Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Abayomi Azikiwe, PANW Editor, Featured on Press TV's US Desk: 'Solitary Confinement, A Crime Against Humanity'

Solitary confinement: 'a crime against humanity’

Mon Mar 11, 2013 6:17PM

To listen to this statement by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, on the growing use of solitary confinement in prisons throughout the United States, just click on the website below:
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/293079.html

A new report shows that an estimated 80,000 American prisoners spend 23 hours a day in closed isolation units for 10, 20 or even more than 30 years.

An American journalist has said such an act is “a crime against humanity” though he called it “not surprising.”

“It’s not surprising that this method of confinement is being utilized here in the United States,” Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire told the U.S. Desk on Monday.

“The U.S. has the highest per capita prison population of any other country throughout the world even though the United States champions itself as being a democratic political and social system.”

“The majority” of the people in prison according to Azikiwe are “people from the national minorities and the working class as well as the poor.”

“There are possibly 2.5 million people in prisons in the United States, and millions more are under some form of judicial or law enforcement supervision,” he said.

Azikiwe said that this “criminalization” of the American people stems from the inherent societal “racism” and also “relates to the impact of the economic crisis, particularly on young people from national minorities.”

There’s growing evidence that solitary confinement causes mental breakdown. American prisoners in solitary confinement have testified about suicidal depression, self-mutilation, lethargy, hallucinations and other ills.

No comments: