ACLU Calls For Clean Break With Bush’s Human Rights Legacy

Human Rights Summit Brings 11 Advocacy Groups Together to Send a United Message to New Administration

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CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – Today, the American Civil Liberties Union joined 10 other advocacy groups in calling on President-elect Obama to take swift action to restore basic human rights damaged under the Bush administration.

The half-day human rights summit at the National Press Club brought together the ACLU, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Constitution Project, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, National Lawyers Guild and Partnership for Civil Justice, Global Detention, Rendition and Torture, US Human Rights Network, Witness Against Torture and the Torture Abolition Survivors Support Coalition.

The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

“We in the human rights community are united in asking President-elect Obama to transform the United States from a human rights violator into a human rights leader. Inauguration day can mark a turning point for America. We have a new president and Congress. The federal government should not hesitate to make a clean break with Bush’s human rights legacy.

“The Bush administration engaged in a far-reaching assault on our nation’s freedoms. The next administration needs to let the world know on day one that this chapter in American policy is over, that America will be an advocate for human rights and that Americans will once again have an America that we can be proud of.”

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