US: Torture Should Not Go Unpunished

Failure to Prosecute CIA Abuses Sends Wrong Message

Death of Malnourished Girl, Marchella Pierce, Ruled Homicide

A 4-year-old Brooklyn girl who weighed 18 pounds when she was found dead last month had toxic levels of antihistamines in her system, the city’s chief medical examiner’s office said on Friday in ruling the death a homicide.

The office said the girl, Marchella Pierce, died of “child abuse syndrome with acute drug poisoning, blunt impact injuries, malnutrition and dehydration,” according to a statement issued by the office.

The drugs found in her body were diphenhydramine and desloratadine, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. Each drug is marketed under many names, including Benadryl for diphenhydramine and Clarinex for desloratadine. The term child abuse syndrome means that the abuse occurred over a period of time and was not a one-time occurrence, Ms. Borakove said.

Investigators have been awaiting the findings since the police found the girl dead in her mother’s apartment on Sept. 2. The mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, is facing charges that include second-degree assault, endangering the welfare of a child, unlawful imprisonment and reckless endangerment. Those charges are likely to be elevated sharply based on the medical examiner’s findings.

“The case is under investigation and additional charges are possible,” said Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.

In a criminal complaint filed last month, prosecutors outlined a litany of abuse that they said the girl suffered in her final days at the hands of her mother. The girl, who had been plagued by severe health problems since her birth on April 30, 2006, and spent most of her life hospitalized, had only returned to the family full time in February.

Ms. Brett-Pierce repeatedly struck the girl with a belt and a video box at their home on Madison Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the complaint said, citing a witness account. The mother lashed the girl to a bed with twine and forced her “to take blue sleeping pills,” the complaint added.

A Brooklyn grand jury is also looking into actions of the Administration for Children’s Services, which had monitored the girl’s family before she died, and other agencies that were involved in the girl’s care.

In testimony to the City Council this month, the children’s services commissioner, John B. Mattingly, acknowledged that the case revealed systemic problems in the agency that persisted even after reforms were instituted following the 2006 beating death of a 7-year-old girl, Nixzmary Brown.

In Marchella’s case, a caseworker and a supervisor in the Brooklyn field office of the children’s services agency appeared not to have visited the girl or her family for months, the agency acknowledged, despite indications that she was at risk. The last recorded contact, the agency said, was on March 2.

In a statement released on Friday, the agency said, “Since learning of her death and launching an investigation we have already begun addressing practice concerns within the child welfare system that were identified as a result of this case.”

Female Domestic Workers Must Be Protected in Indonesia

By Carole Marzolf, Indonesia Country Specialist for Amnesty International

This week President Obama paid his first ever visit to Indonesia since he took office in 2008. It took place in a heavy climate as President Yudhoyono is dealing with two simultaneous natural disasters: an earthquake followed by a deadly tsunami and a series of volcano eruptions which have triggered international media attention. Yet, while these catastrophes may provide the media with ‘outstanding’ visuals, a silent human tragedy unfurling the whole archipelago goes unreported.

Every year in Indonesia, an estimated 20,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth. Amnesty International published last week a report on maternal health in Indonesia. This report shows that discriminatory laws, gender stereotyping and criminalization of abortion constitute violations of women’s rights and of the state’s duty to guarantee the right to the highest attainable standard of health, including reproductive health, free from discrimination, coercion and the threat of criminalization.

But the report also pointed out that some groups such as domestic workers are more vulnerable than others to violations of their sexual and reproductive rights. An estimated 2.6 million people work as domestic workers in Indonesia, the vast majority of whom are women and girls. Girls under 18 years old are believed to make up a third of that figure. Yet, the 2003 Manpower Act fails to provide any form of protection to Indonesian domestic workers who have been left out of the piece of legislation.

This act contains a number of provisions specifically protecting women during menstrual period, pregnancy and night work. But the Manpower Act only applies to employees of “entrepreneurs” in “business” or “social and other undertakings with officials in charge’ – definition which private households and domestic workers do not meet.

Because domestic workers’ work takes place in the employer’s home and they are often isolated from their families, they can face abuses and difficulty accessing sexual information and education, family planning, and health care services.  Lenny, a 14-year old domestic worker from Java was abducted, drugged, and smuggled to another province of Indonesia, where she worked 19 hours a day with no compensation whatsoever while being abused both physically and psychologically until she escaped three months later.

Amnesty International has been vocal advocating for female domestic workers rights in Indonesia. In 2007, we published the report Indonesia – Exploitation and Abuse: the Plight of Women Domestic Workers. In 2010, several public statements were issued, urging Parliamentary Commission IX to move forward with a Bill on domestic workers which would meet international laws and standards. Now is the time to prioritize the passing of legislation on domestic workers with explicit provisions pertaining to maternity.  Join us in urging the Indonesian Parliament to care about women and girls domestic workers in Indonesia by passing a domestic workers bill.

