"Nothing about us, without us."
KEEP UP WITH ARISE!
Welcome, May 2021! Earth History Month
This month marks a year since George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, which outraged the world and sparked unprecedented domestic and global protests calling for racial justice and transformative change. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict should have been an inevitable accountability measure, yet even though the horrible display of brutality was caught on camera in broad daylight, the outcome was far from guaranteed. The uncertainty leading up to the verdict illustrates the normalization of impunity for police in the criminal legal system.
Calls for accountability following Floyd’s murder reverberated around the world, and ultimately led to the unprecedented demand for a United Nations commission of inquiry to investigate racist police violence in the U.S. We now hold the same expectations for international human rights bodies to respond and utilize the momentum of this moment for transformative change.
Today, 171 family members of victims of police violence, with the support of a large coalition of advocacy groups from more than 40 countries all over the world, sent a letter to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and another letter to the Foreign Ministers of African States demanding effective accountability and follow-up to HRC resolution 43/1. The letters reiterated the call to mandate an international independent investigation into police killings and violent law enforcement responses to protests in the U.S., and create a mechanism imbued with the power to investigate systemic racism in law enforcement on a global scale.
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