furthermore, on average, the longer the mandatory minimum penalty an offender was facing, the less likely the offender was to plead guilty.
The Commission described one finding as particularly disturbing. “Mandatory minimums are justified on the basis that they will help get ‘the big fish’. The commission’s analysis of a 15 percent sample of fiscal year 2009 cases indicates that the mandatory minimum penalties sweep up a lot of minnows, rather than the big fish. Among all drug cases, couriers accounted for 23 percent of the prosecutions with street-level dealers another 17.2 percent, meaning that very small players accounted for over 40 percent of the cases. Going after these small fish was not what Congress intended when it passed mandatory minimum sentences.”
The commission concluded that for a mandatory minimum to be just it must meet these criteria: it should not be excessively severe, it must be narrowly tailored to apply only to those offenders who warrant such punishment, and it must be applied consistently.
The US houses the world’s largest prison population. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2010 — about .7% of adults in the US resident population. Additionally, 4,933,667 adults at year-end 2009 were on probation or on parole. In total, 7,225,800 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2009 — about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.
In addition, there were 86,927 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2007.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
How Nine Florida Republicans Sandbagged the Private Prison Industry
By William Fisher
It wasn’t supposed to be a nail biter. It was supposed to be a bill that effortlessly slithered its way through a well-oiled State Legislature.
Here’s how it happened:
The Republican-controlled Florida legislature was set to consider a bill that would have authorized private sector bidding on all of South Florida’s state prisons. That’s twenty-nine prisons in 18 counties. The successful bidder would have to guarantee the state a seven per cent savings on the $232 million Florida now spends on these prisons.
An annual savings of about $20 million-plus was looking better and better to lawmakers faced with a statewide deficit of more than $1 billion for this year alone. That kind of economy looked particularly succulent to Republican lawmakers who have generally had an affinity with private, for-profit prisons. Free enterprise and all that jazz, y’know.
Now, it hadn’t been easy to get this legislation to the floor. On its first try, the bill ran smack into a lawsuit filed by the union representing some 4,000 state prison guards. They asserted that the prison privatization bill was unconstitutional because it was part of the state’s general budget and not a stand-alone measure as the law requires. A judge agreed.
So it was back to square one for the private prisons. A new stand-alone bill was introduced. It was expected to pass without incident.
But a funny thing happened to the bill on its way to the desk of Gov. Rick Scott, a friend of for-profit prisons. Nine Republicans jumped ship.
How come?
Well, it wasn’t for lack of intense lobbying by those in favor – largely fiscal hawks and those who received substantial campaign contributions from private prison interests – or those opposed – the union, trying to protect 4,000 jobs, and lawmakers and public policy organizations who didn’t think it was a good idea for private companies to run prisons, and who doubted that the promised savings would ever appear.
Sen. Mike Fasano, the Republican who led the charge against privatization, told James Rosico of the Associated Press that the bill was "bad public policy."
His reward? Losing the chairmanship of the Senate budget panel that oversees spending on prisons and the courts.
Some legislators simply felt that public safety, including corrections, shouldn't be contracted out. Others doubted that the state would ever see the promised savings. A delegation of state prison guards, sitting in the gallery, let loose a shout of joy.
Thus the largest prison privatization in US history crashed and burned, 21-19.
But many familiar with Florida politics think this is only Round One. They expect prison privatization to come back to the legislative calendar in the near future.
The AP reports that Florida already has seven privately-run prisons.
“Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), based in Nashville, runs the Bay, Graceville and Lake City correctional facilities, and South Florida's Moore Haven correctional facility, its website says. The GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut), headquartered in Boca Raton, operates South Florida's South Bay correctional facility and Broward Transition Center, and Blackwater correctional facility in the Panhandle, according to its website.”
Companies like CCA and GEO own and operate adult prisons, juvenile facilities and immigration detention centers across the country. They have been widely criticized by many prison professionals for hiring inexperienced staff willing to work for less, focusing their management initiatives on keeping their beds filled (and thus paid for), and neglecting the health and safety of inmates. A number of their facilities have turned out to be public health nightmares, with substandard food and unsanitary conditions. There have been a number of deaths and sexual assaults in for-profit prisons.
Despite such well-publicized shortcomings, the for-profit prison business has grown consistently, spurred recently by the industry’s sales pitches that play to the necessity for cash-strapped states to balance their budgets. But prison professionals report that the resulting savings, if any, are marginal.
The two largest companies in the field, CCA and GEO, reported revenues of over a billion dollars each in 2011, and forecast healthy growth for 2012.
CCA and GEO are also major players in the organization known as ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council – an association of corporate lobbyists and state legislators. ALEC prepares “model bills” that states can adapt to their particular politics. For example, the egregious stack of paper known as B-1070, Arizona’s disastrous anti-immigrant bill, is largely an ALEC product, as are many parts of a similar bill in Alabama.
The link between private prisons and immigration? These companies and others also operate detention centers for tens of thousands of people – whole families, in fact – who are awaiting hearings before immigration judges to decide whether they will stay in the US or be deported. The tougher the laws, the more people will be picked up and detained.
Given the obvious clout of the industry, it was a rare act of genuine courage for these nine Florida Republicans to buck their Senate leadership, their Governor, and their campaign coffers to vote the vote this bill down. I was particularly struck by the reasoning of one of the rebellious Florida lawmakers, Sen. Steve Oelrich, a Republican from Alachua.