Human Rights Now – Amnesty International USA Blog

The Child Soldier on Trial at Guantanamo

NGO Letter to President Obama regarding waivers to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act

Dear President Obama,

We are writing to express our deep disappointment with your decision to grant blanket national interest waivers and allow all forms of US military assistance to Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, and Yemen, despite their continued use of child soldiers in violation of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (Title IV of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act).

We recognize that the United States has a complex set of national interests in each of these countries, including for example, counter-terrorism concerns in Yemen. However, the administration could have accommodated these concerns while also showing that it was taking the Child Soldiers Prevention Act seriously and using its leverage strategically to effectively end the use of child soldiers.

As you know, the Child Soldiers Prevention Act was adopted in 2008 with strong bipartisan support from Congress because of deep concerns over the continuing recruitment and use of child soldiers around the world. By prohibiting foreign military financing, military training and several other categories of US military assistance to governments using child soldiers, the law allows the US administration to exert powerful leverage on states with abusive child recruitment policies and practices. The United States was one of the first countries in the world to enact such groundbreaking legislation.

As mandated by the Act, the State Department identified countries in violation of the law in its annual Trafficking in Persons report, which was published on June 14, 2010. The countries identified were Burma, Chad, DRC, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Of the six, Burma receives no US military assistance and the administration contends that the assistance received by Somalia is not covered by the law.

Your decision to give the remaining four countries a blanket waiver means that none of the six violators will be impacted by the law. We believe that your waiver undermines the intent of the law and sends an unfortunate message that the administration is not seriously committed to ending the use of child soldiers. By giving a blanket waiver, the administration has also given up the significant leverage that the law provides to influence the child recruitment practices of its military allies.

The White House has stated that continued engagement will allow the United States to help these governments end their use of child soldiers, including by professionalizing their military forces and implementing existing plans to end child recruitment. However, this approach has been ineffective thus far. The DRC has received IMET training from the US since FY 2004, and Chad has received IMET since at least FY 2002. Yet both countries continue to use child soldiers in their forces. Continuing existing programs-as the US has done for years-without other changes in the approach is unlikely to yield change. Informing these governments that certain programs will be suspended until they have removed all child soldiers from their ranks could prove more effective.

The Child Soldiers Prevention Act does not present an “all or nothing” approach. Section 404 (e) of the Act permits continued engagement with governments in violation of the Act. Specifically, the section allows assistance for “international military education, training, and nonlethal supplies” otherwise prohibited under the Act upon certification to the appropriate congressional committees that the government is taking reasonable steps to demobilize child soldiers, provide rehabilitation and reintegration assistance, and that US assistance is directly supporting the professionalization of the military.

Many of the military programs identified in the memorandum of justification regarding the waiver of restrictions could have been continued under Section 404 (e). In contrast to the use of the blanket waiver, providing programs through Section 404 (e) would have tied the continued assistance directly to concrete progress in ending child soldier use.

Your decision to issue the waivers was unfortunate. However, we don’t believe that you need to wait until next year’s determination process to take additional action on this issue. We recommend the following:

1) Establish specific benchmarks with the governments concerned within the next six months. These benchmarks should require a cessation of new child recruitment and demonstrable progress in the demobilization or release of children from existing forces. Failure to do so should result in the suspension of specific and targeted military programs;

2) Publically commit to refrain from transferring any lethal equipment to Chad, DRC, and Sudan until the Secretary of State certifies that these countries are no longer in violation of the Child Soldier Prevention Act;

3) Establish a substantive dialogue with key stakeholders, particularly the NGOs and Congressional offices involved in creating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, regarding:

a) the determination of governments to be listed in 2011;

b) how determinations regarding any waivers and/or exceptions under section 404(e) will be made;

c) how the law can be most effectively implemented in order to achieve its objectives.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,

African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies

African Faith & Justice Network

American Federation of Teachers

Amnesty International USA

Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America

Caring for Kaela

Child Protection International

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

3D Security Initiative

Fellowship of Reconciliation

Foreign Policy in Focus

Friends Committee on National Legislation

Human Rights First

Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota

Human Rights Watch

International Labor Rights Forum

International Justice Mission

Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice

National Consumers League

Open Society Policy Center

Oxfam America

Pax Christi USA

Physicians for Human Rights

Presbyterian Church USA

Ramsay Merriam Fund

Refugees International

Resolve

United Methodist Church, General Board of Church & Society

World Vision

CC:

The Honorable Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State

Samantha Power, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council

The Honorable Maria Otero, Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs

The Honorable Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The Honorable Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs

The Honorable Harold Koh, Legal Advisor, Department of State

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

Senator Richard Durbin

Senator Sam Brownback

Senator John Kerry, Chair, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Senator Richard Lugar, ranking member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Congressman Howard Berman, Chair, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs