June 10, 2000 International Tribunal for U.S./NATO warcrimes in Yugoslavia

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND "HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION"

by Monica Moorehead

Monica Moorehead is a national coordinator of Millions for Mumia of the International Action Center, which organized the historic rally of 6,000 people on May 7 at Madison Square Garden, to demand a new trial for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 1996 she interviewed Mumia on death row. Monica is also a contributing editor to Workers World newspaper and has written extensively on the prison-industrial complex. Here she presents her analysis of the government's claim that it was defending human rights in Kosovo.

    The U.S. is the biggest human rights violator in the world. I stand before this tribunal to talk about another kind of war being waged by the same blood thirsty ruling class that financed the war against the Yugoslav peoples. In this particular war, the victims are the poor and the oppressed inside the U.S.

    This war takes the form of the fastest growing profitable sector of the U.S. economy-the prison industrial complex. There are presently 2 million people imprisoned in local, state and federal prisons--the figure is really about 5 million people trapped in the vicious cycle of the criminal justice system. This expanding sweatshop industry has become the second largest employer in the country with 523,000 employees-second only to General Motors. The value of goods produced by prison slave labor is well over $1 billion annually.

    By the end of this year, $41 billion will have been invested by Wall Street into building more private prisons to help house 25% of the world's incarcerated. Since 1996, the U.S. government has spent more money to build prisons than universities. Working class and poor youth will have a greater chance of being "educated" inside of the walls than in a college.

    The prison industrial complex is an outgrowth of "competitive globalization" that has deepened racist and class oppression. The application of the death penalty is considered a crime against humanity by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The U.S. has executed more people, including juveniles, than any other industrialized country.

    The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states, "sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below 18 years old." The Convention on the Rights of the Child includes the same stipulation, but the U.S. has refused to sign it. Almost half of the U.S. states, 24, permit the execution of juveniles.

    There are over 3,600 people on death row in the U.S. The majority of them are Black and Latino and a greater majority of them are poor. Black and white people in the U.S. are murder victims in almost equal numbers but only five or six white people have been executed for killing a Black person while 82% of those executed were convicted of killing whites since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1977.

    The application of the death penalty has nothing to do with fighting crime and everything to do with repression and super-exploitation. The federal prison population is expected to increase by 50% by the year 2006, from 130,000 to 200,000, due to the severity of prison sentences for non-violent drug convictions (including single mothers with children), the elimination of parole at the federal level, and the lack of drug rehabilitation. All of this means more cheap labor to super-exploit.

    Sisters and brothers, there is a growing debate in this country over the use of the death penalty. Much of that debate is centered on the wrongfully convicted being executed. Many of those wrongfully convicted are political prisoners. Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most famous death row prisoner who is a revolutionary-millions of people worldwide including inside the U.S. are demanding a new trial for Mumia in order to prove his innocence.

    Right behind Mumia in terms of notoriety is Shaka Sankofa, a revolutionary in Texas who has been on death row longer than Mumia. Before Shaka took a righteous name, he was known as Gary Graham. Shaka was 17 years old when he was convicted of murder in 1981. He was convicted on the testimony of one eyewitness. According to six other eyewitnesses, Shaka was not at the scene of the murder. He has faced a number of execution dates, and all of them were stayed. But since the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear all of the suppressed evidence in Shaka's case, he is set to be murdered by lethal injection on June 22. The only thing that can save him is a reprieve by the Texas Board of Clemency and Governor Death himself, George Bush.

    We must build a powerful opposition to stop the execution of an innocent man by a governor who has carried 135 executions since he took office five and a half years, more than any other governor. Anti-death penalty activists around the country are rallying in an attempt to save Shaka's life. The International Action Center has issued an emergency call for nationally coordinated actions from June 16-20 in cities around the country to hold civil disobedience campaigns, demonstrations, press conferences and so on to stop this execution. We have to understand that if we don't do everything we can to stop Shaka's execution, it will certainly help to embolden the state of Pennsylvania, with the fourth largest death row, to speed up the process to execute Mumia. The movement must force the U.S. not only to stop executing innocent people, but to abolish the death penalty altogether, because it is an illegal tool used by the super-rich to terrorize the poor and people of color.

    So when you return to your respective cities and countries, please take Shaka's case to the halls of parliament as well as to the streets. The international community's involvement in helping to save the life of Shaka can be decisive just as your role has been decisive in keeping Mumia alive for the past 18 years. The struggle against racist repression is an extension of the struggle against imperialist war-it is inherent within the same rotten capitalist system that puts profits before the needs of the people. Let us unite like the fingers of one mighty fist to defeat it once and for all.

    FREE MUMIA, SHAKA, LEONARD PELTIER AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS! ABOLISH THE PENTAGON, NATO AND THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!

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