Voter ID requirements ‘discriminate’
The U.N. experts did voice approval for some policies and initiatives, including the recent executive order aimed at reducing the use of solitary confinement in prisons. And they praised the Affordable Care Act, which they said “has allowed 2.3 million African-American adults to gain medical health insurance.”
But they were highly critical of voter-ID laws, charging that “increased identification requirements in several states served to discriminate [against] minorities such as African-Americans contrary to the spirit of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”
(During the last presidential election year four years ago, the NAACP approached the HRC in Geneva to complain about what it called “racially-discriminatory election laws.” The HRC includes countries where free elections are unknown, including current members China, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.)
The three experts also criticized “stand your ground” laws, alleged racial bias in the criminal justice system and, in general, “systemic” racial discrimination which they said had the effect of denying development to the poorest black communities
“The persistent gap in almost all the human development indicators, such as life expectancy, income and wealth, level of education, housing, employment and labor, and even food security, among African-Americans and the rest of the U.S. population, reflects the level of structural discrimination that creates de facto barriers for people of African descent to fully exercise their human rights,” said part of the report, read out at the briefing by Mendes-France.
The “U.N. working group of experts on people of African descent” was established by the HRC’s now-defunct predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, following the World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.
The Bush administration withdrew from the Durban conference, amid controversy over demands for reparations for slavery and attempts to brand Israel as a racist state.
Article Appeared @http://cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/lack-reparations-voter-id-laws-un-experts-slam-us