Tag: discrimination

Volatile Times for Brazil’s Human Rights

by Eyal Weinberg

15 FEB 2018

The decision of Porto Alegre’s appeals court to uphold the corruption conviction of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva three weeks ago (1/24/2018) threw Brazil into turmoil. The former Brazilian president (2003-2010) is the last to be targeted in the grandiose “Car Wash” investigation, a major probe into the rampant corruption in Brazil’s political and economic systems. The ruling was not the first to remove a powerful figure from Brazil’s political landscape; since 2014, special prosecution task forces have secured the imprisonment of various influential politicians and business moguls. But Lula’s conviction overshadows all previous spectacular moments of the Car Wash investigation.  A study by the Getulio Vargas Foundation has already concluded that the ruling was the leading political event on social media in Brazil in the past two years, counting 1.2 million online references in less than 24 hours.

The implications of the ruling exceed the realms of social media, of course. Last July, the court found Lula guilty of receiving a beachside apartment from a construction company in exchange for lucrative contracts in state projects. Now, the appellate court not only unanimously declined Lula’s appeal, but also voted to increase his sentence from nine to twelve years in prison. More than sending one of the most popular presidents in Brazilian history to jail, the sentence makes Lula ineligible to run for the coming October presidential elections (under Brazil’s Clean Slate law). The former union leader-turned president still has a few more routes of appeal left—he has denied any wrongdoing and already reaffirmed his presidential nomination—but the prospects are far from rosy.

Public opinion is very much divided over the recent court’s decision. Opponents of Lula celebrated the ruling and the ousting of whom they consider the “head of a crime organization.” The Brazilian stock exchange closed on a record high (up 3.72 percent) on the day of the verdict, indicating how badly investors wanted Lula out. Demonstrating the judiciary’s mistrust in the former president, a federal judge ordered the seizure of Lula’s passport the following day. Lula’s supporters, however, are confident in his innocence and maintain that the Car Wash investigation has deteriorated into a political witch-hunt against him and the Workers’ Party. They point to irregularities in the tribunal’s proceedings and see its ruling as a direct continuation of the 2016 impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff (Lula’s successor in the Workers’ Party). Even some conservative commentators criticized the judicial process. Indeed, the hastiness of the appellate court in considering Lula’s appeal—typical cases wait in line for over a year before getting a hearing—and the fact that his charges were far less severe than those of other politicians who stole millions but were never indicted cast the court’s decision in a suspicious light, at best.

For now, however, Lula leads the polls, earning over 36 percent of the potential votes in the coming October election. What is the reason for his enduring strong appeal? Lula’s magnetic charisma, and the Workers Party’s sophisticated political mechanism that cultivates support across Brazil’s poor northeast are key factors. It is also true that none of the other presidential hopefuls have yet been able to offer a compelling platform, and voters tend to stick with what they remember to have worked. But this is only half the story. Perhaps it is worthwhile to revisit some of the advancements Lula and his successor Rousseff have implemented during their terms, particularly in regards to human rights.

The biggest success of Lula’s government was the transformative and internationally-celebrated bolsa família program, which lifted 20 million Brazilians above poverty level. The plan, part of Lula’s Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) policy, was accompanied by various other programs that expanded access to postsecondary education (ProUni), increased rural credit to poor farmers (PRONAF), and reduced food insecurity (PAA). The administration also raised the minimum wage and advanced policy change in regards to housing, health, and land rights for various populations (among them quilombo communities). Many of these programs were further expanded under Dilma Rousseff’s Brasil Sem Miseria (Brazil Without Extreme Poverty) policy. Lula’s government also promoted racial equality and encouraged affirmative action mechanisms in the education system (through REUNI and SINAPIR). Rousseff later enacted the latter, passing the pioneering Quotas Law that requires federal universities to reserve up to 50% of their admission spots to students of low-income families and African or indigenous descent. Of course, Rousseff’s centerpiece of human rights policy was the formation of Brazil’s National Truth Commission (2012-2014), which examined human right violations taking place under the country’s military dictatorship (1964-1985).

This concise list indicates the level of commitment to social and human rights policy under the Workers’ Party rule. This is in addition to a momentous reform in environmental policy, which among other things drove deforestation of the Amazon down by over 80% (through the PPCDAm plan). Notwithstanding various criticisms levelled against some of the above programs, Lula and Rousseff’s agenda had a dramatic, typically positive effect on the lives of Brazilians, particularly low-income citizens. It is perhaps no surprise that Lula still captures the hearts of millions of voters. President Michel Temer, who took office after Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016, had already scaled down many of Lula’s initiated programs. The long-time supporter of the soy and cattle rancher oligarchy had also promoted concessions to mining in national protected areas, launched a massive privatization plan, curbed public spending, and is set to pass more austerity measures—among them a substantial cut in pension benefits. Just last month President of the Lower House Rodrigo Maia had publicly said that the Bolsa Família program “enslaves people.”

