MIM Notes No. 197	 December 1, 1999

Humyn Rights Day 1999 for the U$: DENYING Humyn Rights Around the WORLD

December 10 marks 51 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 
adopted on December 10, 1948 by the General Assembly of the United 
Nations (without dissent). This document supposedly guarantees everyone 
in the world the right to freedom from oppression and torture, access to 
education, freedom of expression and the right to life and liberty. It 
also guarantees the right to private property and other bourgeois rights 
that are fundamental to capitalism and that make it impossible to 
achieve equality for all people of the world. MIM highlights the 
following accomplishments of the united snakes to celebrate this 
anniversary -- and to demonstrate that the system of capitalism is 
incompatible with universal humyn rights.

* 	By 1996, US spending on prisons ($1.6 billion) had surpassed US 
spending on colleges ($1.3 billion).

*	As of early 1998, there were 13,500 political detainees in US 
prisons seeking asylum.

*	The US is one of five countries with the death penalty against 
juveniles.

*	There are 5.5 million US adults under control of the US prison 
system.

*	One out of nine US children have one or both parents in prison.       

*	One out of three Black man age 18-35 is in prison, on parole or 
probation.

*	88% of those sentenced for crack are Black, 4.1% are white-- even 
though more than 50% of crack users are white.

*	Black political leader, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was denied a new trial 
and faces state execution.

*	At least 7,000 Iraqi children a month die from US sanctions.

*	About 60,000 Latin American army officials and death squad leaders 
linked to human rights violations have been trained at the School of the 
Americas -- for about $18.4 million per year

*	Between 1987 and 1990, the US sent $1.3 billion in military aid to 
the Philippines.

*	US aid accounts for more than 80% of the military budget of 
thePhilippines, used against peasant and worker mass mobilization.

*	The Indonesian government, backed heavily by the US, has murdered 
over 1/3 of the people of  East Timor since 1971 -- 53% of Indonesia's 
weapons imports are from the US.

* In 1997, the US gave $120 million of military aid to the government of 
Columbia to repress peasants and workers -- under the guise of the war 
on drugs.

*	In August 1998, the US bombed Sudan -- a country where 2.6 million 
people face death from famine.