FROM MUMIA ABU-JAMAL KILLING KIDS: SHAKA & INTERNATIONAL LAW Column Written 7/11/2000 Mumia Abu-Jamal, M.A. All Rights Reserved Because self-preservation takes precedence over niceties of morality, the law of the nations has tended to be the law of the jungle, although this truth is slurred over with polite phrases. -- Carl G. Gustavson, A Preface To History (1955) The state-sanctioned murder of death row captive Shaka Sankofa (né Gary Graham) by the Texas death machine and the Bush administration was surely a base political killing for a higher office, but it was more. Followers of the Sankofa case know that he was 17 years old at the time of his arrest, but perhaps do not understand the significance of this simple fact. The execution of a person who was under the age of 18 at the time of the offense violates international law. On June 8, 1992, the U.S. congress ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a global treaty. Article 6 of the ICCPR provides, in part: 6(5). Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women. That's not all. Several other international treaties also have similar provisions, for example: * The Convention on the Rights of the Child; * The Fourth Geneva Convention; * The American Convention on Human Rights; All of these (including the ICCPR) are international treaties to which the United States is a signed party. All of these were violated by the legal lynching of Shaka Sankofa-indeed, under international law, the killing of Sankofa was truly an illegal lynching-a killing in violation of the law. Some may ask, "Well, Jamal-is a treaty really a 'law'?" What does the Constitution say? Read Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which states, in part: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby.... If a treaty which has been ratified by the U.S. Congress is the "Supreme Law of the Land," why was Sankofa judicially and administratively murdered? The answer is a grim, yet undeniable truth: the state will violate its own so-called "law" in furtherance of white supremacy and in violation of black life. This same vicious, hypocritical state, that will call an illegal killing a crime, committed a crime against Sankofa, in violation of the Constitution, and international law. What you have before you is a criminal system, that must be rejected, opposed and replaced! ©MAJ 2000 ======================================> www.phillynews.com features ongoing mainstream media reports on convention weekend. Too many articles to e-mail out! --------------------- Philly Daily News Thursday, July 27, 2000 Banned radio show returning by Chris Brennan Daily News Staff Writer "Democracy Now," the public radio program banished from local airwaves in 1997 for planning to broadcast commentaries by convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, is returning to Philadelphia for the Republican convention. The New-York-based program will broadcast from the Independent Media Center at 13th and Locust streets on the radio, television and the Internet. Host Amy Goodman yesterday seemed to be still smarting from the boot received by Temple University's WRTI-FM in February 1997. Goodman said her staff was not joking about a triumphant return to Philadelphia. "I usually make jokes about everything," Goodman said. "But this one isn't so funny, because it's about censorship." Goodman and co-host Juan Gonzalez will broadcast from 8 to 10 a.m., Monday to Friday. The show, with a national radio audience, will be broadcast on local public-access channels, the Internet and the Deep Dish TV network. Goodman said her staff has credentials to cover the "anatomy of power" inside the convention but also planned to study the protests drawn by the political gathering, including activists rallying for Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981 and sentenced to death for that murder. Send e-mail to brennac@phillynews.com ====================================> FAIR-L Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Media analysis, critiques and news reports ACTION ALERT: Pre-Convention Coverage Whitewashes Police Violence, Distorts Activists' Agendas July 25, 2000 Early coverage of the upcoming protests at the Republican and Democratic national conventions has followed a familiar pattern: Mainstream media are stoking fears about the potential for violence in Philadelphia and Los Angeles by rewriting the actual history of police brutality at last year's anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. In its place, media are developing a mythology of dangerous protesters who, for unspecified reasons, violently overpowered police. "It is widely agreed that the Seattle police got out-foxed by better organized protestors trying to shut down the World Trade Organization meeting last year," reported NBC's Fred Francis in a story about the conventions (Nightly News, 7/14/00). Francis went on to describe activists who attended the "violent" Seattle demonstrations as a "battle-tested" force "better trained than the LAPD for street violence." Widely agreed? Francis must have either missed or discounted the American Civil Liberties Union's recent report on the Seattle protests. "Demonstrators [in Seattle] were overwhelmingly peaceful," wrote the ACLU. "Not so the police." According to the ACLU's 87-page report, "Out of Control: Seattle's Flawed Response to Protests Against the World Trade Organization," the City of Seattle's response to the WTO protests was characterized by "unwarranted restrictions and outright assaults on citizens and on their basic American rights." The "draconian" violations of civil liberties committed by Seattle police and officials included widespread use of "chemical weapons, rubber bullets and clubs against peaceful protesters and bystanders alike"; numerous "individual acts of [police] brutality"; the suppression of free speech rights; hundreds of improper arrests; and intimidation and "brutal" abuse of arrestees. (See http://www.aclu-wa.org/ISSUES/police/WTO-Report.html .) NBC, ABC and CBS all ignored the release of the ACLU report, as did CNN. The Seattle Times is the only major American newspaper to have covered the ACLU's findings (7/5/00). Yet the media haven't forgotten Seattle-- mainstream reports on the upcoming convention protests consistently refer to them as follow-ups to Seattle, and frequently ask whether authorities in Philadelphia and Los Angeles will be able to avoid a similar scenario. But which scenario? One ABC World News Tonight report (7/23/00) asked what lessons Philadelphia police have learned from Seattle, and how they will be applied to the convention. According to reporter Jim Sciutto, Philadelphia police observers in Seattle saw protesters "at times playing to the television cameras" by feigning injury. Sciutto's report features, without rebuttal, a Philadelphia police lieutenant claiming that at the sight of a camera, activists are trained to "fall down and start screaming and yelling whether you hit them or not." ABC's report made no mention of any substantive allegations of police brutality in Seattle. When riots erupted in Los Angeles on June 19 after the Lakers won the NBA Finals, several news outlets discussed the random acts of vandalism as though they were comparable to the protests planned for the Democratic convention. "Los Angeles officials hope that the convention crowd will exercise more self-restraint than the Lakers crowd," reported the NBC Nightly News (6/20/00). The CBS Evening News (6/20/00) made the same comparison, reporting that officials promised "much less access for potential troublemakers" at the convention than there had been at the Lakers game. CBS voiced skepticism however, adding, "but that's what they said in Seattle.... And some of those [protest] groups have already announced they're coming here." What emerges from this coverage is an image of activists as a paramilitary mob preparing to take to the streets to frustrate and discredit the police. This distorted view has been helped along by the three major networks' failure to discuss in any depth protesters' critiques of the conventions. CBS mentioned that Los Angeles anarchists would protest in order to "shine the spotlight on economic injustice" (7/10/00); NBC (7/20/00) noted that the protesters' message is "simply that the political parties have been taken over by big money interests." Neither network featured any further examination of the activists' political positions. Demonizing activists and ignoring police brutality may imbue police departments with a sense that they can operate with impunity-- or at least without fear of serious scrutiny from the press. This media whitewashing may heighten the risk that citizens assembling to speak out at the conventions will face police violence. ACTION: Please contact the media and urge them to provide more balanced coverage of the protests at the Republican and Democratic conventions than they did of last year's protests in Seattle. Acknowledging the ACLU's findings about the growing problem of anti-protest police brutality would be one way to improve coverage. Taking activists' politics seriously would be another. For more information on the protests planned for the Republican Convention (7/31/00-8/4/00), visit http://r2kphilly.org/ . For info on actions at the Democratic Convention (8/14-17/00), visit http://www.d2kla.org/ . CONTACT: NBC Nightly News Phone: 212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259 Fax: 202-362-2009 mailto:Nightly@nbc.com ABC World News Tonight Phone: (212) 456-4040 Fax: (212) 456-4297 mailto:netaudr@abc.com CBS Evening News Phone: (212) 975-3691, (202) 457-4385 Fax: (212) 975-1893 mailto:audsvcs@cbs.com As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence. ---------- FAIR (212) 633-6700 http://www.fair.org/ E-mail: fair@fair.org ====================================> FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS! From: Denise Alvarado Click on the below link to sign an online petition for Leonard Peltier http://www.petitiononline.com/Clemency/petition.html ===================================== "Indian Country Today" wrote: Sen. Campbell urges decision on Peltier clemency By Brian Stockes Today staff - Washington Bureau WASHINGTON, D.C. - A letter from Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., calling for a decision on a petition for executive clemency filed by Leonard Peltier recently was delivered to the White House. Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, was convicted for the 1975 murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He has served nearly 25 years at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan. As a result of numerous questions and inconsistencies in the case, many claim he is innocent, citing the government's lack of evidence connecting Peltier to the murders. "Mr. Peltier filed a petition for executive clemency in 1993 and as of November, 2000, it will have been seven years since the original filing," wrote Sen. Campbell, chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. "Given this time frame, and the expedition with which you considered other requests for clemency, I believe that fundamental fairness and basic precepts of due process require a decision on Mr. Peltier's petition." Peltier was charged in the deaths of two FBI agents following a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in June 1975. The shootout initially erupted following a traffic stop and chase onto private property. The property, at the Jumping Bull ranch near Oglala, was called the "Jumping Bull Compound." It was a gathering place for Oglala traditionalists and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) to which Peltier belonged. The situation deteriorated into a firefight involving approximately 30 American Indian people and the two FBI agents, BIA police, U.S. Marshals and local police. When hostilities ended, two FBI agents - Jack Coler and Ron Williams - and one American Indian, Joe Killswright Stuntz, were dead. Although there was no investigation into Stuntz' death, the FBI said he was killed during the firefight by a law enforcement agent. The government launched a full-scale investigation into the deaths of the agents. Three people were tried, including Peltier. Two were acquitted while Peltier, who had fled to Canada, was tried later in a different court and found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. Questions have been raised over admitted improprieties by the federal government with regard to its prosecution of Peltier, including his extradition from Canada and confusion over expert testimony on ballistics evidence. Although denying a new trial, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals held that Peltier's initial trial and previous appeals were riddled by FBI misconduct and judicial impropriety. In its decision, the court stated: "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and the data improperly withheld from the defense been available to him in order to better exploit and reinforce the inconsistencies casting strong doubts upon the government's case." The court called the FBI's misconduct "a clear abuse of the investigative process." It ruled against a new trial based on the "Bagley Test" which requires that the court be convinced, from a review of the entire record, that had the information withheld been made available, the jury would have reached a different decision. While the court held it was possible the jury could have reached a different decision, in the end, the judges could not be sure. Years later, the judge who wrote the decision wrote a letter recommending that Peltier be released through executive clemency saying, "the FBI used improper tactics in securing Peltier's extradition from Canada and in otherwise investigating and trying the Peltier case." In June, Peltier was again denied parole even though U.S. prosecutor Lynn Crooks admitted in a 1995 parole hearing that no evidence existed against Peltier, that the government never really accused him of murder, and that if retried the government could not reconvict. "It was more of what we interpreted as a token approach to the parole process," said Ernie Stevens Jr., member of the executive board of the National Congress of American Indians and the Native American Rights Fund. "We don't feel his application for parole was legitimately evaluated." Although Peltier was denied parole, advocates such as Stevens are hopeful, seeing executive clemency as a viable alternative. "Clemency is something that is appropriate," Stevens said. "I think working through the president is our best hope." While many in and outside Indian country support clemency, including prominent figures such as Nelson Mandela and organizations like Amnesty International, some within the law enforcement community continue to argue against his release. "The unfortunate situation that we have is a lot of lobbying by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies that continue to promote falsehoods about his case," Stevens said. "In order for us to move away from the era that was so terrible and where so many lives were lost we have to forgive and move on. Leonard's freedom would help us do that." The White House has yet to respond to Senator Campbell's letter. Brian Stockes reports from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at (202) 783-2012. Email bstockes@earthlink.net. http://indiancountry.com/articles/headline-2000-07-26-14.shtml Call the White House Comments Line Today Demand Justice for Leonard Peltier! 202-456-1111 Leonard Peltier Defense Committee PO Box 583 Lawrence, KS 66044 785-842-5774 www.freepeltier.org Stop the execution! New trial for Mumia! Youth & Students for Mumia http://www.mumia2000.org