To be sure, the current alternatives for the presidency pale in comparison to the now convicted-former president Lula. Temer is perhaps the least favorite president since the end of military rule. His approval ratings are in the single digit range, and in recent poll, 90% of Brazilians said they would not vote for any candidate aligned with the current government’s platform. More alarming is the fact that the leadership vacuum invites reactionary, threatening waves. Currently second in the polls for the 2018 Presidential election is federal congressman Jair Bolsonaro, a former military officer who aspires to be Brazil’s next Trump—or perhaps Rodrigo Duterte. Promising to uproot corruption for good, Bolsonaro has already expressed his support of torture and extrajudicial killing of criminals. Various times he spoke about the military dictatorship with nostalgia, reminiscing of the regime’s “law and order.” And he suggested that beating your children can prevent them from becoming gay.

Bolsonaro’s controversial homophobic, racist, and hateful statements find sympathetic ears with those despaired of the ongoing economic recession, political stagnation, and peaking crime rate. Many of them have lost faith in the democratic institutions, and are slowly moving towards acceptance of authoritarianism. A recent survey concluded that 43% of the population would support a “temporary military intervention,” and another poll showed that 23% of Brazilians would back either a military regime or a “strong leader.” As the notion of a military coup is no longer taboo in public debate, and with Lula’s political future uncertain, Brazilians—and especially human rights advocates—should brace themselves for an intense, explosive year.

Eyal Weinberg is a PhD candidate in the History Department at The University of Texas at Austin, and he is a member of the 2017-2018 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee. His area of focus is twentieth-century Brazil.

Legalized Slavery in the United States Implemented Through the “Justice” System

by Courtney McGinn

26 APR 2017

The prison system in the United States equates to modern-day slavery due to its targeting of racial and ethnic minorities. There are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails, which amounts to a 500% increase over the last 40 years. One in seventeen black men, aged between thirty and thirty-four, were in prison in 2015, as were one in forty-two Hispanic males, and one in ninety-one white males in the same age group. Today, people of color make up thirty-seven percent of the United States population but sixty-seven percent of the prison population. African Americans are “more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences.”  Similarly, African American men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as non-Hispanic white men. One in three African American males are expected to go to prison, while one in seventeen white males are expected to do the same.[i]  In fact, no other country in the world imprisons as many of its racial or ethnic minorities as the United States does, even the highly repressive regimes in Russia, China, and Iran.[ii] Currently, the United States imprisons a larger percentage of its African American population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.[iii]

The increase of the incarcerated population, especially the population of incarcerated minorities, is a result of a series of law enforcement and sentencing policy changes in the “tough on crime” era, not a result of more crimes committed by these individuals.  Since the official beginning of the “War on Drugs” in 1982, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in the United States drastically increased from 40,900 in 1980 to 469,545 in 2015, with most of those incarcerated being African Americans. The War on Drugs was allegedly in response to the crack cocaine epidemic, but this has been dispute by several civil rights activists. For example, Michelle Alexander, a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer and the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, points out that President Ronald Reagan officially announced the current drug war in 1982, well before crack even became an issue in the media or a crisis in poor black neighborhoods.[iv] It was actually a few years after the drug war was declared that “crack began to spread rapidly in the poor black neighborhoods of Los Angeles and later emerged in cities across the country.”[v] In Michelle Alexander’s view, shared among others, this drug “epidemic” was created by the United States to continue the oppression of African Americans.[vi] In fact, the CIA admitted that the guerrilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United States – “drugs that were making their way onto the streets of inner-city black neighborhoods in the form of crack cocaine.”[vii] The CIA also admitted that during the War on Drugs era, it blocked law enforcement efforts to investigate illegal drug networks that were helping to fund its covert war in Nicaragua.[viii]

As the War on Drugs continued, law enforcement began focusing on urban areas, on lower-income communities, and on communities of color. Therefore, minorities became a target for incarceration. While crack cocaine was considered an inner-city issue mostly affecting African Americans, whites were directly tied to the use of powder cocaine.[ix]  Since the 1980s, federal penalties for crack were 100 times harsher than those for powder cocaine, with African Americans disproportionately sentenced to much lengthier terms. In 2010, the crack/powder sentencing disparity reduced from 100:1 to 18:1, but the disparity still remains, leaving minorities vulnerable to inequitable treatment by the criminal justice system.

