The Hyper-Hypocrisy of the US Department of State Criticizing Costa Rica for Human Rights Violations

The US Department of State’s International Travel Information for Costa Rica states that: “Local law enforcement agencies have limited capabilities and different standards than U.S. law enforcement. Daytime robberies in public places occur, and thieves have been known to brandish weapons or threaten violence if victims resist.”

Of course this warning could apply to practically any country including dozens of cities in the US which have far higher crime rates than any location in Costa Rica…

The numbers do vary a little depending on the source but no matter what statistics you look at, Costa Rica remains the safest country in all of Central America. Even Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose is far safer than many major US cities.

And you probably weren’t dreaming of living to Detroit or San Jose, Costa Rica anyway, right?

The wheels of justice can move slowly in Costa Rica, some criminal cases can take two years to get to court and in their effort to cut down on crime, the Costa Rican police authorities are currently holding 2,694 inmates in prison who have yet to be convicted.

If you are innocent of the crime that you have been charged with, being held for two years in prison before being released cannot be a pleasant experience however, most law abiding Costa Rican citizens believe that as a preventative measure, it’s a very good thing that so many of these suspected thieves and other criminals are behind bars waiting for their court date.

So bearing in mind that you can watch TV documentaries about the “wholesale torture taking place inside the US prison system,” most Ticos were surprised to read the headlines on the 9th April 2011 about how this preventative imprisonment and these legal delays were detailed in the US Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report on Costa Rica as the principal reason for “human rights violations in Costa Rica.”

One might begin by looking at police brutality within the USA where in the first nine months of 2010, at least US$347,455,000 was spent in related settlements and judgements for cases of police brutality. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse but the police are trying hard to stop this, in at least three states it is now illegal to photograph any on-duty police officer, even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

We’ve read about how the FBI “dangled offers of money and lured impoverished men with no ties to international terrorism into a plot they could never have dreamed up on their own.”

All of this enthusiasm certainly helps the prison industry which is one of the few fast-growing industries in the United States. “The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. ‘

In the U.S. Department of Justice December 2010 report on the ‘Correctional Populations in the United States, 2009’ “Correctional authorities supervised 7,225,800 offenders at year end 2009” meaning that one out of every thirty-two adults in the “land of the free” is under criminal justice supervision.

“Over 2200 juveniles nationwide have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Children as young as 13 years old have been tried as adults and sentenced to die in prison, typically without any consideration of their age or circumstances of the offense.”

According to The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University in their “Behind Bars II: Substance Abuse and America’s Prison Population” report: “We in the United States, though only five percent of the world’s population, consume two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs.”

“Substance use disorders among inmates are at epidemic proportions. Almost two-thirds of the inmate population in the U.S. meet medical criteria for an alcohol or other drug use disorder. Prison and jail inmates are seven times likelier than are individuals in the general population to have a substance use disorder. One-third of the prison and jail inmates has a diagnosis of a mental illness.”

It’s also interesting to note that according to the Department of State website it would appear that US has totally forgotten to publish a report on the widespread human rights violations within the USA so …

• Torture in American prisons
• America’s Hardest Prisons
• Prison Predators
• Kids Behind Bars
• Abu Ghraib in the USA – Naked Torture and Death
• Torture endemic in US prisons
• Torture and Abuse in the US Prison System
• Mental Illness in America’s Prisons

Do you think any of this video footage shows conclusive proof of “human rights violations” within the US?

And this is also a very valuable workforce, yup! Cheap prison labor is most definitely here to stay. “Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.”

With over 3,000 inmates on death row and Amnesty International in its report on the execution of mentally ill offenders in the United States found that one in every ten individuals executed in the United States suffered from a serious mental disorder other than mental retardation

“Thirty one countries have abolished the death penalty but China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen remain amongst the most frequent executioners, according to a new report from Amnesty International released Monday.” The US however has rejected international calls to abolish the death penalty.

