Thanks to K for emailing the link. What the US Dept. of State says about human rights practices in the UK from a couple of years ago. It certainly makes interesting reading, and, in places, makes us sound rather a bad country.
The following human rights problems were reported: increased police misconduct; occasional abuse of detainees and other persons by individual members of the police and military; overcrowded prison conditions and some inadequate prison infrastructure; increased limitations on freedom of religious expression; violence and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities, including increased anti-Semitism, women, and children; and trafficking of persons into the country.
This is from the US? *cough pot kettle*.
I read through the Australian one, and I am surprised at what they don’t tell. Although the following was pretty damning:
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“According to a government report entitled Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage released in 2005, the life expectancy of an indigenous person remained 20 years less than that of a nonindigenous person, and the indigenous infant mortality rate was 2.5 times the rates found in nonindigenous populations.
….section cut
Although Aboriginal adults represented only 2.2 percent of the adult population, according to the ABS they accounted for approximately 21 percent of the total prison population and were imprisoned at 11 times the rate of nonindigenous persons as of June 2004, down from 15 times the nonindigenous rate in 2002. More than 45 percent of Aboriginal men between the ages of 20 and 30 years had been arrested at some time in their lives. ”
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