Chronology of Human Rights Violations of the United States in 2017

OCTOBER

October 1

The USA Today website reported that at least 59 people were killed and more than 500 injured in a mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert, considered the worst mass shooting in modern history of the country.

October 4

The Chicago Tribune website reported that US authorities made more than 300 arrests at demonstrations over the Sept 15 acquittal of former officer Jason Stockley in the fatal shooting of an African-American. Protesters and civil liberties groups accused the authorities of using heavy-handed tactics against demonstrators. And the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri filed a lawsuit which accused police of unnecessarily using tear gas and pepper spray, arresting bystanders and journalists.

October 18

Research by the Pew Research Center showed that 57 percent of women said the country hasn't done enough to give women equal rights with men; 38 percent of women who said they have faced gender discrimination cited experiences related to hiring, pay or promotion; 26 percent said they have had their abilities questioned or were treated as if they weren't smart because of their gender; and 10 percent cited sexual harassment.

October 25

The International Business Times website reported that a study from the Reflective Democracy Campaign found that 90 percent of all US elected officials were white and 71 percent were men. With only the wealthy funding and communicating with the campaigns of elected officials, politicians were incentivized to make policy decisions that align with their donors' interests, not those of their broader constituency. Nick Nyhart, founding executive of voting rights advocacy group Every Voice, said "every cycle, there are fewer and fewer donors giving more and more of the money. The voices of everyday people get heard less and less each year. People who win under (the current system) don't promote policies that everyday people want to happen".

October 26

A study on the website of the Institute for Women's Policy Research showed that child care costs represent a large financial burden for parents who are in college. Washington State's child care assistance rules made it difficult for low-income students to access child care. And Washington was one of 11 states that require parents in postsecondary education to also work to be eligible for child care assistance.

October 31

The New York Post website reported that police arrested three men who smashed more than 40 headstones and spray-painted racial slurs on graves that had Asian names on them at a Queens cemetery in the summer of 2016.

NOVEMBER

November 3

The New York Daily News website reported that a racist attack on two Asian school board candidates in central New Jersey came in the form of a postcard with racist words. The postcard, which was mailed to residents in Edison, included photos of Jingwei (Jerry) Shi and Falguni Patel with "DEPORT" stamped over their faces.

November 5

The website of WHAM, a New York based station, reported that at least 26 people were dead and 20 injured in a mass shooting in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Those killed ranged from 5 to 72 years old, and the incident was called the "worst mass shooting" in the state's history.

November 7

The Huffington Post website reported that New York Police Department detectives Eddie Martins and Richard Hall were accused of detaining and raping a woman in a police van after finding her in possession of marijuana and anti-anxiety pills.

November 8

The Huffington Post website reported that 80 percent of the political nominees the president has sent to the Senate have been men. Among the nominees for US attorney, 41 were men and only one was a woman.

November 8

The website of the American Civil Liberties Union reported that after a decade of collecting evidence, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, announced that she would take steps toward a full investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed over the course of the armed conflict in Afghanistan since May 2003.

In a 2016 report, the prosecutor's office revealed that it had reason to believe that members of the US military "subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity" and members of the CIA "subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape".

November 18

The Huffington Post website reported that a report released by the US Sentencing Commission looked at federal prison sentences in the country from Oct 1, 2011 to Sept 30, 2016, and found that black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than those of "similarly situated" white male offenders. Sentencing was just one part of the broader problem of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system: Black people were incarcerated in US state prisons at more than five times the rate of white people.

November 20

The New Yorker website reported on the hugely unbalanced gender ratio in tech industry. Studies estimated that women make up only a quarter of employees and 11 percent of executives in the industry. In September, three women brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all female Google employees, accusing the company of "segregating" women into lower-paying jobs and of paying them less than their male counterparts for "substantially similar work".

November 20

The USA Today website reported that sexual harassment troubles had mounted in statehouses around the country. Since 2016, at least 40 lawmakers in 20 states have been publicly accused by more than 100 people of some form of sexual misconduct or harassment. In Illinois and California, hundreds of people signed letters alleging widespread sexual harassment in state politics.

November 21

The Newsweek website reported that hundreds of thousands of US citizens were being denied the right to vote because they are poor. In nine states, legislators have enacted laws that disenfranchise anyone with outstanding legal fees or court fines. In Alabama, more than 100,000 people who owe money - roughly 3 percent of the state's voting-age population - have been struck from voting rolls.

November 22

The BBC website reported that former USA Olympic gymnastics sports doctor Larry Nassar had been accused of sexually abusing more than 130 women, including several Olympic gold medalists.

November 24

The New York Times website reported that the elderly and disabled citizens of any age have faced several obstacles while voting. The results of a survey of 178 polling places showed that the great majority had impediments outside - like steep ramps or inadequate parking - or inside that could discourage or exclude disabled voters. Voting machines may not accommodate people who use wheelchairs or are visually impaired.

November 29

The Al Jazeera website reported that protests carried out by African-Americans have been monitored by the US government and have been seen as a potential threat, according to documents from the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security.