He told his Senate colleagues: “No sooner should we privatize our military than we should be privatizing our corrections department and our
correctional officers. I think it’s bad policy.”
But Mr. Oelrich must know how naïve it would be for Florida lawmakers to expect private prisons to just go away. With the financial and political firepower this industry has exhibited, they will surely be back next year if not sooner.
It wasn’t supposed to be a nail biter. It was supposed to be a bill that effortlessly slithered its way through a well-oiled State Legislature.
Here’s how it happened:
The Republican-controlled Florida legislature was set to consider a bill that would have authorized private sector bidding on all of South Florida’s state prisons. That’s twenty-nine prisons in 18 counties. The successful bidder would have to guarantee the state a seven per cent savings on the $232 million Florida now spends on these prisons.
An annual savings of about $20 million-plus was looking better and better to lawmakers faced with a statewide deficit of more than $1 billion for this year alone. That kind of economy looked particularly succulent to Republican lawmakers who have generally had an affinity with private, for-profit prisons. Free enterprise and all that jazz, y’know.
Now, it hadn’t been easy to get this legislation to the floor. On its first try, the bill ran smack into a lawsuit filed by the union representing some 4,000 state prison guards. They asserted that the prison privatization bill was unconstitutional because it was part of the state’s general budget and not a stand-alone measure as the law requires. A judge agreed.
So it was back to square one for the private prisons. A new stand-alone bill was introduced. It was expected to pass without incident.
But a funny thing happened to the bill on its way to the desk of Gov. Rick Scott, a friend of for-profit prisons. Nine Republicans jumped ship.
How come?
Well, it wasn’t for lack of intense lobbying by those in favor – largely fiscal hawks and those who received substantial campaign contributions from private prison interests – or those opposed – the union, trying to protect 4,000 jobs, and lawmakers and public policy organizations who didn’t think it was a good idea for private companies to run prisons, and who doubted that the promised savings would ever appear.
Sen. Mike Fasano, the Republican who led the charge against privatization, told James Rosico of the Associated Press that the bill was "bad public policy."
His reward? Losing the chairmanship of the Senate budget panel that oversees spending on prisons and the courts.
Some legislators simply felt that public safety, including corrections, shouldn't be contracted out. Others doubted that the state would ever see the promised savings. A delegation of state prison guards, sitting in the gallery, let loose a shout of joy.
Thus the largest prison privatization in US history crashed and burned, 21-19.
But many familiar with Florida politics think this is only Round One. They expect prison privatization to come back to the legislative calendar in the near future.
The AP reports that Florida already has seven privately-run prisons.
“Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), based in Nashville, runs the Bay, Graceville and Lake City correctional facilities, and South Florida's Moore Haven correctional facility, its website says. The GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut), headquartered in Boca Raton, operates South Florida's South Bay correctional facility and Broward Transition Center, and Blackwater correctional facility in the Panhandle, according to its website.”
Companies like CCA and GEO own and operate adult prisons, juvenile facilities and immigration detention centers across the country. They have been widely criticized by many prison professionals for hiring inexperienced staff willing to work for less, focusing their management initiatives on keeping their beds filled (and thus paid for), and neglecting the health and safety of inmates. A number of their facilities have turned out to be public health nightmares, with substandard food and unsanitary conditions. There have been a number of deaths and sexual assaults in for-profit prisons.
Despite such well-publicized shortcomings, the for-profit prison business has grown consistently, spurred recently by the industry’s sales pitches that play to the necessity for cash-strapped states to balance their budgets. But prison professionals report that the resulting savings, if any, are marginal.
The two largest companies in the field, CCA and GEO, reported revenues of over a billion dollars each in 2011, and forecast healthy growth for 2012.
CCA and GEO are also major players in the organization known as ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council – an association of corporate lobbyists and state legislators. ALEC prepares “model bills” that states can adapt to their particular politics. For example, the egregious stack of paper known as B-1070, Arizona’s disastrous anti-immigrant bill, is largely an ALEC product, as are many parts of a similar bill in Alabama.
The link between private prisons and immigration? These companies and others also operate detention centers for tens of thousands of people – whole families, in fact – who are awaiting hearings before immigration judges to decide whether they will stay in the US or be deported. The tougher the laws, the more people will be picked up and detained.
Given the obvious clout of the industry, it was a rare act of genuine courage for these nine Florida Republicans to buck their Senate leadership, their Governor, and their campaign coffers to vote the vote this bill down. I was particularly struck by the reasoning of one of the rebellious Florida lawmakers, Sen. Steve Oelrich, a Republican from Alachua.
He told his Senate colleagues: “No sooner should we privatize our military than we should be privatizing our corrections department and our
correctional officers. I think it’s bad policy.”
But Mr. Oelrich must know how naïve it would be for Florida lawmakers to expect private prisons to just go away. With the financial and political firepower this industry has exhibited, they will surely be back next year if not sooner.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
SAUDI ARABIA: Cracking Down Quietly
By William Fisher
It is being reported that Saudi Arabia’s aging monarch, King Abdullah, is refusing to discuss the Syrian catastrophe with international colleagues. “There is nothing more to say,” he is being quoted as saying.
Well, OK, given the huge rebuff Syrian President Basher al-Assad handed the Arab League, maybe the king’s position is understandable. On the other hand, the King’s neighborhood is chock-a-block with calamity situations triggered by the so-called Arab Spring.
The King should be a tad relieved. Ongoing violence in Syria and Bahrain, continuing post-revolutionary conflict in Egypt and Yemen – all these situations have tended to draw media attention away from locales that don’t present journalists with enough blood-curdling visuals.
And Saudi is one of those locales where brutality has always trumped justice and human rights – and still does. While far more highly-publicized transgressions are pervading the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi has quietly put in place a carrot and stick strategy in an effort to keep the country stable.
The carrots have consisted of generous cash stipends for every Saudi family and the availability of more government jobs and more funds for job training. The sticks have come from the arsenal brutally used by every Middle East dictator in memory.
In March, Saudi Arabia announced that it would not allow any demonstrations or sit-in protests in the country that the government said are aimed at undermining the Kingdom’s security and stability.
“Laws and regulations in the Kingdom totally prohibit all kinds of demonstrations, marches and sit-in protests as well as calling for them as they go against the principles of Shariah and Saudi customs and traditions,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said such demonstrations not only breach the Kingdom’s law and order but also encroach on the rights of others.
Saudi Arabia has blamed an unnamed foreign power for clashes that took place in its oil-rich Eastern Province in which it says 14 people were injured.
Among the people, and largely under the press radar, there appears to be a substantial desire for more human rights. Many of these demands are coming from women who want to seek office and vote, women who want the right to drive, and women who are frustrated with their roles as men’s property.
The Kingdom’s minority Shia population says they suffer from widespread discrimination in housing, top government and private sector jobs, and access to finance.
The King has not hesitated to use the stick part of his carrot-and-stick strategy. He has jailed hundreds of citizens, including many journalists and bloggers. It has long been well documented that Saudi jailers practice torture of prisoners, as do most of the nations of the Middle East-North Africa region. Men and women detained by the Security Forces are likely to lack lawyers and even less likely to experience anything that could pass for due process. Defendants frequently languish in jail for long periods before they are tried.
The current poster-child for Saudi repression is an example. Khaled al-Johani is a 42-year-old Saudi teacher who was arrested in March 2011 over alleged support for anti-regime protests in Riyadh.
He was arrested on charge of supporting demonstrations, being present at the site of a planned protest, and talking to the foreign press "in a manner that harmed the reputation of the Kingdom," according to Amnesty.
The London-based human rights group released a statement late on Wednesday, condemning Johani’s trial earlier in the day as "utterly unwarranted."
The statement further urged Saudi authorities to release the jailed teacher
"immediately and unconditionally.”
He "shouldn't be standing trial in any court for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of expression and assembly," Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Director Phillip Luther stated.
On March 11, 2011, the Saudi regime launched a massive clampdown to prevent a planned "Day of Rage" protests, demanding democratic reform in the Persian Gulf monarchy.
Johani was apparently the only protester who was able to reach the location of the planned rally and was arrested minutes after he talked to BBC Arabic about the lack of freedoms in Saudi Arabia, according to the statement.
Amnesty said the 42-year-old father of five, including a six-month old who was born during his detention, is being tried at the Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh, a court established to deal with terrorism charges.
The statement said that Johani has so far been denied legal representation, though the judge during Wednesday's hearing said he would be allowed to appoint one "within a week."
Johani's trial will resume in April, it added.
Finally, Saudi Arabia continued its refusal to register a human rights organization, the Saudi Society of Labor. It has been trying unsuccessfully to register since 2007. Its mission is to protect the rights of workers, tackle unemployment in Saudi Arabia, improve and develop the performance of Saudi workers, activate labor unions while adhering to the Kingdom’s laws, empower the female workforce, and offer foreign language courses and computer training.
Despite the fact that the Society has been denied permission to legally register, it reportedly has now more than 4,000 members and has developed an online forum, www.saudi-workers.org, in which members discuss job-related issues.
At the end of 2008, the founders of the Society complained to the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR). The NCHR advised the founders to wait until the establishment of a commission which will specialize in regulating civil society organizations. To date, no such commission has been formed.
According to Saudi law, civil societies are not allowed to form or conduct activities without prior authorization. Although permission to register was granted to the semi-official Saudi Human Rights Society, this has not been the case for independent human rights groups such as the Saudi Society of Labor, Human Rights First Society, and the Legal Support Society.
Finally, the US has moved to strengthen its alliance with Saudi Arabia, signing an agreement to sell F-15 fighter jets to the desert Kingdom.
It is being reported that Saudi Arabia’s aging monarch, King Abdullah, is refusing to discuss the Syrian catastrophe with international colleagues. “There is nothing more to say,” he is being quoted as saying.
Well, OK, given the huge rebuff Syrian President Basher al-Assad handed the Arab League, maybe the king’s position is understandable. On the other hand, the King’s neighborhood is chock-a-block with calamity situations triggered by the so-called Arab Spring.
The King should be a tad relieved. Ongoing violence in Syria and Bahrain, continuing post-revolutionary conflict in Egypt and Yemen – all these situations have tended to draw media attention away from locales that don’t present journalists with enough blood-curdling visuals.
And Saudi is one of those locales where brutality has always trumped justice and human rights – and still does. While far more highly-publicized transgressions are pervading the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi has quietly put in place a carrot and stick strategy in an effort to keep the country stable.
The carrots have consisted of generous cash stipends for every Saudi family and the availability of more government jobs and more funds for job training. The sticks have come from the arsenal brutally used by every Middle East dictator in memory.
