Activists slam Bush AIDS initiative

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, June 20 (IPS)— US President George W. Bush’s new $500 billion anti-HIV/AIDS initiative, announced here Wednesday, gained a bitter reception from AIDS activists who complained the plan was too little and far too narrowly focused.

“The plan is all for show,’’ ACT Up, the Global AIDS Alliance, and other groups said in a statement. They targeted for protest late June 19 a fund-raising dinner for Bush’s Republican Party. The event’s sponsors included major Western pharmaceutical companies.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) was the chief corporate donor at the dinner, which was expected to raise a record-breaking $30 million for Bush and his party.

Bush’s plan, called the International Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative, earmarks $500 million in bilateral aid over the next two years to cut mother-to-child transmission of HIV by some 40 percent in 12 African countries, plus selected Caribbean programs.

Because the aid will be provided through bilateral channels, rather than via the new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB (tuberculosis) and Malaria, medications used in the program are certain to be purchased from the patent-holding pharmaceutical companies rather than from firms, many of them in developing countries, that produce generic versions of the same drugs at lower cost.

“The administration is worried that the Global Fund will buy generics and thus damage the interests of the major pharmaceutical companies,’’ noted Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, a grassroots coalition which played a key role in the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1970s and 1980s.

Activists said they hoped the administration would substantially boost its contributions to the Global Fund which, according to the United Nations and independent analysts, will need as much as $10 billion a year to effectively contain the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The virus, which has claimed the lives of some 23 million people over the last 20 years, currently infects roughly 40 million more worldwide, of whom 30 million are Africans.

Washington so far has committed only $300 million to the Fund and has promised an additional $200 million for next year. That is a tiny percentage of the $2.5 billion -- or one-fourth share of the total funds needed -- that Washington would normally provide to major UN initiatives.

As a result, other major donors, while pledging about twice what Washington has committed in per capita terms, are still not filling the gap of what is needed, according to health activists. Therefore, they say, the Global Fund has received only about $2 billion in pledges for its first two years of operations. Existing funds might be exhausted after the next round of grants are awarded later this year.

“Once the US makes low commitments, others don’t feel any pressure to increase their own,’’ said Booker.

What has angered activists even more is that Bush’s new plan effectively derailed Congressional efforts this year to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more to the Global Fund.

Just two weeks ago, the administration opposed a bipartisan Senate bill sponsored by Republican Arlen Specter and Democrat Richard Durbin that would have provided $700 million in additional US funding for the fight against AIDS this year, about half of which would have gone to the Global Fund.

Bush also personally intervened with Republican Senators Bill Frist and Jesse Helms to persuade them to slash $300 million from a pending $500 million package in new anti-AIDS funding so that Bush’s announcement Wednesday would be seen as a bold new step.

Frist, who is widely rumored to be Bush’s choice to replace Vice President Dick Cheney on the Republican ticket for the 2004 elections, went along, paving the way for Wednesday’s announcement.

“The sad reality is, the Bush announcement has only $300 million in it, which does not start to trickle out until 2003 and 2004,’’ said Paul Davis, director of government relations at Health GAP. “Had Senators Frist and Helms and President Bush simply sat on their hands, the Global Fund would have received $700 million in urgently needed new funding from the Specter/Durbin amendment.’’

“Many more people with AIDS worldwide will die because the Global Fund will have to turn away many solid proposals before the end of the year,’’ Davis added.

Booker charged that the announcement and its timing, coming just before next week’s Group of Eight (G-8) Summit in Canada, were “particularly cynical.’’ The G-8, which includes the world’s biggest bilateral donors, is expected to devote one day of discussion to Africa, including the AIDS crisis.

“Obviously, the timing of the announcement was designed to pre-empt criticism at the Summit by announcing something in advance that makes it look like Bush is serious about poverty and AIDS,’’ Booker said. “But people must not be fooled.’’

Booker and other critics pointed to a recent report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that predicted a sharp increase in HIV infection rates for Africa’s two most populous countries, Nigeria and Ethiopia, as more evidence of the urgent need for action.

Prevalence rates in both countries, with a combined population of almost 200 million, could rise to around 20 percent or even higher by 2010, according to the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

Ethiopia is included with seven other African countries -- Botswana (where infection rates have reached a global high of around 40 percent), Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda -- where Bush’s new initiative will be applied this year. Nigeria, along with Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Guyana and Haiti, will be added next year, according to a White House fact sheet.

The initiative, Bush said, will be used to treat one million women annually and reduce mother-to-child transmission of the virus by 40 percent within five years or less in target countries. Worldwide, close to 2,000 babies are infected with HIV every day during pregnancy, birth or through breast-feeding.

Thousands of children have lost parents to prison

June 19— Excessively severe drug laws have deprived thousands of children of their parents, Human Rights Watch said today. Governor Pataki and New York politicians in Albany are now debating legislation to reform these drug laws.

Releasing a new report with the first statistics on the number of children in New York who have had parents sent to prison for drug offenses, Human Rights Watch said the statistics should spur a swift agreement on major reform of the state’s drug laws.