DECEMBER

December 5

The BBC website reported that the US Supreme Court had ruled the new US administration's travel ban on six mainly Muslim countries could go into full effect. The decision was a boost for President Donald Trump's policy against travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. A federal judge in Hawaii said the policy "plainly discriminates based on nationality" in violation of "the founding principles of this nation".

December 6

According to the Guardian website, a study showed that 553,742 people in the US were homeless on a single night in 2017. The homeless population of New York increased 4.1 percent. The poverty rate of California has reached 20.4 percent.

December 12

The VOA website reported a survey showing that nearly six in 10 US citizens believe the level of government corruption rose in the year since US President Donald Trump was elected and that the White House was now a more corrupt institution than Congress. The survey said 44 percent of US citizens believed that the White House officials were corrupt, and 38 percent believe members of Congress were.

December 13

The Al Jazeera website reported that sexual harassment, assault and violence were widespread among women farmworkers in the country, who number hundreds of thousands across the country.

Many women had come forward with stories of sexual abuse at the hands of powerful men working in media, politics, sports and other areas. Many of the women didn't have legal status in the US, leaving them with little recourse to report abuse, seek legal recourse or get any other type of support. The nature of their work - seasonal, temporary and low-wage - also played a role.

Sexual harassment and abuse at work was widespread in industries dominated by low wages. A 2016 survey of 500 women employed in Chicago-area hotels and casinos found that 58 percent of hotel workers and 77 percent of casino workers had been sexually harassed by a guest.

December 13

The website of ABC news reported that the new US administration has not released any prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay and not added any to the list of cleared men who can go home, or to a third country, for resettlement.

December 14

The Independent website reported that Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said torture was still being carried out at Guantanamo Bay and urged the US to end its torture of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

December 14

The website of CNN reported that US service members have been accused of assaulting and raping Okinawans.

December 15

According to the Al Jazeera website, the Federal Communications Committee voted to end the 2015 Open Internet Rules on Dec 14. The move broke the net neutrality rules, and allowed internet service providers to block and "throttle" certain data streams. It would also deepen the "digital divide" between the wealthy and low-income communities.

Nyasia Valdez, with Detroit's Equitable Internet Initiative in Southwest Detroit, said making the internet more expensive would further economically disadvantage poor people. "It would be so devastating and further exacerbate the inequality that's already there," Valdez said.

Research showed that 94 percent of job recruiters used online means of finding candidates for work. Minority and lower-income populations in the US would experience joblessness at higher rates. With so many jobs advertised only online, the problem of unemployment is made worse.

December 15

The website of the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, released a report from Philip Alston, the UN Human Rights Council's special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who had spent two weeks touring the country.

According to Alston, "the American Dream was rapidly becoming the American Illusion".

He said: "I met with many people barely surviving on Skid Row in Los Angeles. I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to. I heard how thousands of poor people get minor infraction notices which seem to be intentionally designed to quickly explode into unpayable debt, incarceration, and the replenishment of municipal coffers.

"I saw sewage-filled yards in states where governments don't consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility. I saw people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor. I heard about soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by opioids, and I met with people in Puerto Rico living next to a mountain of completely unprotected coal ash which rains down upon them, bringing illness, disability and death."

He pointed out that the US had harnessed neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty. The youth poverty rate in the US was the highest across the OECD, with one quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14 percent across the OECD.

According to the World Income Inequality Database, the US had the highest Gini rate (measuring inequality) of all Western countries. It was fast becoming a champion of inequality.

Alston warned: "The persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power. With political will, it could readily be eliminated."

On the same day, the Guardian website reported that the "health gap" between the US and its peer countries continued to grow. The US had much fewer doctors and hospital beds per person than the OECD average. US citizens could expect to live shorter and sicker lives, compared to people living in any other rich democracy.

Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, were increasingly common in the US. It had been estimated that 12 million US citizens live with a neglected parasitic infection. The country had the highest prevalence of obesity in the developed world. In terms of access to water and sanitation the US ranked 36th in the world.

December 17

The Al Jazeera website reported that the so-called "medical deserts" were becoming more common in the US. Since 2010, more than 80 rural hospitals had been closed and hundreds more were at risk of shutting their doors.

December 18

The Huffington Post website reported that at least 15 women said Judge Alex Kozinski groped them, made inappropriate sexual comments, and/or showed them pornography.

December 18

According to the gunviolencearchive.org website, as of Dec 18, 2017, the total number of gun violence and crime incidents in the US was 60,091, including 338 mass shooting incidents, causing total deaths of 15,182 and 30,619 injuries. 716 children aged 0 to 11 were killed or injured, and 3,178 teens aged 12 to 17 were killed or injured.

December 27

The Center for Responsive Politics website reported the latest figures on federal lobbying activity showing that the total spent on lobbying in 2017 reached $2.468 billion, a record high in the past five years.

December 31

The Washington Post website reported that 987 people have been shot and killed by police in 2017. According to monthly statistics, in 2017, the US police shot 92 people dead in January; 100 in February; 76 in March; 67 in April; 74 in May; 84 in June; 94 in July; 82 in August; 70 in September; 85 in October; 84 in November and 79 in December.