There are no shortage of stories in the US press about the hundreds of innocent men and women in the United States who have spent a large part of their lives in prison – like Innocent man shares his 20-year struggle behind bars – who have been “…exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. ”

Human rights activists might also point out the fact that “88,500 adults held in U.S. prisons and jails were sexually abused at their current facility in the past year.”

Could that also be considered a “human rights violation,” do you think?

“According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hepatitis C is the most common blood-borne viral infection in the U.S. between 12 and 35 percent of adult prison inmates has chronic Hepatitis C infection. For jail inmates, the infection rate is six times higher than in the general population and for prison inmates it is seven times higher. Primary risk factors for contracting Hepatitis C are injection drug use and needle sharing, two behaviors among inmates that may continue during incarceration.”

Article 19 of the Costa Rica constitution states that foreigners can not intervene in the political affairs of the country (no pueden intervenir en los asuntos políticos del país), yet repeated interventions by the US in Costa Rica’s political affairs is pretty much standard operating procedure as it is everywhere else in the world.

Over the past 3-4 months, 827 cables from the US Embassy in Costa Rica have been revealed by Wikileaks, over one hundred cables of them focusing on the U.S. Embassy’s efforts to persuade Costa Rica to pass the free-trade treaty.

Because Costa Rica did not agree to sign the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA) guaranteeing that US soldiers and citizens would be given immunity no matter what sort of horrific crimes may have been committed, “the giant of the north” pressured Costa Rica to renounce its membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Costa Rica did not and as punishment for this between 2004 and 2006 the US suspended all military aid to Costa Rica, much of which would have spent in the “war on drugs.”

At the time Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister Tovar, responding to press inquiries said: “For the love of God, this is not the way to treat a country that is your friend.” He complained that the U.S. laws affecting aid to Costa Rica were “offensive” and asked why they make exceptions for Argentina, Australia, Japan, and European countries, but not for Costa Rica.”

US diplomat Rusell Frisbie confirmed that: “The Costa Rican Coast Guard and police are not getting the training they have been accustomed to receiving under our Bilateral Maritime Agreement for Counternarcotics Cooperation, and it will become increasingly difficult for the Coast Guard to repair its ships without U.S. assistance. Costa Rica counternarcotics capability undoubtedly will diminish over time.”

Another US Embassy cable leaked by Wikileaks revealed that: “This decline in assistance unavoidably affects the level of our cooperation with Costa Rica in the areas of counternarcotics, counterterrorism, and trade.”

In December 2007 Obama stated “the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation” but, that was just another promise shattered into thousands of sharp little pieces when he started a war with Libya without any backing from Congress.

So after President of the US ignores his own country’s Constitution, why would we surprised when US Ambassadors and other politicians ignore Costa Rica’s?

Obama has broken his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba where: “More than 100 of the inmates are considered too dangerous to release but not guilty enough to prosecute… ” ??

In speaking about this and George W. Bush, Colonel Wilkerson a critic of the Bush Administration’s counter terrorism tactics who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent … If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”

Could that also be considered a “human rights violation” do you think?

U.S. citizen Pfc. Bradley Manning aged 23, is awaiting a possible court-martial on charges that he endangered national security by allegedly leaking classified military and diplomatic information.

On the 12th April Congressman Dennis Kucinich stated that: “I put in a request to the secretary of defense, who referred me to the secretary of the army, who referred me to the secretary of the navy, who referred me to the secretary of defense, and still not an answer on whether or not I can visit Private Manning,”

Congressman Kucinich has promised that there will be “consequences” for how the soldier is being treated. He and hundreds of other legal experts, authors, scholars and former government employees — and even President Obama’s former constitutional law professor at Harvard — have all called the conditions of Manning’s detention an “illegal” punishment for an American not yet convicted of a crime.

A United Nations diplomat charged with investigating claims of torture said Monday that he is “deeply disappointed and frustrated” that U.S. defense officials have refused his request for an unmonitored visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of passing classified material to WikiLeaks.

