The Times Picayune: Tribunal Will Give Victims A Forum

Sessions to open on storm anniversary

A panel of judges from the United States and abroad will gather in New Orleans later this month to hear from survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita who claim that local state and federal governments began violating their rights during the storm, continue doing so and should be held accountable for those actions.

"The American government carried out numerous crimes against humanity, human rights violations," Leon Waters of the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund said Thursday at a news conference outside U.S. District Court with other conference supporters, among them former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia.

According to survivor advocates, 300,000 New Orleanians, most of them black, have been unable to return to the city largely because of discriminatory rebuilding and public assistance efforts.

Waters’ organization and others, including the Louisiana ACLU, Safe Streets Strong Communities and the U.S. Human Rights Network, have arranged for the survivors to air their complaints and demand reparations during hearings beginning Aug. 29, Katrina’s second anniversary, and ending Sept. 2.

The sessions, to be held daily in the 11th floor conference center of the Pan American Life Insurance Building, 601 Poydras St., will bring together hurricane survivors, delegations from 12 countries and a team of civil and human rights prosecutors.

Judges for the international tribunal will include Louisa Hanoune, a member of the Algerian Parliament, international law scholar Ward Churchill and human rights expert Jill Soffiyah Elijah of Harvard Law School.

The hearings will be based on international law, a practice made standard by the Permanent People’s Tribunal, founded by an Italian law professor in 1979 as an independent international platform for dealing with complaints of human rights violations.

Waters said his organization wants to publish the tribunal’s findings and recommendations around the world and use them to haul government agencies alleged to have mistreated Katrina and Rita survivors into American and international courts to answer charges of crimes against humanity.