Lawmakers urge US crackdown on Afghan child sex slavery

Lawmakers urge US crackdown on Afghan child sex slavery:

Behind Closed Doors, Abuse of Domestic Workers - NYTimes.com

With his latest project, photographer Steve McCurry, best known for his work in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, has documented the suffering of women from Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines who endured a myriad of abuses while working for families elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East.

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Behind Closed Doors, Abuse of Domestic Workers - NYTimes.com:

Sex Trafficking, Lies & Money: Lessons From the Somaly Mam Scandal | The Nation

Source:  The Nation:

First Greg Mortenson, the world-famous author of Three Cups of Tea, raised millions of dollars for schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan that turned out not to exist. Now Somaly Mam, the world-famous Cambodian campaigner against sex trafficking, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, has stepped down from her eponymous foundation in the wake of charges that she fabricated her harrowing autobiography of having been sold into sex slavery as a child. 

Continue:
http://www.thenation.com/article/180132/sex-trafficking-lies-money-lessons-somaly-mam-scandal#

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"Zero-Tolerance" on Trafficking Must Mean What It Says

http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights/zero-tolerance-trafficking-must-mean-what-it-says

03/18/2013

By Allison Frankel, ACLU Human Rights Program at 4:54pm

U.S. officials have acknowledged that human trafficking is a problem of "crisis proportions," both outside and inside America's borders. Yet despite professed intent to end this scourge, including with the help of a "zero-tolerance, one strike approach," human trafficking remains a pervasive and ongoing problem in this nation. As part of ongoing efforts to combat the phenomenon, the ACLU and a coalition of anti-trafficking organizations submitted a written statement last week to the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council, urging the U.S. government to translate its words into actions.

The statement was submitted on the heels of a hearing entitled "Measures on Human Trafficking in the United States" before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In his testimony, the ACLU's Steven Watt commended recent efforts by the U.S. government to close loopholes that enable human trafficking on federal government contracts, such as an executive order on human trafficking and a provision in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which codifies many of these essential protections. Still, Watt cautioned:

This legislation and the E.O. are important first steps to ending trafficking on government overseas contracts. Together they improve oversight of the contracting process and allow for more effective enforcement of anti-trafficking laws and policies.  However, they will only achieve their objectives if properly implemented.

As the ACLU and Yale Law School documented in our 2011 report, Victims of Complacency, since 2003 thousands of foreign workers (known as Third Country Nationals or "TCNs") hired to work on U.S. government contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been subjected to illegal recruitment, trafficking, and forced labor, in stark violation of U.S. and international law. Disturbingly, although these abuses are well known, the U.S. government has utterly failed to hold those responsible accountable: in fact, in the past decade the government has yet to prosecute one single contractor for involvement in trafficking and forced labor.

In our submission to the FAR Council, we recommend the adoption of standards essential to ensuring better oversight of the government contract process so that trafficking does not occur. These include the elimination of recruitment fees, which place workers in a situation of debt bondage and make them more vulnerable to abuse by their employers; provision of written contracts to workers and use only of licensed recruitment agencies; the implementation of grievance procedures so that workers are able to report violations without fear of retaliation; independent verification to ensure recruitment of TCNs follows ethical guidelines; training programs to educate contractors about human trafficking; and the development of a wage compliance program to verify that employees are actually paid the wage they are promised.

Implementation of regulations incorporating these standards is vital to ensuring that the executive order and the new statutory provision are not empty promises. As Watt said before the Inter-American Commission hearing on trafficking, "Only then, will the government's oft touted zero-tolerance on trafficking become a reality for TCNs working for the government and the American public."

Learn more about human trafficking and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

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Human trafficking, prostitution thrive in Afghanistan

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=23742

Source: The Muslim News

25-10-2012

DW.DE:

Thousands of Afghan girls and boys are trafficked into neighboring countries and sold into slavery each year. Though it is taboo, prostitution is alive and thriving - at the cost of those forced to work in it.


It is the oldest trade in the world and exists in probably every country in the world. Yet prostitution is not a dream job. Most female sex workers are forced to make a living through prostitution.

In conservative Afghanistan, prostitution is illegal. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Human trafficking is booming - young women are being sold and sent over to neighboring countries, mostly to Pakistan.

Heather Barr says the government has a number of other issues to tackle as well

Many people are unaware of just how many women are forced to work as prostitutes, according to Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.

"HRW did a report that was released in March this year about women in prison for moral crimes. And one of the things that I found really surprising by doing those interviews, was how many women I met, had been forced in prostitution often by their husbands and in-laws."

Women sold as commodities

The reason, she explained, that women were forced into the sex trade by their families was due to poverty and drug addiction - usually of a husband or brother or both. The families often saw women as a source of money and take advantage of it.

Women from Pakistan are also been bought and sold to Afghanistan. Poor or practically non-existing security at the border means criminals smuggling and trafficking goods and people can easily get away with it. When the trafficked people arrive on the other side of the border, they are fully at the mercy of their pimps.

One woman from Pakistan who wished not to be named is now in Jalalabad - far away from her home in Karachi.

"We are poor and helpless. What are we supposed to do? We don't have anything to eat. That's why the "big man" brought us here from Karachi. No one likes doing this work, but I don't have any other choice," she told DW.

The young woman speaks neither of Afghanistan's official languages - Dari and Pashtu. She said she didn't know who to turn to and was afraid of the consequences she would face should she run away and the authority of her pimp, the "big man," as she called him. But he himself also cited poverty as a reason to force women into prostitution.

Sahar Gul, 15 years old, was tortured for months by her in-laws for refusing to prostitute herself

"I do this because I am poor and I want to be able to feed my children. I am aware that there are dangerous consequences, harsh punishments for this kind of work - for instance death or being ostracized and other things."

But he insisted he did not force anyone to work - that the women who work for him prostituted themselves because they wanted to.

Prostitution, whether out of one's own will or not, is illegal according to Islamic law. The cleric Nek Mohammad works for the court in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar and offers consultations on Islamic law. All forms of position are illegal, he told DW.

"At least four people have to bear witness to the crime. And should the prostitute or the person who buys her be married, his or her spouse will have to be stoned. If there are no married people involved, then they receive lashings."

Disease

But punishment is not the only thing to worry about. Most of the prostitutes are unaware of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as HIV and do not use condoms. The number of cases of STDs had sharply risen in the past few months, according to Dr. Baz Mohammad Sherzad, head of Nangarhar province's health ministry.

Prostitutes pose as beggars on the streets of Afghanistan

"Our doctors confirm that many young men who have come to us recently have had urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases. If prostitution is allowed then it is no wonder there is an increase in such problems in Nangarhar."

Nonetheless, doctors should promote educational campaigns, said Sherzad. The government should tackle the problem. Yet the government had a whole set of other problems: "Think about child marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence, the sale of women for marriage and other purposes, forced prostitution, self immolation - honestly the government hasn't been dealing very effectively with any of those issues," said Heather Barr.

She said it was unfortunate that there was a lack of political will to solve these issues. Progress was only made very slow.

As of recently, it is now illegal to lock up women for running away from home, which is just a further symptom of the violence and forced prostitution women continue to face in Afghanistan.

Teenager Films Afghan Child Labor - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303640804577491511393159548.html

Source: WSJ.com

School Documentary Project Seeks to Illuminate Open Secret: Young Boys atWork in Remote Coal Mines

By DION NISSENBAUM

KABUL—A video shot by an 18-year-old Afghan in the claustrophobic passages of a coal mine casts new light on one of Afghanistan's most disturbing challenges.