US state department spokesman PJ Crowley said in a seminar a few weeks ago that: “What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence.”

More than 250 of America’s most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his “degrading and inhumane conditions” are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.

Asked about the controversy at a White House press conference, Obama revealed he had asked the Pentagon “whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

• While the US Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report on Costa Rica mentions that: “There were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings…” American special forces troops are killing people in 75 countries around the world.
• While the US Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report on Costa Rica mentions: “There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.” In the US where it is strictly illegal under international law to “transfer people from one country to another without any kind of judicial or administrative process,” through rendition, the USA has sent hundreds of people to foreign countries to be questioned, tortured and “disappeared.”
• While the Costa Rica “Ombudsman’s Office recorded 27 complaints of police abuse,” “Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists, as the greatest threat to the American public,” and a quick search on YouTube results in tens of thousands of videos recording police brutality in the USA.
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• While the US Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report on Costa Rica states that: “The constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. The independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views without restriction.” In the US contrary to the First Amendment’s declaration that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” the US now has Free Speech Zones where the government may regulate the time, place, and manner–but not content–of expression. The USA is ranked at #20 (Costa Rica is ranked #29) in the Press Freedom Index and there have been numerous cases where the police have aggressively prevented people taking photographs.
• While the US Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report on Costa Rica states that: “There were no government restrictions on access to the Internet or reports that the government monitored e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Individuals and groups could engage in the expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail.” In the USA the Obama administration endorses continued spying on Americans, laptops were issued to 1,800 students at three high schools, each with a built-in webcam that was used to covertly spy on them, both at school and at home, and the “US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.”
• While the US Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report on Costa Rica says: “The constitution and law provide for freedom of movement within the country, foreign travel, emigration, and repatriation, and the government generally respected these rights in practice.” In the USA the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) uses the “Secure Flight” travel-permission system to check everyone for domestic U.S. flights and unless the TSA sends the airline a message that you are “cleared”, you can’t fly. The airline is forbidden to give you a boarding pass or let you on a plane.” Homeland Security has their “Automated Targeting System” (ATS) which is “an illegal and initially secret system of records about everyone — including U.S. citizens, regardless of whether they are suspected of any crime — who travels internationally to, from, or via the U.S.”

  Even though “The TSA has not caught a single terrorist. However, it has abused and inconvenienced several hundred thousand innocent American citizens.” And when you are allowed to travel within the US, passengers then face ridiculous security measures, like this little six year old girl in the video below who is first being being searched and then tested for explosives (????)

You don’t see this in Costa Rica! A typical Costa Rican parent would not allow this to happen…

Without an army, a navy or an air force Costa Rica threatens nobody and attacks nobody! Costa Rica has no nuclear weapons or any other kind of weapons of massive destruction, the Costa Rican government authorities doesn’t kidnap anyone and they don’t torture people.

“From illegal domestic wiretapping to kidnapping and torturing detainees abroad, the (US) government is not only expanding — and abusing — its authority, it is attempting to do so under a veil of secrecy in order to avoid being held accountable to the law. Government secrecy is a concept completely at odds with the Constitution and the principle of government accountability.”

Hong Lei, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on 10th April 2011: “But we are firmly against interfering in our internal affairs under the pretext of human rights issues.” He urged the US to reflect more on its own human rights issues rather than acting as a “preacher of human rights.” “The US should stop interfering in other country’s internal affairs with human rights report.”

We’ll leave the last words to Paul Craig Roberts who served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service.

“The U.S. government is the most determined foe of democracy in the world. Yet, Washington lectures China, which has more civil liberties than Bush/Cheney/Obama permit Americans.

If Americans ever find the emotional strength to acknowledge the oppression under which they live, they, too, will be in the streets.”

Written by Scott Oliver, author of 1. Costa Rica Real Estate Scams & How To Avoid Them, 2. How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa, and 3. Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.