By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Managing Editor

WASHINGTON D.C., United States of America –  As they take the field to play the sport they call the Creator’s Game at the Lacrosse World Championships, the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois National Lacrosse Team is playing for much more than a title, they are playing for their standing in the International Community. The team, whose players represent the six Haudenosaunee nations — the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora — is the world’s only indigenous team competing as a sovereign nation for the World Lacrosse Championships in Denver. The Iroquois men’s lacrosse team has been competing internationally under the Haudenosaunee flag since 1987 and is the only Native American team officially sanctioned to compete internationally as an independent entity.

For the Haudenosaunee Lacrosse is much more than a game, it is a way of life. Called the Creator’s Game, Lacrosse is a deeply spiritual game and is frequently used for healing purposes and can be summoned by clan mothers on behalf of any person or people who is in need of its healing powers.

“We play for the creator, and the game was put here to please the creator,” said team goalie Marty Ward who grew up in Syracuse New York just outside of the Onondaga Nation reservation and is playing for his third world team. “Every time we pick up a stick, it is a medicine game first.”

Although Lacrosse was born on Haudenosaunee land, the road to representing their people at the Lacrosse world Championships has not been easy for the Iroquois Nationals. Four years ago, the Iroquois Nationals made international headlines when the British government refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Haudenosaunee Passports under which the team was traveling despite the fact that the Haudenosaunee passports have been recognized abroad since 1923 when delegates from the Six Nation’s visited the League of Nations. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded by offering the team members one-time travel waivers. While they team was offered expedited United States passport the they refused to accept the offer; Wishing not only to play, but also to travel under their own flag.

As a result of being denied the right to play their own sport at the lacrosse World Championships in Manchester the Iroquois nationals fell in the international rankings and the Federation of International Lacrosse stripped the team of  its ability to compete in the coveted top-flight blue division against fellow lacrosse powerhouses including the United States and Canada.  The Iroquois Nationals successfully appealed the federation’s decision and regained entry into the blue division in the 2014 world championships. “We’re going to play to win,” Marty Ward said. “We’re going to play with a clear mind, clear heart and a free spirit when we’re out there.”

For more information please see:

ABC News – Iroquois Lacrosse Team Playing for Redemption – 11 July 2014

Al Jazeera America – Fighting For More Than a Win: Iroquois Lacrosse Team Back In Championships – 9 July 2014

Denver Post – Brothers Playing For Nation, Redemption in World Lacrosse Championships – 10 July 2014

Indian Country Today Media Network – Iroquois Nationals Gearing up For World Lacrosse Championships in Denver – 4 July 2014

By Lyndsey Kelly
Desk Reporter, North America  

Washington D.C., United States of America – The California Supreme Court has loosened the states infamous “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” law. The law was originally passed as a part of the national trend to get “tough on crime” in the 1990’s.

Under the three strikes law, an individual whom committed a violent crime and who had been convicted of two prior felonies was sentenced to a mandatory 25 years. The law was recently amended in 2012, as a result of a ballot vote, requiring the third strike to be a violent felony. Prior to this amendment the law allowed the third strike to be a misdemeanor.

The ruling came about in a case regarding a woman, Darlene Vargas, who had been charged with two prior felonies, car jacking and robbery. Both charges came out of the same incident. The Court decided that Vargas’ two prior felonies stemmed from the same act- taking a car by force. The unanimous decision by the court will overturn a 25-years-to-life sentence for the woman.

Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar likened the situation to America’s favorite pastime, baseball. “The voting public would reasonably have understood the ‘Three Strikes’ baseball metaphor to mean that a person would have three chances – three swings of the bat if you will – before the harshest penalty could be imposed,” “The public also would have understood that no one can be called for two strikes on just one swing,” Justice Werdegar wrote for the court.

In making their ruling, the judges stated that the legislature and the voters intended for criminal defendants to have three separate chances to redeem themselves before they are sentenced to 25-years-to-life.The Court’s decision marks the second time the rules regarding imprisoning career criminals have been softened in recent years.

The justices sent the case back to the trial court for resentencing.

 

For more information, please see the following:

CBS – State Supreme Court Rules On Three Strikes Law – 13 July 2014.

L.A. TIMES – Multiple Convictions From One Act Count As One ‘Strike,’ Court Rules – 13 July 2014.

REUTERS – California High Court Softens ‘Three Strikes” Law – 13 July 2014.

YAHOO – California high Court Softens ‘Three Strikes’ Law – 13 July 2014.

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Managing Editor

WASHINGTON D.C., United States of America – Since last October, more than 52,000 Children, mostly from Central America, have been taken into U.S. custody in what has become the largest movement and detention of migrants into the United States since the Cuban Boat Lift. A Study published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees found that 58 percent of the unaccompanied children entering into the United States are motivated by safety concerns, fearing violence their home countries.