Children as young as 10 toil in illegal mines, often for 12 hours a day, activists say. Afghan officials agree the problem is stubborn despite recent efforts. The boys represent a thorny obstacle to the nation's push to transform its antiquated mining industry into a modern economic engine.

At unlicensed coal mines in Afghanistan's remote Bamiyan province, children as young as 10 are working with no safety protection. Fledgling Afghan filmmaker Fardeen Barkazai risked a trip through Taliban territory to tell their story.

Their plight is receiving new attention from 18-year-old Fardeen Barakzai. With the backing of the nonprofit school in Kabul where he works, Mr. Barakzai said he traveled through Taliban territory in Bamiyan province to document the conditions of child laborers at an unlicensed coal mine. His film shows young boys coated in coal dust that blotches their skin and stains their teeth.

Child labor "is a major, major problem in Afghanistan," said Hervé Berger, head of the United Nations' International Labor Organization in Afghanistan.

"Kabul children play, go to school," Mr. Barakzai said. "But there, the children are so dirty, the work is not good. I wanted to show Kabul and all of Afghanistan that this is a big problem for all children."

The specific assertions of people interviewed in Mr. Barakzai's video couldn't be independently verified. But the driver and the teacher who accompanied Mr. Barakzai on his journey confirmed details of his story, as well as the location of the unlicensed mine.

Enlarge Image

Dion Nissenbaum

Eighteen-year-old Fardeen Barakzai traveled in dangerous areas to film children at work in a mine in remote Bamiyan province. Afghan officials acknowledge the problem.

"I saw some children working there loading and unloading donkeys," said Khalilullah, the driver. "All the people working there are extremely poor and don't have any other job to feed their families except working in the mines."

By Afghan government estimates, as many as a third of the nation's children—more than 4 million—take part in some sort of work, from picking fruit to mining coal. U.N. officials estimate about 18% of Afghan children work—1.4 million between the ages of 6 and 15.

No one knows how many boys work in the mines. While the government has enacted laws to curb child labor, the rules have so far done little to curtail the problem. "Because there are no resources, we are not able to enforce the laws," said Khair Mohammad Niru, director general of labor regulations at the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled.

A 2010 report by the Bamiyan provincial Human Rights Commission, an independent group, showed that 212 children between ages 12 and 18 were working in two unlicensed mines, including the one in the video, said Abdul Ahad Farzaam, the commission's director. "Our investigation indicates those children were working there even during the night," he said. "The environment isn't suitable for children at all."

Ahmad Javeed Ahwar, youth program coordinator in Afghanistan for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German-based foundation that earlier this year released a study about child labor in Afghanistan, said that child exploitation "is not a matter of Bamiyan or Kabul, it's a matter of all Afghanistan."

The future of Bamiyan's mines is important for Afghanistan. The government awarded a Chinese consortium—the same group that won the rights to operate a $3.5 billion copper mine near Kabul—the license to mine coal there, and the area will soon be turned over to it.

China Metallurgical Group, the Chinese state-run company slated to take control of the coal deposits, said it had no idea children were used to mine coal in the area. It said it will follow Afghan law to ensure children don't work in its mines.

Afghan officials also say they are aware of the country's unlicensed mines, but added that the government had cracked down on sites. Abdul Rehman Shahid, a member of parliament from Bamiyan Province, couldn't confirm whether children worked in those mines, but added that the government recently enforced a ban on transporting coal there.

Afghan mining minister Wahidullah Shahrani said in an interview that he couldn't be sure if the mine filmed by Mr. Barakzai is still operating. "It's very disturbing," he said. "These are the sad realities."

For Mr. Barakzai, the stories of child miners hit home. The oldest son of a disabled father, Mr. Barakzai was sent into the streets of Kabul at age five to make money for his family.

When he was eight, Mr. Barakzai became one of the first students of the Afghanistan Educational Children's Circus/Mobile Mini Circus for Afghanistan, a Danish-run school that seeks to use theater and circus arts to teach children.. He now helps run the school's video projects.

"Children are the best to tell the problems of Afghanistan," said Berit Muhlhausen, co-director of the school, which is funded in part by the Danish government.

Last month, the school's directors agreed to work on a child-labor radio project with the International Labor Organization. The directors asked Mr. Barakzai if he would look into child labor in the coal mines.

Mr. Barakzai says he was determined to do more than routine interviews in the safety of the capital. He persuaded two teachers from the school to take him on the four-hour trek. from the capital to the mines.

"I told him the district is very remote and insecure, but he insisted," said Asadullah, one of the teachers. "There are Taliban on the way."

Mr. Barakzai was shocked by what he saw: Scores of boys in tattered clothes popped in and out of mine entrances. None appeared to have safety protection. Mr. Barakzai and a young teacher named Ahmad followed a ten-year-old miner deep into the mine to film the video.

—Habib Khan Totakhil, Nathan Hodge in Kabul and Kersten Zhang in Beijing contributed to this article.

Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared July 14, 2012, on page A10 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Teenager Films Afghan Child Labor.

"Victims of Complacency": Trafficking and Abuse of Migrant Workers on U.S. Military Bases

"Victims of Complacency": Trafficking and Abuse of Migrant Workers on U.S. Military Bases


Source: ACLU Blog of Rights


06/28/2012

By Steven Watt, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program & Valerie Brender, Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project at 1:29pm

(Originally posted on Huffington Post)

Ramesh, a college graduate from India, borrowed $5,000 from a loan shark to pay a recruiting agent for the opportunity to work in Kuwait as a storekeeper at a wage of $800/month. His aims were simple: to provide a better life for himself and his family. Instead, Ramesh was trafficked to a U.S. military base in Iraq where he was compelled to work as a janitor for $150/month. This paltry sum meant that Ramesh was unable to meet his loan repayments. In a cruel attempt to intimidate him into making his payments, the loan shark sexually assaulted Ramesh’s sister and seized the family home.

This story, recounted in the just-released, joint ACLU-Yale Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic report, “Victims of Complacency”, is but one example of the price that many migrant workers have paid and continue to pay for the opportunity to work on U.S. military bases and other U.S.-run facilities around the world.

These migrant workers, often referred to as “third-country nationals,” or “TCNs,” have become an indispensable part of the daily lives of our troops in the wars and their aftermath in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like Ramesh, TCNs come mainly from developing countries such as India, the Philippines, Nepal and Uganda, and are contracted to perform low-paid but essential services as cooks, janitors, cleaners and mechanics on U.S. military bases worldwide. In 2011, there were more than 60,000 TCNs contracted to work in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. And while the U.S. military has largely been replaced by the State Department in Iraq, thousands of contract workers, many of whom are TCNs, remain in the country to provide services to the U.S. embassy.

“Victims of Complacency,” together with hundreds of pages of documentsobtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, details the trafficking, forced labor and other abuses that thousands of TCNs have suffered since 2003. The report also provides a concrete set of detailed recommendations to Congress that are aimed at preventing future abuses.

As the report documents, the trafficking and abuse of TCNs in Iraq and Afghanistan is facilitated by the U.S. government contacting and sub-contracting process. The U.S. government, often through the Department of Defense or State, will award prime contractors, U.S.-based corporations such as Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), logistics contracts to service the U.S. military on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. These government contractors in turn subcontract to other contractors, most of them located in the Gulf States or the Middle East, that then contract with local recruiting agencies in the workers’ countries of origin. Workers like Ramesh, enticed by promises of high paying jobs in the Middle East, take out loans from local loan sharks to pay recruiting agency fees for the promise of high-paying jobs overseas. Some workers get lucky; their recruiting agencies don’t charge them a fee and are honest about the location and pay of their work. However, many workers are not so fortunate. Like Ramesh they end up paying exorbitant recruitment fees to secure jobs that pay much less than advertised and that are located in different countries than indicated on their contracts (Iraq and Afghanistan instead of Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates), or sometimes don’t even exist. Often, these jobs come with unsafe and unhygienic living and working conditions. Fearful of losing their jobs and defaulting on their loans, which often mean the loss of their livelihoods back home, these workers continue with their contracts in spite of these conditions. Contractors, who are often aware of the precarious financial situation of many TCNs, take advantage of and will threaten the workers with termination if they make complaints about their poor working conditions and pay.

“Victims of Complacency” also highlights how the government contracting process opens the door to corruption and waste of U.S. tax-payer’s dollars by U.S. military contractors. For example, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting noted in its 2011 report that contractors bill for TCNs at an average rate of $67,600 to perform food services and other menial tasks. Yet, TCNsalaries often range between $150-$500 a month, or $1800-$6000 per year. Since TCNs are often charged for their recruitment and transportation into Iraq and Afghanistan, it is unclear what causes such a large discrepancy between contractor billings and TCN salaries.

Despite media and government reports on TCN trafficking and abuse and contractor malfeasance, in the past ten years not a single military contractor has been prosecuted by the government. Nor is there evidence that military contracts are ever terminated due to contractor trafficking violations. However, as the ACLU-Yale report notes, the United States government can address future trafficking, abuse, and corruption in government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan by taking small, but important steps to improve the oversight of the contracting process and more effectively enforce existing laws and policies, including U.S. anti-trafficking laws. “Victims of Complacency” makes a number of concrete recommendations on how greater oversight may be introduced and how U.S. laws may be employed to counter trafficking and abuse of TCNs in the future.

The U.S. government has repeatedly and forcefully stressed its zero-tolerance policy on trafficking; criminal prosecutions and administrative penalties for non-compliant companies should be at the forefront of its enforcement strategy against U.S. contractors that violate U.S. anti-trafficking laws.

As some companies operating in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, the adoption of stricter hiring and employment standards, aimed at preventing trafficking and abuse of TCNs, are not a pipe dream. “Victims of Complacency”highlights that FSI Worldwide, a British contractor, has hired workers from Nepal, India, and Kenya for positions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the UAE. FSI “transfer[s] the cost of recruitment from the TCN to the contracting company, eliminat[es] recruiting agents and us[es] only trusted senior personnel to conduct recruitment, and ask[s] recruits to sign non-payment declarations and to report any attempts by staff to extort money.”

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Tell Your Senator to End Trafficking in Government Contracting

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TCNs migrate to find work, to provide for their families, and to save for a better life. The responsibility lies with the U.S. government to ensure that these workers—who provide valuable services to our troops and embassies—are not trafficked, forced into indentured servitude, or otherwise exploited on the taxpayer’s dime in violation of U.S. and international law.

Learn more about human trafficking: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, andlike us on Facebook.

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GOP, Dems come together to fight human trafficking by contractors in Iraq, Afghanistan - The Hill's Floor Action

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/218353-gop-dems-come-together-to-fight-human-trafficking-by-contractors-in-iraq-afghanistan

SOURCE: The Hill

By Pete Kasperowicz - 03/27/12 09:33 AM ET

A bipartisan group of members from the House and Senate proposed legislation on Monday that seeks to crack down on human trafficking by contractors that the U.S. military hires for work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The End Trafficking in Government Contracting Act is a reaction to reports from the Commission on Wartime Contracting and the inspectors general of the Defense and State departments that overseas contractors are known to engage in practices that are illegal under U.S. employee rights standards. These include seizing workers' passports to trap them at a work site, lying about compensation, engaging in sexual abuse and generally keeping workers in a state of indentured servitude.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, said the legislation would help improve the treatment of third-country workers who are lured to work in Iraq and Afghanistan only to be defrauded or enslaved.

"Modern-day slavery by government contractors — unknowingly funded by American taxpayers — is unconscionable and intolerable," Blumenthal said. "Current law prohibiting human trafficking is insufficient and ineffective, failing to prevent or punish abuses.

"By increasing preventative scrutiny and investigation, this legislation will stop egregious human-rights abuses on U.S. military bases, increasing security for our troops and preventing waste of taxpayer dollars."

A co-sponsor, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said it is unacceptable that these abuses are often supported by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

"This bill will help crack down on this dehumanizing practice, particularly in government contracting labor operations, and I am proud to support it as one more step we can do to punish human-rights abuses," Rubio said.

Under the bill, contractors with contracts worth $1 million or more would have to implement plans to prevent all abusive practices, and would have to notify the government if they have evidence that a subcontractor is involved in prohibited conduct.

The enforcement provisions of the bill would allow for criminal penalties, in part by expanding current rules related to the treatment of foreign workers inside the United States to foreign workers outside the country. The bill would also allow the government to remove certain employees or suspend contractors when violations are found.

Blumenthal's bill, S. 2234, is also co-sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

The House companion bill, H.R. 4259, was sponsored by Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), and is co-sponsored by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Chris Smith (R-N.J.).

Issa's committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the bill Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., with Blumenthal and Portman expected to testify on the bill at that time.

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Your Tax Dollars at Work? U.S. Military Contractors and Human Trafficking in War Zones » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

Jul 21st, 2011
Posted by Steven Watt and Valerie Brender, Human Rights Program at 2:24pm

Today, we filed a lawsuit to enforce an earlier Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request aimed at tackling the underreported problem of trafficking and abusive treatment of foreign workers on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 70,000 low-wage workers, commonly known as third country nationals or “TCNs,” work for U.S. military contractors to provide the U.S armed forces with essential services on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction, cooking and cleaning. As recent media reports indicate, many of these workers often end up on these military bases through a convoluted system of sub-contracting rife with corruption, debt bondage, coercion and other abuse.

Our FOIA lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, seeks documents detailing the monitoring and enforcement of trafficking and labor laws and policies on U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent article in The New Yorker paints a typical picture of the corrupt military sub-contracting system in operation. The article tells the story of a group of Fijian women TCNs, one handful of the tens of thousands of individuals who work to support the American military in war zones around the world. Hired by a local recruitment agency in their home country as beauticians in 2007, the women were promised lucrative employment in luxury hotels in Dubai. However, upon their arrival there, the women were informed that they were actually bound for a U.S. military base in Iraq. Some of the women had taken out loans to cover onerous recruiting fees; others were threatened with exorbitant termination fees if they returned to Fiji. Because of these costs, they felt compelled to travel to Iraq despite the danger to their lives. Once in Iraq, the women’s contracts were reduced to a fraction of what they had been initially promised in Fiji. And, before being paid at all, the women were all required to sign contracts stating that they would work twelve hours a day, seven days a week with overtime hours that they were unable to turn down.

These corrupt recruiting tactics were not supposed to happen. In fact, back in 2006, in direct response to mounting evidence of trafficking and other abuses of foreign workers by U.S. military contractors, then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General George Casey, issued rules for all military contractors aimed at stopping trafficking and abuse. These rules required that all foreign workers retain their passports, basic standards of living for foreign workers and that all unlicensed recruiting firms be banned from the contracting process.

Unfortunately, since the rules were established, it is difficult to determine whether they have been successful in ending illegal trafficking and abuse. And, recent media articles and government reports suggest the opposite; that they have done little to prevent trafficking and other abuses. Other instances of trafficking and abuse of foreign workers in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as those of the Fijian women, continue to be exposed, revealing that the rules are neither being followed by contactors nor enforced by the government.

We hope that our lawsuit will promote greater transparency about the sub-contracting process with a view to effectively stemming further trafficking and abuses of workers on American military bases. Stay tuned for information about what we uncover.

Learn more about human rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Source: Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

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