Human Rights: May 2004 Archives

Mass incarceration is by far the greatest crisis facing Black America, ultimately eclipsing all others. It is an overarching reality that colors and distorts every aspect of African American political, economic and cultural life, smothering the human – and humane – aspirations of the community. Even the boundless creativity of youth cannot escape the chains that stretch from the Gulag into virtually every Black social space. We hear prison, talk prison, wear prison and – to a horrific degree – have become inured to the all-enveloping presence of prison in virtually every Black neighborhood and extended family.

Editor's note: Despite the fact that the UN has been given a clear mandate, and has the authority to interfere in the problems of individual nation-states, we need to question why, in the instance of Sudan, the UN does nothing. Is it related the skin color of the victims? Maybe it is time to charge the UN Security Council with "crimes against humanity," for their complete inaction and indifference towards the more than one million black African minorities in Darfur who are being raped, mutilated, tortured and killed often for no more reason than their blackness. If the UN proves itself for the second time (the first instance being the genocide of millions in Rwanda) as being totally indifferent to preventing large-scale human rights abuses and genocides, then it is time to dissolve the United Nations as a world body, and begin the creation of a new world government which represents the common people, which will have as its highest mandate the fight for justice in every part of the world, which will also take the responsibility to protect the minorities in each nation-state. The United Nations Security Council in particular is to be recognized as nothing more than an extension of US corporate interests, and having no interest in the well-being of the suffering humanity. The Security Council, due to its immoral powers that do not represent the will of even the General Assembly, render the entire United Nations organization an impotent, useless body. How many more genocides will we allow in silence? It is time for moralists everywhere to begin the formation of a world government elected by the people that will serve the people.

Submitted by: Minority Rights Group

The United Nations Security Council, the body supremely charged with acting to ensure international peace and security, is failing in its responsibility to Darfur's victims of ethnic cleansing. The UN's own evidence of government complicity in attacks is now so great that further investigation must now be replaced by real and unequivocal condemnation at the highest level, states Minority Rights Group International (MRG).