Several Central America countries have been racked by cartel and gang violence, fueled by drug and human trafficking. According to the United States Customs and Border Protection, “Salvadoran and Honduran children … come from extremely violent regions where they probably perceive the risk of traveling alone to the U.S. preferable to remaining at home.” Violence is also hitting Guatemala where many children are fleeing poor areas for both safety and economic opportunity. Thousands of the children entering the United States are unaccompanied, often sent to the United States by their parents who have paid human traffickers  under false promises that there children would be reunited with family members already in the united States as soon as they arrive on U.S. soil.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other groups advocating for the rights of migrants are calling for the children to be treated as refugees who are fleeing armed conflict in the form of gang violence in their home countries.

United Nations officials are pushing for many of the Central Americans fleeing to the U.S. to be given refugees status; arguing that they have been displaced by armed conflict in their home countries. Designating these children as refugees would put greater pressure on both the United States and Mexico to accept tens of thousands of people fleeing Central America.  Officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees say they hope to see movement toward a regional agreement on that refugee’s status for the migrants.

“They are leaving for some reason. Let’s not send them back in a mechanical way, but rather evaluate the reasons they left their country,” Fern1ando Protti, regional representative for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees said.

Today most people who have been granted refugee status are fleeing more traditional forms of political or ethnic persecution and conflict. If granted refugee status the Central America migrants would be among the first in the world to be considered refugees because they are fleeing gang violence and extortion.

When asked if the Obama Administration viewed the border crisis as a refugee crises White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was “a humanitarian situation that requires urgent attention.” the said the Obama Administration wanted to ensure all child migrants were housed in “humane conditions” while authorities work to determine whether they should be allowed to remain in the United States. If not, he said, the Homeland Security secretary should be allowed “to exercise his discretion about repatriating” the migrants.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced it is seeking $3.7 billion from Congress to address the crisis and handle the influx of undocumented children crossing into the United States from Mexico. The funding would go to the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State and Health and Human Services. It would help fund detainment and proper care of undocumented child migrants, speed up their court cases, step up the prosecution of criminal networks involved in the crisis, and improve foreign cooperation to address the root causes of the migration.

For more information please see:

The Guardian – ‘Flee Or Die’: Violence Drives Central America’s Child Migrants to US Border – 9 July 2014

National Public Radio – What’s Causing the Latest Immigration Crisis? A Brief Explainer – 9 July 2014

CBS News – U.N. Pushes for Migrants Fleeing to U.S. to be Called Refugees – 8 July 2014

Al Jazeera – US Border Sees Influx of Child Migrants –17 June 2014

By Lyndsey Kelly
Desk Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON D.C., United States of America –  When Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst and contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton leaked details of U.S. surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post in June of 2013, much of the country erupted with criticism towards the governments invasion of privacy.

By law, without a warrant based on probable cause from a special surveillance court, the U.S. National Security Agency is allowed to target only foreign nations located overseas. A story published by The Washington Post acknowledges, “’incidental collection’ of third-party communications is inevitable.”

The intercepted files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes produced by Section 702 of the FISA Amendments. These changes enable the NSA to use methods of collection that had previously required probable cause and a warrant from a judge.

When the NSA intercepted the online accounts of legally targeted foreigners over a four-year period, which spanned President Barack Obama’s first term, 2009 to 2012, it also collected the conversations of nine times as many ordinary Internet users, including American citizens and residents and non-Americans. Most of the individuals whom were included in the data sweep were those in an online chat room visited by a target or those merely reading the discussion.

The collected material included approximately 160,00 intercepted email conversations, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 accounts. Nearly half of the surveillance filed contained names, email addresses and other details that belonged to Americans. The Washington Post described the intercepted material as containing, “stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversations, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes.”

The majority of the communications intercepted by the NSA were not sent by targeted foreign threats, but provided valuable information. Some of the intercepted messages contained information regarding, “a secret overseas nuclear project, double dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.”

The intercepted information proved to be valuable as it led to the direct capture in 2011 of a Pakistan-based bomb builder suspected in a 2002 terrorist bombing in Bali.

However, while a vast amount of information was of imminent importance to the NSA, much of the communications involved in the data sweep contained private photos of, “kids in bathtubs and kissing their mothers – and of women modeling lingerie or posing in skimpy bikini tops.”

The NSA treats all content even incidental collection from third parties as permissible to retain and search. This highlights a major policy dilemma, as the intercepted information has proven to contain considerable intelligence value helpful to the NSA but at the same time it creates collateral harm to the privacy of individuals.

The Obama administration has not yet been willing to address the scale of the harm to individual privacy produced by incidental collection.

 

For more information, please see:

CBS NEWS – Ordinary Americans Caught Up in NSA Data Sweep, Report Claims – 8 July 2014.

USA TODAY – Report: Most NSA Peeking Involved Ordinary Americans – 8 July 2014.

US NEWS – Report: NSA Surveillance Collects Data On Far More Ordinary Online Users Than Actual Targets – 8 July 2014.

WASHINGTON POST – In NSA- Intercepted Data, Those Not Targeted Far Outnumber The Foreigners Who Are – 8 July 2014.