Thursday, July 26, 2012

Just Another Victim

The following article is about a teenager who was shot five times by police for underage drinking. You can read the details of the story in the link below. However, what I really wanted to share here was the introduction that author made, before going into details of the particular case. 

This is a country whose people self-righteously criticize China for its human rights abuses. This is a country where the public has been aghast at Singaporean laws against chewing gum, and its “harsh” penalties for violations of the law. This is a country whose people have propagated rabid fear-mongering against Muslims, on the grounds Islam supports poor treatment of women and arbitrary and severe punishments (and I have argued in the past that American statism is not so unlike radical Islam).

Despite the outward pretense of civility and denunciation of human rights abuses, this is a country whose police murder disabled old people, the mentally ill, and children – and get away with it. It is a country whose government actually defends the police when they yank little girls out of beds and put guns to their heads during mistaken drug raids. This is a country whose police arrest people for feeding the homeless. This is the country with the highest number of prisoners in the entire world, both in sheer numbers and on a per capita basis, even as it constantly claims to be the “freest” place on the planet.

The list goes on and on – you’d think the United States would be hiding its face in shame, rather than claiming to be a beacon of freedom while pointing the “human rights” finger at every other country but itself. While police apologists repeatedly drone the tire bit about it being “a few bad apples” or “isolated incidents” (never mind the fact that the law actually encourages and permits this type of behavior by police), the truth is, it would take more than a whole team of writers to detail and cover the daily atrocities committed by police.

Aaron Rosas’ story is one such atrocity.
Click here for the rest of the article.








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