In March, Saudi Arabia announced that it would not allow any demonstrations or sit-in protests in the country that the government said are aimed at undermining the Kingdom’s security and stability.
“Laws and regulations in the Kingdom totally prohibit all kinds of demonstrations, marches and sit-in protests as well as calling for them as they go against the principles of Shariah and Saudi customs and traditions,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said such demonstrations not only breach the Kingdom’s law and order but also encroach on the rights of others.
Saudi Arabia has blamed an unnamed foreign power for clashes that took place in its oil-rich Eastern Province in which it says 14 people were injured.
Among the people, and largely under the press radar, there appears to be a substantial desire for more human rights. Many of these demands are coming from women who want to seek office and vote, women who want the right to drive, and women who are frustrated with their roles as men’s property.
The Kingdom’s minority Shia population says they suffer from widespread discrimination in housing, top government and private sector jobs, and access to finance.
The King has not hesitated to use the stick part of his carrot-and-stick strategy. He has jailed hundreds of citizens, including many journalists and bloggers. It has long been well documented that Saudi jailers practice torture of prisoners, as do most of the nations of the Middle East-North Africa region. Men and women detained by the Security Forces are likely to lack lawyers and even less likely to experience anything that could pass for due process. Defendants frequently languish in jail for long periods before they are tried.
The current poster-child for Saudi repression is an example. Khaled al-Johani is a 42-year-old Saudi teacher who was arrested in March 2011 over alleged support for anti-regime protests in Riyadh.
He was arrested on charge of supporting demonstrations, being present at the site of a planned protest, and talking to the foreign press "in a manner that harmed the reputation of the Kingdom," according to Amnesty.
The London-based human rights group released a statement late on Wednesday, condemning Johani’s trial earlier in the day as "utterly unwarranted."
The statement further urged Saudi authorities to release the jailed teacher
"immediately and unconditionally.”
He "shouldn't be standing trial in any court for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of expression and assembly," Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Director Phillip Luther stated.
On March 11, 2011, the Saudi regime launched a massive clampdown to prevent a planned "Day of Rage" protests, demanding democratic reform in the Persian Gulf monarchy.
Johani was apparently the only protester who was able to reach the location of the planned rally and was arrested minutes after he talked to BBC Arabic about the lack of freedoms in Saudi Arabia, according to the statement.
Amnesty said the 42-year-old father of five, including a six-month old who was born during his detention, is being tried at the Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh, a court established to deal with terrorism charges.
The statement said that Johani has so far been denied legal representation, though the judge during Wednesday's hearing said he would be allowed to appoint one "within a week."
Johani's trial will resume in April, it added.
Finally, Saudi Arabia continued its refusal to register a human rights organization, the Saudi Society of Labor. It has been trying unsuccessfully to register since 2007. Its mission is to protect the rights of workers, tackle unemployment in Saudi Arabia, improve and develop the performance of Saudi workers, activate labor unions while adhering to the Kingdom’s laws, empower the female workforce, and offer foreign language courses and computer training.
Despite the fact that the Society has been denied permission to legally register, it reportedly has now more than 4,000 members and has developed an online forum, www.saudi-workers.org, in which members discuss job-related issues.
At the end of 2008, the founders of the Society complained to the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR). The NCHR advised the founders to wait until the establishment of a commission which will specialize in regulating civil society organizations. To date, no such commission has been formed.
According to Saudi law, civil societies are not allowed to form or conduct activities without prior authorization. Although permission to register was granted to the semi-official Saudi Human Rights Society, this has not been the case for independent human rights groups such as the Saudi Society of Labor, Human Rights First Society, and the Legal Support Society.
Finally, the US has moved to strengthen its alliance with Saudi Arabia, signing an agreement to sell F-15 fighter jets to the desert Kingdom.
Will Iranian Government Use Brutal Tactics After Parliamanetary Poll?
By William Fisher
Well, the big secret is out: Whatever it takes, Iran is determined to stamp out another season of mass demonstrations railing against the parliamentary elections set for next week.
In fact, for months Iranian authorities have been targeting everyone from students, lawyers, religious leaders and bloggers to political activists and their relatives as they unleash a wave of repression, including a new “cyber army” to block Internet and social media networks, thus cutting off access to the outside world, Amnesty International charged yesterday.
"The Iranian authorities have unleashed their ‘cyber army’ in an effort to cut off their citizens' access to information,” said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
“Meanwhile those who dare express any unapproved thoughts on the Internet can expect to be slapped with a prison sentence of more than a decade,” she said, adding, “The Iranian government is going to extraordinary lengths to impose a total information blackout on the Iranian population."
These charges are contained in the report, “We Are Ordered To Crush You: Expanding Repression of Dissent in Iran.” The report says “anything from setting up a social group on the Internet, forming or joining an NGO, or expressing opposition to the status quo can land individuals in prison.”
The report documents a wave of arrests in recent months that it said “lays bare the hollowness of Iran’s claim to support protests in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Amnesty also called on the global community “not to allow tensions over Iran’s nuclear program or events in the wider region to distract it from pressing Iran to live up to its human rights obligations.”
Amnesty says Iran’s security forces – including the new cyber police force – can now scrutinize activists as they use personal computers in their own homes. A new and shadowy “cyber army” reportedly linked to the Revolutionary Guards, has carried out attacks on websites at home and abroad, including Twitter and the Voice of America.