Studies show that people of every color use and sell drugs illegally at substantially similar rates to their white counterparts.[x] Such studies even frequently suggest that whites, particularly white juveniles, are more likely to partake in drug crime than people of color.[xi] Although African Americans comprise only fourteen percent of regular drug users, they account for thirty-seven percent of those arrested for drug offenses. Despite this, minorities, specifically African Americans, are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than are whites. Today, there are more African Americans behind bars for a drug offense than the number of people who were in prison or jail for any crime in 1980. If current trends continue, one in three young African-American men will serve time in prison.[xii]

Once incarcerated, most “criminals” are required to perform mandatory, essentially unpaid, labor.  While not all prisoners are “forced” to work, most “opt” to because they have no other choice – they need the pay, no matter how low, in order to purchase food, toiletries, and other basic necessities not provided to them. Some individuals experience additional financial strain by having to pay legal fees or support their families. In places like Texas, however, prison work is mandatory and unpaid.  According the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, prisoners start their day with a 3:30 a.m. wake-up call and are served breakfast at 4:30 a.m. All prisoners who are physically able are required to report to their work assignments by 6 a.m. For prisoners who refuse to work, they are placed in solitary confinement. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice states that one of its goals is to reduce operational costs by having prisoners produce their own food, but also admits that the prison system earns revenue from “sales of surplus agricultural production.” This is all too familiar to the slavery practices that occurred years ago – the “slave” works tirelessly with no pay while the “slave master” reaps those benefits.

After incarceration, individuals continue to be marginalized by their status as “criminals.” Once labeled a felon, the older forms of discrimination that were deemed illegal after the collapse of the Jim Crow era become legal again; employment and housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunities, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service. [xiii] Because of these realities, it is hard to view the prison system in the United States as anything but a modern form of slavery. As Michelle Alexander stated, “[w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.[xiv]

Work Cited

[i] Film: 13th.

[ii] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 6.

[iii] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 6.

[iv] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 5.

[v] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 5 (citing “The Crack Attack: America’s Latest Drug Scare, 1986-1992,” in Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995), 152).

[vi] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 5.

[vii] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 6.

[viii] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 6.

[ix] Film: 13th.

[x] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 7.

[xi] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 7.

[xii] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 9.

[xiii] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 2.

[xiv] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), 2.

Courtney McGinn is an LLM student at Texas Law, concentrating in Human Rights and Comparative Constitutional Law, and member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

The Weight of Stigma and Segregation: Examining the Denial of Equal Education Opportunities to Roma Communities in EU Countries as an Abuse of Human Rights

by Claudia Kania

22 MAR 2017

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination released a statement in 2000 that acknowledged “the place of the Roma communities [is] among those most disadvantaged and most subject to discrimination in the contemporary world.” Such socially and institutionally accepted xenophobia is perhaps most clearly epitomized by its breach into the European school system. Although academic institutions are often times portrayed as “the great equalizer” within Western societies, walls founded on the principles of ignorance and prejudice frequently separate European Roma from reaping their benefits.  

The impartial right to education is universally established as a fundamental guiding principle within international human rights discourse. It is recognized as a human right and protected by Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as Articles 28, 29, and 40 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. To further contextualize the premise of academic equity, UNESCO put forth the 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education, an international legislative framework adopted to promote “the ideal of equality of educational opportunity without regard to race, sex or any distinctions, economic or social.” Education is not only a right in and of itself, but also an intrinsic vehicle in realizing other rights. It is an instrument vital in securing a life free of financial hardship, disenfranchisement, and social exclusion.

A report released in 2016 detailed the true scope of Roma communities’ expulsion to the fringes of European society. In total, approximately 17% of EU citizens are at risk of poverty, while that number is more than four times higher for Romani individuals; in the month prior to the study, only about 30% of Romani households received paid work. The Office for National Statistics revealed that out of 60,000 individuals who identified as Roma, 60% had no formal schooling. Moreover, Roma individuals are often times the victims of hate crimes and police brutality.  

