Official Visit Underscores Ongoing Issues of Discrimination in Florida

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 29, 2008

CONTACT
Rachel Myers, ACLU, (212) 549-2689; media@aclu.org
Stacie Miller, Lawyers’ Committee, (202) 662-8317
Ajamu Baraka, USHRN (404) 695-0475

MIAMI – A fact-finding mission to the U.S. by the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, makes its way to Miami next week, and is welcomed by several national and local civil liberties organizations. The American Civil Liberties Union, Global Rights, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, the U.S. Human Rights Network, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Rights Working Group and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty call on the U.S., state and local governments to fully cooperate with the special rapporteur.

“The United States government has publicly supported the mandate of independent human rights experts to monitor country conditions and document rights violations all over the world.  At long last, the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism to the United States offers us, as supporters of civil liberties and human rights, a unique opportunity to meaningfully examine and document the very serious and systemic human rights violations that exist in Florida and throughout this country,“ said Chandra Bhatnagar, Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Human Rights Program.

At the invitation of the U.S. government, Special Rapporteur Doudou Diène will visit the U.S. from May 18 to June 6 to examine issues of racism and racial discrimination in this country. Diène will be in the Miami area Sunday June 1 for two days. In addition to Miami, Diène is visiting the cities of Washington, New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans and San Juan, Puerto Rico where he will study incidents of contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and the governmental measures in place to address them.

Diène is scheduled to meet with government officials, members of diverse communities across the United States and representatives of several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Florida.

“Racism and racial discrimination are very real, deep-rooted and contemporary problems throughout Florida,” said Muslima Lewis, ACLU of Florida Racial Justice Project Director. “Our goal in Miami is to bring international attention to the systemic forms of racism and race discrimination in Florida that violate fundamental human rights standards. We hope this international attention will create additional pressure for meaningful reform. For this reason, we are very appreciative that Special Rapporteur Diène will be focusing on Miami during his visit to the U.S.”

In March 2008, the separate U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a strongly worded critique of the United States' record on racial discrimination and urged the government to make sweeping reforms to policies affecting racial and ethnic minorities, women, immigrants and indigenous populations in the U.S. Several civil liberties and human rights organizations have urged the special rapporteur to critically examine the continuation of racism and racial discrimination in various areas identified by CERD and well documented in extensive NGO “shadow reports”, including criminal justice, education, housing, juvenile justice, immigration policy, police brutality, hate crimes and racial profiling.

The mandate of the special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance was established in 1993 by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and further extended by the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Special Rapporteur will submit a final report on the visit to the Human Rights Council in the spring of 2009.

Participating organizations include: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Florida, American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), Fanm Ayisyen Nan Miyami (FANM) / Haitian Women of Miami, Farmworkers Association of Florida, Florida ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), Florida Immigration Advocacy Coalition (FIAC), Florida State Conference NAACP, Miami-Dade Branch, Haitian American Grassroots Coalition (HAGC), Housing Opportunities Project for Excellence, Inc. (HOPE, Inc.), Miami Dade County Office of the Public Defender, Miami Coalition for the Homeless, Miami Workers Center, Power U, and South Florida Jobs with Justice.

More information about the special rapporteur’s visit is available online at: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/racialjustice/sronracism.html and www.ushrnetwork.org/special_rep

More information about the CERD recommendations to the U.S. is available at: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/racialjustice/cerd.html and www.ushrnetwork.org/projects/cerd

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2008 Press Releases