“In Iran today you put yourself at risk if you do anything that might fall outside the increasingly narrow confines of what the authorities deem socially or politically acceptable,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s interim deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“This dreadful record really highlights the hypocrisy of the Iranian government's attempts to show solidarity with protesters in Egypt, Bahrain and other countries in the region.”
Iran’s current actions also confirmed that there will be no change, no “softening,” in the brutal tactics the government employed in the brutal crackdown following parliamentary 2009 elections. In the 2009 demonstrations, Western media were regularly provided with photographs of the violence. Most were taken with cell phone cameras.
In the wake of protests called by opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi in February 2011, the Iranian authorities steadily cranked up repression of dissent and the situation has worsened over the last few months in the lead up to the parliamentary elections this Friday (March 2).
The report finds that in recent months a wave of arrests has targeted lawyers, students, journalists, political activists and their relatives, religious and ethnic minorities, filmmakers, and people with international connections, particularly to media.
Embarrassed and humiliated by the fierce and prolonged protests following the highly controversial 2009 Iranian presidential elections, the Iranian Government has apparently decided to adopt the same strategy should massive protests erupt across Iran next week.
The Iranian government suppressed the protests and stopped the mass demonstrations in 2009, with only very minor flare-ups in 2010. However, not many of the protesters' demands were met. Hundreds of citizens were thrown into jail. Iran’s basij – its motorcycle-borne militia – roamed Tehran and other cities, beating citizens with batons. The government also employed security forces with tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets and, finally live rounds.
For a time, the protest movement went relatively quiet. Then, the 2010–2011 Arab world protests spread across the Middle East and North Africa. After the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 January 2011, millions of people began demonstrating across the region in a broad movement aimed at various issues such as their standards of living or influencing significant reforms, with varying degrees of success. With the successful ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February 2011 following that of President Ben Ali of Tunisia, renewed protests began in Iran.
On 27 January, the opposition Green Movement of Iran announced a series of protests against the Iranian government scheduled to take place prior to the "Revolution Day" march on 11 February.
On 9 February, various opposition groups in Iran sent a letter to the Ministry of Interior requesting permission to protest under the control of the Iranian police. Permission was refused by the relevant government officials. Despite these setbacks and crackdowns on activists and members of opposition parties, opposition leaders such as Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, called for protests.
On Feb.14, a man displayed a poster of one of those killed during the 2009 election protests. Feb. 15 was publicized as "The Day of Rage". But, the day before the protests were due to begin, opposition leaders Mousavi and Karroubi were placed under house arrest and denied access to telephones and the Internet. Their homes were blockaded and they were not allowed visitors. On 14 February 2011, thousands of protesters began to gather in a solidarity rally with Egypt and Tunisia. There was a large number of police on the streets to keep an eye on the protesters, but thousands were still able to gather together in Tehran's Azadi Square. The number of protesters has been given by different sources, from "thousands" to "hundreds of thousands".
The solidarity protests turned into an anti-government demonstration during which the police fired tear gas and paintballs at protesters. To protect themselves, protesters responded by setting fires in garbage bins. Video footage showed one civilian being violently beaten by a group of protesters. Two protesters were fatally wounded in Tehran. Both were university students. According to reporter Farnaz Fassihi, they were both shot by men on motorcycles who their friends identified as Basij members.
Protests were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and Shiraz, which police forcibly dispersed, as well as in Rasht, Mashhad and Kermanshah.
The protests that occurred on this day marked a setback for the government of Iran, as the regime has campaigned that Mousavi's Green Movement had lost momentum, but the revived uprisings helps prove otherwise.
According to some reports, 1,500 Hezbollah fighters assisted in the suppression of the protests in Azadi Square. Following the initial protests, Hezbollah fighters allegedly continued to participate, assisting local forces in suppressing protests.
On 18 February, thousands of pro-government supporters called for the execution of opposition leaders after Friday prayers. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said that the opposition leaders had lost their reputation and are as good as "dead and executed." He said there should be more restrictions on Mousavi and Karroubi. "Their communications with people should be completely cut. They should not be able to receive or send messages. Their phone lines and Internet should be cut. They should be prisoners in their homes”
On February 19, the Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar stated that the protests set for Sunday, February 20, will "be confronted as per the law".
Electronic media is seen as a major threat. In January a senior police officer said Google was an “espionage tool,” not a search engine. The same month, the recently established Cyber Police required owners of Internet cafés to install CCTV and to register the identity of users before allowing them to use computers.
Blogger Mehdi Khazali was this month sentenced to four and a half years in prison, followed by ten years in “internal exile,” and a fine for charges believed to include “spreading propaganda against the system,” “gathering and colluding against national security,” and “insulting officials.” It is not clear whether his “internal exile” will in fact be served in prison.
Having been originally charged in 2011 and released on bail, he was arrested again in January. He is being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where he has been on hunger strike for more than 40 days in protest at his detention, raising fears for his health.
Harassment, arrest and imprisonment of human rights defenders, including women’s rights groups, has also intensified and several NGOs have been shut down.
Abdolfattah Soltani, a founder member of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders, was arrested in September and is held in Evin Prison awaiting the outcome of his trial on charges which include his acceptance of an international human rights prize. He has been threatened with a 20-year sentence.
The pressure on independent voices has extended to those outside Iran.
Earlier this month, the BBC said family members of its Persian language service had been subjected to harassment, including one who was arrested in January and held in solitary confinement and others whose passports were confiscated.
Amnesty International said the attacks on dissenting views come against a backdrop of a worsening overall human rights situation in Iran.
There were around four times as many public executions in 2011 as in 2010, a practice that Amnesty International said was used by the authorities to strike fear into society.
Hundreds of people are believed to have been sentenced to death in the past year, mainly for alleged drugs offenses. Iran continues to execute juvenile offenders – a practice strictly prohibited under international law.
Amnesty International called on the international community not to allow tensions over Iran’s nuclear program or events in the wider region to distract it from pressing Iran to live up to its human rights obligations.
"For Iranians facing this level of repression, it can be dispiriting that discussions about their country in diplomatic circles can seem to focus mainly on the nuclear," said Harrison.
Well, the big secret is out: Whatever it takes, Iran is determined to stamp out another season of mass demonstrations railing against the parliamentary elections set for next week.
In fact, for months Iranian authorities have been targeting everyone from students, lawyers, religious leaders and bloggers to political activists and their relatives as they unleash a wave of repression, including a new “cyber army” to block Internet and social media networks, thus cutting off access to the outside world, Amnesty International charged yesterday.
"The Iranian authorities have unleashed their ‘cyber army’ in an effort to cut off their citizens' access to information,” said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
“Meanwhile those who dare express any unapproved thoughts on the Internet can expect to be slapped with a prison sentence of more than a decade,” she said, adding, “The Iranian government is going to extraordinary lengths to impose a total information blackout on the Iranian population."
These charges are contained in the report, “We Are Ordered To Crush You: Expanding Repression of Dissent in Iran.” The report says “anything from setting up a social group on the Internet, forming or joining an NGO, or expressing opposition to the status quo can land individuals in prison.”
The report documents a wave of arrests in recent months that it said “lays bare the hollowness of Iran’s claim to support protests in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Amnesty also called on the global community “not to allow tensions over Iran’s nuclear program or events in the wider region to distract it from pressing Iran to live up to its human rights obligations.”
Amnesty says Iran’s security forces – including the new cyber police force – can now scrutinize activists as they use personal computers in their own homes. A new and shadowy “cyber army” reportedly linked to the Revolutionary Guards, has carried out attacks on websites at home and abroad, including Twitter and the Voice of America.
“In Iran today you put yourself at risk if you do anything that might fall outside the increasingly narrow confines of what the authorities deem socially or politically acceptable,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s interim deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“This dreadful record really highlights the hypocrisy of the Iranian government's attempts to show solidarity with protesters in Egypt, Bahrain and other countries in the region.”
Iran’s current actions also confirmed that there will be no change, no “softening,” in the brutal tactics the government employed in the brutal crackdown following parliamentary 2009 elections. In the 2009 demonstrations, Western media were regularly provided with photographs of the violence. Most were taken with cell phone cameras.
In the wake of protests called by opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi in February 2011, the Iranian authorities steadily cranked up repression of dissent and the situation has worsened over the last few months in the lead up to the parliamentary elections this Friday (March 2).
The report finds that in recent months a wave of arrests has targeted lawyers, students, journalists, political activists and their relatives, religious and ethnic minorities, filmmakers, and people with international connections, particularly to media.
Embarrassed and humiliated by the fierce and prolonged protests following the highly controversial 2009 Iranian presidential elections, the Iranian Government has apparently decided to adopt the same strategy should massive protests erupt across Iran next week.
The Iranian government suppressed the protests and stopped the mass demonstrations in 2009, with only very minor flare-ups in 2010. However, not many of the protesters' demands were met. Hundreds of citizens were thrown into jail. Iran’s basij – its motorcycle-borne militia – roamed Tehran and other cities, beating citizens with batons. The government also employed security forces with tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets and, finally live rounds.
For a time, the protest movement went relatively quiet. Then, the 2010–2011 Arab world protests spread across the Middle East and North Africa. After the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 January 2011, millions of people began demonstrating across the region in a broad movement aimed at various issues such as their standards of living or influencing significant reforms, with varying degrees of success. With the successful ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February 2011 following that of President Ben Ali of Tunisia, renewed protests began in Iran.
On 27 January, the opposition Green Movement of Iran announced a series of protests against the Iranian government scheduled to take place prior to the "Revolution Day" march on 11 February.
On 9 February, various opposition groups in Iran sent a letter to the Ministry of Interior requesting permission to protest under the control of the Iranian police. Permission was refused by the relevant government officials. Despite these setbacks and crackdowns on activists and members of opposition parties, opposition leaders such as Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, called for protests.
On Feb.14, a man displayed a poster of one of those killed during the 2009 election protests. Feb. 15 was publicized as "The Day of Rage". But, the day before the protests were due to begin, opposition leaders Mousavi and Karroubi were placed under house arrest and denied access to telephones and the Internet. Their homes were blockaded and they were not allowed visitors. On 14 February 2011, thousands of protesters began to gather in a solidarity rally with Egypt and Tunisia. There was a large number of police on the streets to keep an eye on the protesters, but thousands were still able to gather together in Tehran's Azadi Square. The number of protesters has been given by different sources, from "thousands" to "hundreds of thousands".
The solidarity protests turned into an anti-government demonstration during which the police fired tear gas and paintballs at protesters. To protect themselves, protesters responded by setting fires in garbage bins. Video footage showed one civilian being violently beaten by a group of protesters. Two protesters were fatally wounded in Tehran. Both were university students. According to reporter Farnaz Fassihi, they were both shot by men on motorcycles who their friends identified as Basij members.
Protests were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and Shiraz, which police forcibly dispersed, as well as in Rasht, Mashhad and Kermanshah.
The protests that occurred on this day marked a setback for the government of Iran, as the regime has campaigned that Mousavi's Green Movement had lost momentum, but the revived uprisings helps prove otherwise.
According to some reports, 1,500 Hezbollah fighters assisted in the suppression of the protests in Azadi Square. Following the initial protests, Hezbollah fighters allegedly continued to participate, assisting local forces in suppressing protests.
On 18 February, thousands of pro-government supporters called for the execution of opposition leaders after Friday prayers. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said that the opposition leaders had lost their reputation and are as good as "dead and executed." He said there should be more restrictions on Mousavi and Karroubi. "Their communications with people should be completely cut. They should not be able to receive or send messages. Their phone lines and Internet should be cut. They should be prisoners in their homes”
On February 19, the Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar stated that the protests set for Sunday, February 20, will "be confronted as per the law".
Electronic media is seen as a major threat. In January a senior police officer said Google was an “espionage tool,” not a search engine. The same month, the recently established Cyber Police required owners of Internet cafés to install CCTV and to register the identity of users before allowing them to use computers.
Blogger Mehdi Khazali was this month sentenced to four and a half years in prison, followed by ten years in “internal exile,” and a fine for charges believed to include “spreading propaganda against the system,” “gathering and colluding against national security,” and “insulting officials.” It is not clear whether his “internal exile” will in fact be served in prison.
Having been originally charged in 2011 and released on bail, he was arrested again in January. He is being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where he has been on hunger strike for more than 40 days in protest at his detention, raising fears for his health.
Harassment, arrest and imprisonment of human rights defenders, including women’s rights groups, has also intensified and several NGOs have been shut down.
Abdolfattah Soltani, a founder member of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders, was arrested in September and is held in Evin Prison awaiting the outcome of his trial on charges which include his acceptance of an international human rights prize. He has been threatened with a 20-year sentence.
The pressure on independent voices has extended to those outside Iran.
Earlier this month, the BBC said family members of its Persian language service had been subjected to harassment, including one who was arrested in January and held in solitary confinement and others whose passports were confiscated.
Amnesty International said the attacks on dissenting views come against a backdrop of a worsening overall human rights situation in Iran.
There were around four times as many public executions in 2011 as in 2010, a practice that Amnesty International said was used by the authorities to strike fear into society.
Hundreds of people are believed to have been sentenced to death in the past year, mainly for alleged drugs offenses. Iran continues to execute juvenile offenders – a practice strictly prohibited under international law.
Amnesty International called on the international community not to allow tensions over Iran’s nuclear program or events in the wider region to distract it from pressing Iran to live up to its human rights obligations.
"For Iranians facing this level of repression, it can be dispiriting that discussions about their country in diplomatic circles can seem to focus mainly on the nuclear," said Harrison.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Bahrain in Wonderland
By William Fisher
Hey, great news!
The Arab Spring revolution in Bahrain is over!
And the way I know this is how?
Well, there was this announcement this week from the Board of the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) that the 2012 Formula One Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix will be held from April 20 to 22 at BIC, ‘The Home of Motorsport in the Middle East,’ in Sakhir, a desert area just outside Manama, Bahrain’s capitol.
The directors noted that the race will mark the Kingdom’s eighth hosting of the prestigious Formula One event, and will feature plenty of top-class action being the fourth round of a record-breaking 20-race calendar that makes up the 2012 FIA Formula One World Championship.
Last year’s race was cancelled because of what sponsors called “unrest,” but which most of the rest of us described as mindless, heartless, brainless and unspeakable violence. We’re certainly happy that’s all over with now!
And how do I know it’s all over?
I know this also because Professor Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, the prominent Egyptian judge who prepared the government-ordered report on the violence in Bahrain, “expressed his full backing for the race weekend scheduled to take place this April.”
Professor Bassiouni described the Bahrain Grand Prix as “a significant national event”, one that is of “deserved national pride”. He further lauded BIC’s decision to hold the race weekend under the slogan, ‘UNIF1ED – One Nation in Celebration’.
It’s surprising that Judge Bassiouni is endorsing this sporting event with such gusto. He must really believe it presents the opportunity, as he says, “for the people of Bahrain to come together.”
Well, maybe he’s right. After spending months leading a team of investigators looking into the year-long Bahrain “unrest,” few people would seem better prepared to know the situation and how to improve it.
He and his team interviewed government officials, members of the armed forces and the security services, participants in the peaceful demonstrations seeking a larger role in speaking out for respect for human rights, a more representative form of government, and an end to arrest and torture.
King Hamad, who received the report personally, surprisingly accepted all its findings and promised to initiate an immediate dialogue to address the demonstrators’ grievances and launch the reform process.
Well, insiders tell me Judge Bassiouni has either has a major epiphany or he has been snookered big-time. The King’s office has been issuing lots of press releases describing a “national dialogue.” But this dialogue seems more like a monologue. Most of the citizen groups that spearheaded and sustained the months of peaceful demonstrations say they have not been invited to participate in anything that sounds like a meaningful discussion.
Worse yet, security services are still shooting randomly at civilian demonstrators, babies and old people are dying from inhaling tear gas, people, including women and children, are being arrested and routinely tortured by their captors. The bodies of some of the kids, bearing the unmistakable marks of torture, are being returned to their families without explanation.
