Families Call for UN Probe into Police Violence against Black Americans
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The families of more than a hundred victims of US police brutality on Monday called on the United Nations to set up an investigation into police violence against Black Americans.
Family members of 165 victims signed a letter sent to UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet, The Guardian reports. They called for an “independent inquiry into the killings and violent law enforcement responses to protests in the US."
The families are backed by more than 250 civil society and human rights groups, including the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The families of George Floyd, Michael Brown and Daunte Wright were among those who signed the letter.
"We believe that a robust international accountability mechanism would further support and complement, not undermine, efforts to dismantle systemic racism in the United States, especially in the context of police violence against people of African descent," the letter reads, The Hill reported.
The Guardian notes that this letter comes two weeks after an alliance of human rights lawyers from 11 countries accused the US of crimes against humanity for allowing law enforcement officers to kill and torture African Americans with little to no repercussions.
The report from the lawyers found the US frequently violates international laws by allowing “severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, persecution and other inhuman acts."
The UN has so far resisted efforts to draw it into the US's ongoing reckoning with police brutality.
Last year, the family of Floyd sent a letter to the UN requesting recommendations on police reform in the US.
“When a group of people of any nation have been systemically deprived of their universal human right to life by its government for decades, it must appeal to the international community for its support and to the United Nations for its intervention,” Ben Crump, the attorney for Floyd's family, said in a statement at the time.
The families of Brown, Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Philando Castile also sent a letter to the UN Human Rights Council last year calling on the body to convene a special session to respond to what it called a "human rights crisis" in the US.
