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12.
In addition, there should be more vigorous action on behalf of
human rights education, in particular for law-enforcement officials. Such a
step would promote greater acceptance of one another by the members of the
different communities who live in the United States and would encourage
sharing between them in the economic and social or even the cultural spheres.
To assume fully, and in a genuine democracy, the cultural pluralism which
characterizes the American nation is a challenge which the United States is
undoubtedly capable of taking up.
Notes
1/ See, for example, the following documents: World Council of Churches,
Overview of Campaign on Human Rights Violations in the United States, 1994;
United States, Commission on Civil Rights; Intimidation and Violence, Racial
and Religious Bigotry in America, September 1990; the statements by the
International Association against Torture at the 1992, 1993 and 1994 sessions
of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of
Minorities and at the 1993 and 1994 sessions of the Commission on Human
Rights; "The Hidden Rage of Successful Blacks", Newsweek, 15 November 1993;
Amnesty International, United States of America. The death penalty.
Government survey finds pattern of racial disparities in imposition of death
penalty, March 1990; Human Rights Watch and American Civil Liberties Union,
Human Rights Violations in the United States, Washington, 1994.
2/ None the less, the Special Rapporteur would like to emphasize that the
Indians with whom he spoke who represented the League of Indigenous Sovereign
Nations of the Western Hemisphere believe that the failure to observe the
treaties signed by the Government of the United States with their ancestors,
treaties which guaranteed the sovereignty of the signatory Indian Nations,
constitutes an act of discrimination. Representatives of the Mohawk and
Piscataway Nations said in particular that "The Mohawk Nation undergoes
State-sponsored racial brutality and impoverishment when they exercise their
unrelinquished right to determine their own development as an intact nation.
The Piscataway Nation, despite constitutional guarantees to religious freedom,
cannot practice their spirituality without the permission of white landowners
and the National Park Service."
3/ Reference was made in communications received by the Special
Rapporteur and in discussions with official departments to discriminatory and
brutal treatment of migrant workers from Mexico; of racist acts by the police
and prison warders, discriminatory judicial practices in Mississippi, with the
encouragement of the highest State authorities and judges.
4/ The names of these organizations are given in the annex, in the
schedule of the Special Rapporteur’s mission.
5/ Communication to the Special Rapporteur from the African American
Human Rights Foundation, Washington, 12 October 1994.