This can be read at     http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/newsprint.cgi?file=/news2008/0513-14.htm

Military Recruitment Practices Violate International Standards, Says ACLU
New Report Also Details U.S. Failure To Protect Foreign Child Soldiers

  NEW YORK - May 13 - The United States has failed to uphold its commitments to safeguard the rights of youth under 18 from military recruitment and to guarantee basic protections to foreign former child soldiers, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released today. The report, “Soldiers of Misfortune,” charges that U.S. military recruiting practices that target children as young as 11, the lack of protections for alleged foreign child soldiers in U.S. military custody, and the denial of protection to former child soldiers from other countries seeking asylum violate the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict that the U.S. ratified in 2002.

“The Unites States is failing to protect its own youth from abusive military recruitment, and is simultaneously failing to protect the youth of other countries who have already been forcibly involved in armed conflict,” said Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program. “The United States should take immediate action to bring its policies and practices on military recruitment and treatment of former child soldiers in line with internationally accepted standards.”

The ACLU submitted the report to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, which oversees compliance with the optional protocol. The Protocol mandates countries to protect children under 18 from military recruitment and guarantees basic protections to former child soldiers. The committee will review the ACLU report before questioning a U.S. government delegation on its compliance with Protocol obligations on May 22 in Geneva.

According to the report, the military regularly targets youth under 18 for recruitment and disproportionately targets poor and minority students. The ACLU charges that exaggerated promises of financial rewards and coercion, deception and sexual abuse by recruiters nullify the so-called “voluntariness” of recruitment. A 2007 survey of New York City high school students by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other organizations found that more than one in five students, including students as young as 14, reported the use of class time by military recruiters.

“Military recruitment tools aimed at youth under 18, including Pentagon-produced video games, military training corps, and databases of students’ personal information, have no place in America’s schools,” said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project. “The United States military’s procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics.”

The report also criticizes U.S. detention of children at Guantánamo and U.S.-run facilities overseas without recognizing their juvenile status or observing international juvenile justice standards. Highlighted in the report is the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen in Department of Defense custody since he was 15, detained at Guantánamo on charges that include alleged crimes committed when he was 10 years old. The ACLU charges that military commission proceedings against Khadr allow the admission of coerced evidence that may have been obtained through torture.

Also included in the report are details of the U.S. denial of asylum status to former child soldiers under immigration provisions intended to bar those who victimized them. Some former child soldiers who were the victims of serious human rights abuses and cannot safely return to their home countries are being denied protection in the U.S.

The report calls on the United States to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most comprehensive treaty on children’s rights and the most universally accepted and least controversial human rights treaty that has been drafted. Of 195 countries in the world, only the U.S. and Somalia have not ratified or acceded to this treaty.

The ACLU report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child is available online at: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/35245pub20080513.html

The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict is at: www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc-conflict.htm

The report of the NYCLU and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer on military recruitment in New York City public schools is available online at: www.nyclu.org/node/1348

END THE WARS AND OCCUPATION BRING HOME THE TROOPS NOW

Contact our representatives:

Tom Harkin: 284-4574

Charles Grassley: 288-1145         Leonard Boswell: 282-1909 

Des Moines Catholic Worker: 282-4781 AFSC: 274-4851 Iowa Peace Network: 255-7114 Catholic Peace Ministry: 255-8114

Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2008.

Source: CASMII

In a sharp reversal of its longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq , the US military has made an unprecedented albeit quiet confession: the weapons they had recently found in Iraq were not made in Iran at all.

According to a report by the LA Times correspondent Tina Susman in Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.”

The US , which until two weeks ago had never provided any proof for its allegations, finally handed over its “evidence” of the Iranian origin of these weapons to the Iraqi government. Last week, an Iraqi delegation to Iran presented the US “evidence” to Iranian officials. According to Al-Abadi, a parliament member from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance who was on the delegation, the Iranian officials totally refuted “training, financing and arming” militant groups in Iraq . Consequently the Iraqi government announced that there is no hard evidence against Iran.

In another extraordinary event this week, the US spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, for the first time did not blame Iran for the violence in Iraq and in fact did not make any reference to Iran at all in his introductory remarks to the world media on Wednesday when he described the large arsenal of weapons found by Iraqi forces in Karbala.

In contrast, the Pentagon in August 2007 admitted that it had lost track of a third of the weapons distributed to the Iraqi security forces in 2004/2005. The 190,000 assault rifles and pistols roam free in Iraqi streets today.

In the past year, the US leaders have been relentless in propagating their charges of Iranian meddling and fomenting violence in Iraq and since the release of the key judgments of the US National Intelligence Estimate in December that Iran does not have a nuclear weaponisation programme, these accusations have sharply intensified.  

The US charges of Iranian interference in Iraq too have now collapsed. Any threat of military strike against Iran is in violation of the UN charter and the IAEA's continued supervision on Iran's uranium enrichment facilities means there is no justification for sanctions.

CASMII calls on the US to change course and enter into comprehensive and unconditional negotiations with Iran.

For more information or to contact CASMII please visit http://www.campaigniran.org

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