“Children of incarcerated drug offenders are one of the collateral casualties of the state’s war on drugs,” said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s US Program. “Disproportionately harsh drug sentences have not only led to the unnecessary incarceration of tens of thousands of low-level drug offenders, but also deprived thousands of children of their parents.”

In Collateral Casualties: Children of Incarcerated Drug Offenders in New York, Human Rights Watch presents a statistical snapshot developed from state and federal data. Among the findings:

An estimated 23,537 children currently have parents in New York prisons convicted of drug charges. An estimated 11,113 currently incarcerated New York drug offenders are parents of children. Since 1980, an estimated 124,496 children have had at least one parent imprisoned in New York on drug charges. Some 50 percent of mothers and fathers in New York prisons for drug convictions do not receive visits from their children.

Human Rights Watch has consistently urged New York to eliminate harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders and to authorize judges to tailor criminal sanctions that reflect the individual offender’s conduct and other relevant factors.

Restoring fairness and proportionality to New York’s drug laws would reduce the number of drug offenders needlessly sent to prison. For many low-level nonviolent drug offenders, alternatives to incarceration -- including community-based sanctions and drug treatment programs -- would be a “punishment that fits the crime.” By reducing the number of offenders sent to prison, the state would also reduce the number of children who must suffer from losing a parent to prison.

“Safeguarding communities and protecting families from drug trafficking and drug abuse are important public interests,” said Fellner. “But the means chosen to combat drugs should neither violate human rights nor inflict unnecessary collateral harm.”

No New York agency tracks the number of children who have parents in prison. Human Rights Watch derived its figures from New York State Department of Correctional Services data on incarcerated drug offenders and from the results of a survey of a representative sample of New York prison inmates conducted in 1997 for the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice. The survey yielded data on such questions as the percentage of inmates who have children, the size of their families, current caregivers, and the frequency with which the incarcerated parents are in contact with their children.

The full report by Human Rights Watch can be found at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/usany/

Source: The November Coalition

US Supreme Court bans executions of mentally retarded

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, June 20 (IPS)— The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the execution of mentally retarded people is cruel and unusual punishment under the US Constitution.

The practical effect of the decision could be considerable, as 20 US states that still permit the death penalty to be imposed on mentally retarded individuals will have to change their laws and commute the sentences of mentally retarded prisoners awaiting execution.

There are some 2,455 prisoners on death row in those 20 states and an estimated five percent of them may be mentally retarded, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). There are 3,701 persons currently awaiting execution across the United States.

A majority of six of the nine justices held in the case of Atkins v. Virginia that execution of individuals with very limited intelligence serves no legitimate purpose and that a national and international consensus has emerged in recent years that the practice should be banned. Three justices dissented.

“We are not persuaded that the execution of mentally retarded criminals will measurably advance the deterrent or the retributive purpose of the death penalty,” wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in the majority opinion.

Human rights and death-penalty abolition groups said the decision marked a major advance for their causes.

“Executing the mentally retarded has long been a violation of international standards of justice and decency,” said William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). “In its Atkins v. Virginia decision, the US Supreme Court has finally ushered the United States into the civilized nations when it comes to such executions.”

“Thirty states have either banned the death penalty altogether or stopped the execution of those with mental retardation,” noted Richard Dieter, who heads the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). “There is no doubt that there is now a national consensus on this issue.”

“Concerns remain about other aspects of the death penalty,” he added, “but at least today we have stopped a practice that most Americans and the rest of the world find abhorrent.”

The three dissenting justices — all nominated by Republican presidents — strongly disagreed with the majority’s conclusion. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was appointed by former President Richard Nixon 30 years ago, objected in particular to the majority’s reference to foreign laws and public opinion as considerations in its decision.

Since 1995, only three countries — Japan, Kyrgyzstan, and the United States — are reported to have carried out executions of mentally retarded defendants, according to Amnesty. Since 1977, at least 35 mentally retarded prisoners, or those with significant brain damage, have been executed in the United States, the London-based group said.

The dissenting judges also noted that the majority effectively overruled a 1989 decision that found explicitly that executing the mentally retarded did not violate the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. “Seldom has an opinion of this court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members,” wrote Justice John Scalia, generally seen as the most right-wing member of the Court.

But the 1989 decision was based on the assertion that a “national consensus” against the practice had not yet developed. At the time, only two states prohibited execution of the mentally retarded. Thirteen years later, 16 more states and the federal government itself have all enacted laws banning the practice.

“It is not so much the number of these states [that have banned the practice] that is significant, but the consistency of the direction of the change,” Stevens wrote, adding that it “is fair to say that a national consensus has developed against it.”

While the Court majority noted Washington’s international isolation on the issue, it placed stronger emphasis on domestic public opinion, including strong statements in recent years by major US religious, psychological and criminology associations, as well as bans enacted by state legislatures. A Gallup poll released last month found that 82 percent of the public opposes executing the mentally retarded and only 13 percent support it.

Atkins v. Virginia involved a defendant, Daryl Atkins, with an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of only 59, who was convicted for the 1996 robbery and murder of Eric Nesbitt. An IQ of less than 70 is considered a major indicator of mental retardation.

