U.S.
Lectures World on Human Rights as Cops Kill Blacks
With Impunity
By Finian
Cunningham
May 30,
2020 "Information
Clearing House"
- “Being black in America should not be a death
sentence” – so said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
following the shocking, gruesome killing of George
Floyd by a police officer on the streets of Saint
Paul.
Floyd
(46) was
filmed by
bystanders handcuffed and pinned to the road face
down while a cop pressed his knee on his neck for
eight minutes. Despite desperate pleas from Floyd
that he could not breathe and protests from the
bystanders to let him go, the police officer choked
him to death.
Four
officers have been
reportedly fired
following public outrage over the killing of Floyd.
Minneapolis and other cities have seen riots for
several nights running since the incident on May 25.
Video footage
shows the victim
was not resisting arrest as the police force had
earlier claimed. He was arrested on suspicion of
passing a fake $20 note at a restaurant. The use of
such excessive force by the police – even if the
forgery claims are substantiated – is obscenely
disproportionate.
Evidently,
George Floyd was lynched by a white cop on the
street of city in broad daylight. The victim’s real
“crime” was being black.
Studies of official data consistently
show that U.S.
black males, proportionate to population, are far
more likely to die from encounters with police
officers compared with their white counterparts.
The
case of George Floyd is grimly
reminiscent of that
of Eric Garner who was choked to death by a police
officer in New York City in 2014. Garner was
apprehended on suspicion of selling contraband
cigarettes on the street. He also pleaded for mercy
while in a stranglehold, telling officers he could
not breathe before being throttled to death.
Most
deaths, however, at the hands of law enforcement
officers are caused by firearms. Invariably, the
excuse is parroted that the officer “felt his life
was being threatened” by the victim. Philando
Castile was
shot dead with five
rounds at the wheel of his stationary car in July
2016 because the traffic cop claimed Castile was
moving his hand suspiciously. That was after the
victim had calmly told the officer he had a firearm
in the car by way of alerting him to avoid fatal
mistake.
The vast
majority of cops accused of these kind of racist
killings are never prosecuted, or else acquitted.
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Michael Brown, a teenager, was shot dead in
Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 even though
witnesses said he
had his hands up when confronted by the police
officer. The cop was not even indicted after a grand
jury accepted his claim of being threatened.
Tamir
Rice, a 12-year-old boy, was shot dead by two cops
in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2014 on
suspicion of
holding a firearm while he played at a children’s
park. Turned out the boy was playing with a replica
toy gun. No charges were brought against his
killers.
This
institutionalized impunity for police officers who
are allowed to get away with murder inevitably
spills over to wider society. The racist suspicion
of black men involved in crime is invoked time and
again by self-appointed, gun-toting vigilantes.
Earlier this year, in February, Ahmaud Arbery was
gunned down in the
street while he was out jogging in Brunswick,
Georgia. His attackers, a white father and son,
suspected he was connected to house burglary in the
area. Video footage clearly shows the victim was
unarmed and in jogging gear. Nevertheless, he was
shot dead by the two men, one of whom is an ex-cop.
Another notorious
case is that of
Trayvon Martin, a teenager, who was stalked and shot
dead in 2012 by a Florida neighborhood vigilante,
again on the suspicion of committing robbery.
The
shocking truth is that lynching of African-Americans
in the U.S. is alive today as it was during the
apartheid era of southern states and their Jim Crow
segregationist laws which existed within living
memory. The Klu Klux Klan may not be burning crosses
openly or hauling victims from the back of jeeps
along roads until their bodies burst. Equality laws
since the 1960s have brought a semblance of evenness
in racial rights and legal protection.
But
in the real world of U.S. society, blacks are still
systematically
poorer, more unemployed, infirm, discriminated
against and deprived. The coronavirus pandemic
wreaking havoc in the U.S. – more than 100,000 dead
in four months – is disproportionately hitting
African-Americans
harder because of
their impoverished living conditions.
Shooting
and choking blacks by cops or vigilantes with
impunity is part and parcel of the systematic racism
that pervades the U.S.. That’s because of the
American capitalist class system which relegates
blacks and other minorities to the lowest rung among
the working-class poor.
A
sinister manifestation of this was seen from the
incident last week
in New York’s Central Park when a white woman
hysterically phoned 911 claiming that her life was
being threatened by a black man. The man had simply
and politely asked the woman to leash her dog in
accordance with the park’s rules. Video footage
taken by the man showed she was in no way infringed
during the encounter. Evidently, she falsely accused
the man of malicious intent and, moreover,
arrogantly felt her white voice would be backed by
law enforcement against a black man.
If the cops
had responded quickly enough to turn up at the
scene, it is likely the man would have been shot
dead for resisting arrest or on suspicion of
threatening their lives with his bird-watching
binoculars. Because the fact is being black in
America is a death sentence.
And yet
American politicians and media have the audacity to
lecture and sanction China, Russia, Cuba, Iran and
other countries about human rights.
Finian
Cunningham
has written extensively on international affairs,
with articles published in several languages. He is
a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and
worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society
of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a
career in newspaper journalism. He is also a
musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he
worked as an editor and writer in major news media
organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent. -
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