Segregation remains one of the primary obstacles standing between Roma pupils and equal education opportunities. Although prejudice is sometimes blatantly propagated by biased media and political campaigns, such instances present a gateway to less conspicuous modes of discrimination. For instance, lower expectations for Roma students subsequently lead to higher dropout rates within their communities, which substantially decreases the prospects of secondary and tertiary education for Roma individuals. This, in turn, translates to higher unemployment rates and hinders the participation of Roma in the democratic process. Thus, the cycle continues. A 2015 report by Amnesty International illustrates discriminatory placement of Romani students in classes physically away from their non-Roma peers. A UNICEF report, specifically noting a 2002 case in Hungary, states that in general all-Roma classrooms typically lack fundamental resources otherwise available to students not of the Roma ethnicity, including experienced teachers and up-to-date curricula. More recently, the European Commission specifically targeted discrimination within Hungarian schools. Although EU member states are expected to abide by equal education frameworks, legal directives such as the Racial Equality Directive and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights oftentimes have little impact on institutionalized forms of ethnic discrimination. 

In 2012, The Slovakian Regional Court condemned the segregation of Roma in its schools. Although the ruling sent a message to the Slovakian Ministry of Education regarding the country’s international obligations to provide impartial access to education, it did little to prevent ethnic-based segregation. Not only do schools continue to run all-Roma classes, but Slovakian Roma pupils are faced with the prospect of being sent to “container schools”- schools made from material resembling shipping containers, and isolated from the rest of Slovak society. Apart from their extreme impoverishment, these schools are also homogeneous. When the guardians of Roma students attempt to enroll their children in non-container schools their pleas are refused by school board officials, who argue that their schools do not have the capacity to accommodate Roma pupils. Indeed, the container schools were instilled as a cursory solution to the problem of overcapacity. However, the “convenient” construction of substandard learning institutions within close geographic proximity to Roma settlements is nothing other than an arm of ethnic discrimination and social exclusion, as noted by Amnesty International. Recent reports delineate Slovakia’s shortcomings in guaranteeing its Roma citizens equal treatment.

The European Roma community also faces another kind of widespread segregation. Roma pupils are frequently placed in learning disability schools, regardless of scholastic comprehension. A 2013 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights remarked that Hungary’s systematic misdiagnosis of learning disabilities violated the European Convention on Human Rights. A 2012 report by the Roma Education Fund highlights the prejudicial nature of such entrance level examinations, focusing specifically on their cultural and linguistic biases.

Presently, cases of outright denial to enroll Romani children to academic institutions continue to remain prominent. The mayors of several French municipalities refused to enroll Roma children in public schools on the basis of lack of certification. Certification, however, is not easily achieved by Roma parents as informal settlements are almost never recognized by government officials. As identity documents remain largely inaccessible to Roma individuals, most families thus remain under the status of statelessness. Thus, admission, in most cases, is granted only after the intervention of the French Ombudsmen. A recent article by the New York Times highlights the bureaucratic obstacles Roma students face when attempting to gain access to French schools. Recently, the country made headlines due to the forced evacuation of hundreds of Roma families.

Former Columbia Law professor Jack Greenberg linked the Roma battle for equal education to the American Civil Rights Movement. Both groups have experienced the harrowing realities of slavery, societal disenfranchisement, and discrimination, propagated in part by stereotyping in biased media. Just as African Americans fought for the right for citizenship in the 19th century, countless stateless European Roma individuals embark on a similar mission today. The doctrine of “separate but equal” plagues much of contemporary European society. Schools today segregate non-Roma students from their Roma peers, providing the latter with substandard educational resources; the case of Horváth and Kiss v Hungary bears a resemblance to Brown v Board of Education. Although both rely on the concept of strategic litigation, the successful implementation of anti-discriminatory education policy is currently a far reach for contemporary Europe. It will require not only the willingness of policymakers, but also the active mobilization of Roma civil society. Locally, individual schools should engage in active redistricting in order to achieve ethnic diversity within academic institutions, as well as incorporate Romani culture into standing curricula to promote diversity and ethnic tolerance. It is well within the means of any school within the EU to guarantee an environment based on social inclusion and academic equity. Likewise, it is crucial that international bodies, such as the European Commission and European Union,  apply political pressure on national governments to uphold international and national legislative standards of equality.  The implementation of such standards and their effects on academic institutions should be monitored by national bodies, benefiting from sustainability through the intersection of interests of both grassroot NGOs and international donors.

Claudia Kania is a freelance writer and independent researcher. Her most recent work has been featured by the Oxford Human Rights Hub, the Yale Broad Recognition, and the University of Cambridge Centre of Human Rights and Governance. Her research interests include minority rights, gender violence, and education policy.