Most scholars of criminal law have long argued against executing mentally retarded defendants for the same reason that that they have opposed the death penalty for children.

Like children, their disability makes it hard for them to understand legal concepts, and their unreliable memories and difficulty in processing information make it hard for them to cooperate in their own defense.

“Being characteristically eager to please authority, many detainees with mental retardation waive their rights to remain silent and even make false confessions,” according to HRW, which last year published a report called ‘Beyond Reason, The Death Penalty and Offenders with Mental Retardation.’

In one recent case, also in Virginia, a defendant, Earl Washington, confessed to crimes he never committed. After being sentenced to death, Washington received an absolute pardon when DNA testing revealed his innocence.

“Although they commit terrible crimes, by virtue of their disability, they should never be considered among the most culpable offenders for whom, in the United States, the death penalty is ostensibly reserved,” said Jamie Fellner, director of HRW’s US program.

As recently as two months ago, the UN Commission on Human Rights approved a resolution urging those US states that retain capital punishment not to impose it against the mentally retarded. In 1998, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions said that such executions violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bans cruel and unusual punishment.

“To execute a mentally impaired offender flies in the face of international human rights standards,” said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, with AIUSA’s campaign to abolish the death penalty.

“We should never execute anybody who is retarded,” said President Bush last year. As Texas governor, Bush oversaw the execution of at least three defendants with IQs of less than 70.

NATION BRIEFS

Only juries can impose death sentences
In a ruling that could affect hundreds of death-row prisoners, the Supreme Court declared June 24 that a jury, not a judge, must decide whether a defendant lives or dies. The court held, 7 to 2, that the Sixth Amendment guaranteeing a suspect a trial by a jury of his peers would be “senselessly diminished” if it did not also confer upon a jury the responsibility to make the ultimate decision about a defendant’s fate.

The decision in Ring v. Arizona, 01-488, invalidated the death-sentencing procedures in five states, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska, which have 168 people under death sentences and where a judge or panel of judges decides sentence.

It could also affect the capital punishment statutes in four other states, Alabama, Delaware, Florida and Indiana, which have 529 people under death sentences. Those states have a hybrid system under which juries advise a judge on the sentence.

However, it is not clear what the fate will be for prisoners sentenced to death in these states, whether they will automatically get life sentences or be sentenced to death again under new procedures.

The ruling, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, reverses the Arizona Supreme Court and remands the case at hand to the state courts “for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.” (NY Times)

KY Health Board retains funding
for birth control
After three hours of debate, the Northern Kentucky Independent District Health Board June 19 voted 14-13 to retain Title X family planning funding and continue providing contraceptives to poor women. At issue were allegations from some local anti-abortion groups claiming that birth control caused abortions.

Board Chairman Greg Kennedy explained after casting his tie-breaker vote: “I believe [rejecting Title X funding] was going to disrupt services to the people that need and rely on the health department the most. When you mix politics with medicine, you get very bad medicine.”

Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, said the debate showed that “pro-choice Americans cannot be complacent about fundamental freedoms such as the right to use contraception.” “It reveals the extremism of the anti-choice agenda,” she said. (www.msmagazine.com, AP)

5 charged with murder of gay man
Five gang members have been charged with murder and committing a hate crime in connection with the stabbing death of a gay activist.

Jeffery Owens and another man, Michael Bussee, were attacked in the parking lot of The Menagerie, a gay bar on University Avenue in downtown Riverside, CA just before midnight June 5.

The friends were looking at photographs Owens had taken on a recent holiday when the five men approached them and began attacking them.

Although one of the five actually killed Owens, under California law all five were charged with murder. The men, who face 40 years to life in prison if convicted of all charges, are members of a Riverside-based gang, Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach said at a news conference.

Owens’ partner, Jeff Holland, said he heard one of the attackers say, “You want some trouble fag, here it is.”

“The only motive for this attack was hatred,” said Leach.

One of the men also will be charged with attempted murder for stabbing Bussee.

Hundreds attended a candlelight vigil for Owens, who worked with a local AIDS project, and a memorial of candles and flowers has formed in the parking lot where he was slain. (365Gay.com)

Blacks to rally for reparations
Promising that it will be one of the “most historic gatherings of African people in America,” organizers of the Millions for Reparations Rally are demanding monetary compensation from the United States government and its citizens.

The Aug. 17 event will take place in Washington, DC on the 115th birthday of the late civil rights leader Marcus Garvey.

The Durban 400 and National Black United Front (NBUF), the lead organizers of the rally, claim their event is “simply an attempt to repair, to make whole, the descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade.”

At the urging of the Durban 400 and other groups, the United Nations’ 2001 World Conference Against Racism declared the transatlantic slave trade and pre-Civil War slavery in the United States crimes against humanity.

According to Worrill, “The abolishment of slavery was really a constitutional scam and the 14th Amendment that allegedly made African people citizens of America was imposed on us. We were never asked if we wanted to be citizens.” (CNSNews.com)