Doctors are being jailed for treating demonstrators, hundreds of people were fired from state-owned companies have yet to get their jobs back. Demonstrators remember when Saudi troops rumbled down the short causeway that connects the two countries, to help the Bahraini military put down the rebellion. Students expelled from the universities for demonstrating are still expelled. Members of the Shia Muslim majority in Bahrain still feel discriminated against by the Sunni Muslim King and his royal family insiders.
Some elements in the international press are reporting, likely with the helping hands of the army of PR experts hired by the King, that the uprising has been crushed and all is peaceful once again.
Well, I wouldn’t take that to the bank if I were you.
Nonetheless, Bahrain has a very active economic development apparatus, busily promoting high-end tourism, featuring fine dining and a ton of sporting events, including Formula One racing. Its work must go on!
The Crown Prince who met with President Obama told him how important it was for Bahrain to rebuild its image in the tourist community. For the US, Bahrain is also important. – strategically important. America’s Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain.
So, yet again, sport and money have trumped justice in this tiny oil-rich island nation.
Will those who are surprised please raise their hands?
Not to worry. Because we also have the blessing of Formula One Supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who has promised, "there will be no problem with the Bahrain Grand Prix" even though petrol bombs, tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades were used in last week's clash between police and demonstrators in the Gulf kingdom.
I fervently hope Judge Bassiouni is right – that the big Formula One blowout, and all its attendant partying, may be just what’s needed to bring Bahrainis together.
Or not.
Watch this space!
END
Hey, great news!
The Arab Spring revolution in Bahrain is over!
And the way I know this is how?
Well, there was this announcement this week from the Board of the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) that the 2012 Formula One Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix will be held from April 20 to 22 at BIC, ‘The Home of Motorsport in the Middle East,’ in Sakhir, a desert area just outside Manama, Bahrain’s capitol.
The directors noted that the race will mark the Kingdom’s eighth hosting of the prestigious Formula One event, and will feature plenty of top-class action being the fourth round of a record-breaking 20-race calendar that makes up the 2012 FIA Formula One World Championship.
Last year’s race was cancelled because of what sponsors called “unrest,” but which most of the rest of us described as mindless, heartless, brainless and unspeakable violence. We’re certainly happy that’s all over with now!
And how do I know it’s all over?
I know this also because Professor Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, the prominent Egyptian judge who prepared the government-ordered report on the violence in Bahrain, “expressed his full backing for the race weekend scheduled to take place this April.”
Professor Bassiouni described the Bahrain Grand Prix as “a significant national event”, one that is of “deserved national pride”. He further lauded BIC’s decision to hold the race weekend under the slogan, ‘UNIF1ED – One Nation in Celebration’.
It’s surprising that Judge Bassiouni is endorsing this sporting event with such gusto. He must really believe it presents the opportunity, as he says, “for the people of Bahrain to come together.”
Well, maybe he’s right. After spending months leading a team of investigators looking into the year-long Bahrain “unrest,” few people would seem better prepared to know the situation and how to improve it.
He and his team interviewed government officials, members of the armed forces and the security services, participants in the peaceful demonstrations seeking a larger role in speaking out for respect for human rights, a more representative form of government, and an end to arrest and torture.
King Hamad, who received the report personally, surprisingly accepted all its findings and promised to initiate an immediate dialogue to address the demonstrators’ grievances and launch the reform process.
Well, insiders tell me Judge Bassiouni has either has a major epiphany or he has been snookered big-time. The King’s office has been issuing lots of press releases describing a “national dialogue.” But this dialogue seems more like a monologue. Most of the citizen groups that spearheaded and sustained the months of peaceful demonstrations say they have not been invited to participate in anything that sounds like a meaningful discussion.
Worse yet, security services are still shooting randomly at civilian demonstrators, babies and old people are dying from inhaling tear gas, people, including women and children, are being arrested and routinely tortured by their captors. The bodies of some of the kids, bearing the unmistakable marks of torture, are being returned to their families without explanation.
Doctors are being jailed for treating demonstrators, hundreds of people were fired from state-owned companies have yet to get their jobs back. Demonstrators remember when Saudi troops rumbled down the short causeway that connects the two countries, to help the Bahraini military put down the rebellion. Students expelled from the universities for demonstrating are still expelled. Members of the Shia Muslim majority in Bahrain still feel discriminated against by the Sunni Muslim King and his royal family insiders.
Some elements in the international press are reporting, likely with the helping hands of the army of PR experts hired by the King, that the uprising has been crushed and all is peaceful once again.
Well, I wouldn’t take that to the bank if I were you.
Nonetheless, Bahrain has a very active economic development apparatus, busily promoting high-end tourism, featuring fine dining and a ton of sporting events, including Formula One racing. Its work must go on!
The Crown Prince who met with President Obama told him how important it was for Bahrain to rebuild its image in the tourist community. For the US, Bahrain is also important. – strategically important. America’s Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain.
So, yet again, sport and money have trumped justice in this tiny oil-rich island nation.
Will those who are surprised please raise their hands?
Not to worry. Because we also have the blessing of Formula One Supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who has promised, "there will be no problem with the Bahrain Grand Prix" even though petrol bombs, tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades were used in last week's clash between police and demonstrators in the Gulf kingdom.
I fervently hope Judge Bassiouni is right – that the big Formula One blowout, and all its attendant partying, may be just what’s needed to bring Bahrainis together.
Or not.
Watch this space!
END
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