GUATEMALA CITY — Human rights advocates on Friday challenged the legality of U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean during the first hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, arguing the policy has caused widespread harm to Latin American communities and violates domestic and international law.
During the hearing, the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, International Crisis Group, and U.N. human rights experts “[spoke] to the commission on how the United States’ lethal-strike policy violates both domestic and international law. U.S. representatives were in attendance, and decried the attempt to hold them accountable,” according to the ACLU.
Director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, Jamil Dakwar, stated that they “are doing everything in [their] power to hold the Trump administration responsible for its egregious violations of both U.S. and international law, and that includes asking the widely respected Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate these heinous killings.”
Dakwar continued by asserting that the “administration can act as outraged and indignant as they want, but Friday’s hearing was a vital first step for establishing international accountability for the lawless policy that claimed the lives of at least 156 people and created another dangerous example of state-sanctioned violence with impunity. The fact that the Trump administration is lashing out at the ACLU and at the Commission is just another preposterous attempt to evade accountability and deflect attention from the government’s crimes.”
According to the ACLU, while speaking at the hearing, human rights experts emphasized that “under both U.S. and international law, it is flagrantly illegal to use the military to kill civilians suspected only of crimes.”
Furthering their point, they added that the “United States is not in an armed conflict with anyone in Latin America. That means the people on these boats are civilians. Civilians, including those suspected of smuggling drugs, are not lawful targets.”
The United States “government’s duty under international treaties to investigate these extrajudicial killings and hold officials accountable for the murders of at least 156 people” was also raised, as reported by the ACLU.
The U.N.’s special rapporteur for “protecting fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism,” Ben Saul, accused the U.S. of “responding with lawless violence that flagrantly violates human rights, in its phony war on so-called narco-terrorism.”
He also noted that “drug trafficking is a crime, not a war,” according to the ACLU.
Saul furthered his point by stating that “the portrayal of suspected drug traffickers as being responsible for ‘speculative drug overdoses’ did not constitute a ‘permissible law enforcement action in personal self-defense or the defense of others,” as recounted by the ACLU.
The human rights groups further “outlined the illegal nature of these strikes and how they violate the U.N. Charter and human rights obligations that bind the United States.”
The ACLU highlights how the groups “called on the commission to declare the U.S. boat strike policy in violation of international law, to conduct an investigation into the policy, and to convene a special meeting with OAS member states affected by the U.S. policy, and make recommendations on how to refrain from aiding or abetting or otherwise being complicit in the U.S. government’s violations of international law.”
Senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, Angelo Guisado, said “these extrajudicial killings were poorly veiled cover to justify the illegal overthrow of the Venezuelan government, as admitted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles,” as recounted by the ACLU.
According to the ACLU, Guisado continued that “the administration’s desire to play imperial superpower in the region cannot be a reason to completely displace the foundations of international law.”
The ACLU highlights that “Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Sara Jacobs (D-CA) also sent a letter to the commission urging them to ‘scrutinize this administration’s policy and help advance accountability in the international arena.’”
This hearing “was one of many legal avenues the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights are taking to hold the Trump administration accountable for these strikes,” according to the ACLU.
The ACLU concludes by stating that they “also represent two of the victims’ families in their efforts to seek redress and separately are suing for the release of the Trump administration’s legal memo justifying these strikes.”
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