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CNN Sunday Morning
Lengthy Document Summarizes Summit of the Americas
Aired April 22, 2001 - 10:04 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The Summit of the Americas in Quebec City concludes later today with a lengthy 250-page statement summarizing the goals of the international trade talks. The main objective is the creation, by 2005, of a free-trade zone that stretches from the tip of Chile to the top of Alaska.
Adoption of a so-called democracy clause would require all trade partners to adhere to democratic principles.
The summit has been a magnet for protesters representing a myriad of causes. What unites them is their shared contempt for the trade talks. Police report more than 400 arrests since Friday.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: While no one agrees with the tactics of demonstrators in Quebec City, there is little doubt that most of them are motivated by a sense of social conscience. And, with us from Nashville to talk more about that is William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International. He's also the author of "In Our Own Best Interest."
Dr. Schulz, welcome to our program.
DR. WILLIAM SCHULZ, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, USA: Thank you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: You make a very important point in your book, and that is why fighting for human rights should be important to all of us. I think a lot of people take life in the United States for granted many of times, and don't realize the economic and political benefits from fighting for human rights. Could you give some specific examples for us?
SCHULZ: Yes, indeed. I think you're right, Kyra. I think most Americans think of human rights as happening to people far away. They're morally repugnant, the violations or people's human rights, torture, unfair trials, but what do they have to do with us?
Well, in 1999, for example, half-a-million U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost to countries overseas that denied their people the right to organize labor unions, and therefore keep wages depressed. That's one example.
Just recently, in the Chinese spy incident, one of the reasons that our flyers were held so long, for 11 days, was because the Chinese press, which is under the control of the government, was only giving out one side of the story, the Chinese side, and that inflamed nationalism within China.
If you look at where our American servicemen and women have been deployed over the last ten years in Haiti and Bosnia and Kosovo, they're all places that have required American intervention because human rights violations were ignored for far too long before they reached the peak where that intervention was necessary.
Or, just quickly, another example. If you think about global warming that effects every single one of us, one of the reasons for global warming is that those environmental defenders around the world who are trying to protect the forests which help fight global warming are often targeted by corporations or governments, thrown into jail, tortured, beaten, their own human rights violated.
Those are just some examples.
PHILLIPS: Would you say in the past decade or so, when U.S. soldiers have had to go overseas, the main reason or maybe the only reason, has been because of human rights violation?
SCHULZ: Well, certainly not the only reason. But, certainly, in those cases, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, very important reasons. And, in each one of those cases, human rights violations had, unfortunately, been largely ignored for many, many years and, therefore, allowed to fester and get to the point where military intervention was perceived, by the U.S. government at least, to be necessary.
PHILLIPS: OK. So, if I'm not a parent of a daughter or son who is in the military and is going to be going overseas, give me other reasons why it's important that I should care about human rights. Public health was an interesting point, I noticed, that you made in your book.
SCHULZ: Well, exactly. For example, in Russia, Russian prisons have so much medical neglect, such abysmal conditions under which prisoners are held, that a strain of tuberculosis has developed in those prisons which is resistant to all forms of drugs, at least drugs that are currently known. And that exact same strain has traveled by trade, by public travel, around the world, and is found today in the United States.
That's a very dramatic example of how the violation of the rights of Russian prisoners can potentially be a deadly impact here on us in the United States. Or, consider the fact that about 10 percent on average of our pension funds are held in foreign stocks and foreign bonds. And we know that the economic situation in countries around the world is often effected by instability, such as we've seen in Indonesia, and that instability is often caused by human rights violations.
In Indonesia, in the province of Aceh, just a week or two ago, Exxon-Mobile said it was closing it's natural gas fields because of political unrest caused by human rights violations in Indonesia.
PHILLIPS: Dr. Schulz, you mentioned the prisons in Russia. She also talk about the prisons in the United States and the human rights abuses, but it's very hard for a lot of people, especially parents of victims, etcetera, to feel compassionate for prisoners. Why did you find this very important to talk about with regard to how prisoners are treated in the U.S.?
SCHULZ: Well, of course no one is suggesting that someone who has been convicted of a crime should not be punished, should not be sentenced to prison. The problem is that very often those sentences do not just involve serving time, they involve being brutalized, either at the hands of other inmates or, particularly in the case of women inmates, who make up now about 15 percent of our population, about 150,000 women in our prisons and jails today, sometimes that brutalization in the form of sexual harassment and sexual assault comes at the hands of custodial officials, of guards and other prison officials.
And look, let's look at it this way. Those 150,000 women have about 200,000 children for whom they are responsible. We know that the children of women in prison are about eight times more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system. And if their mothers, while they've been serving time, have been subjected to various forms of brutalization that violate not only their self-esteem but their personal bodily integrity, they're going to be even less equipped than they may be otherwise when they are released.
And, of course, most of them will be released because they are generally in on nonviolent charges. When they will be released, they're going to be even less effective mothers to those 200,000 children, and that's going to be bad for every single American.
PHILLIPS: Dr. William Schulz, executive director, Amnesty International U.S.A., once again the name of the book, "In Our Own Best Interest." Very interesting and pretty much a blueprint of action if you want to take action. Thank you, Dr. Schulz.
SCHULZ: Thank you Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Alright.
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