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	Southern Poverty Law Center study cites mistreatment of Latinos in South by Al Dozier Columbia Free Times USA   May 2009   No cross burnings. No lynchings. But a pattern of abuse reminiscent of the old South is documented in a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. The victims this time are not African-Americans, but Latino immigrants.   Mary Bauer, author of the report and director of the Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project, doesn’t mince words. “This report documents the human toll of failed policies that relegate millions of people to an underground economy, where they are beyond the protection of the law,” Bauer says.   Immigrants in the South are routinely targets of wage theft, racial profiling and other abuses driven by an anti-immigrant climate, according to the report.   Findings similar to those in the report are cited by Elaine Lacy of USC-Aiken, a history professor who has done extensive research on immigration issues.   “Today many Southerners regard Latino immigrants as criminals who burden the local economy and take jobs from native-born residents, increase crime rates, refuse to adapt to U.S. culture, carry diseases and pose a threat to Southern culture and values,” Lacy writes in a 2008 publication.   All Southern states have passed legislation aimed at limiting unauthorized immigrants’ access to jobs, housing, health care, transportation and public benefits, according to Lacy. Some of the legislation, such as “English only” laws, affects all of those whose English skills are limited.   Tammy Besherse, an attorney and advocate for the poor at the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, says an “English only” law has little effect because federal protections supersede it. “It’s more of a way of saying, ‘We don’t want you here,’” Besherse says.   She sees similarities in such laws to legal barriers once faced by blacks. “They don’t call them Jim Crowe laws. They call them Juan Crowe laws.” Besherse says the biggest social issue facing Hispanic immigrants is a misplaced assumption that any Latino seen on the street is here illegally.   The Law Center report, “Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South,” documents the experiences of Latino immigrants who face increasing hostility as they fill low-wage jobs in Southern states that had few Hispanic residents until recent years.   In South Carolina, the Hispanic and Latino population increased by 8.37 percent in 2007 to nearly 169,000, about 4 percent of the total state population. It was the largest population increase as a percentage in the United States.   The report is based on a survey of 500 low-income Latinos — including legal residents, undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens — in Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, rural southern Georgia and several towns in Alabama.   It says reform legislation must be coupled with strong enforcement of labor and civil rights protections. “We’re talking about a matter of basic human rights here,” Law Center president Richard Cohen said of the report. “By allowing this cycle of abuse and discrimination to continue, we’re creating an underclass of people who are invisible to justice … .”
	Executions doubled in 2008, Amnesty reports by New York Times   March 24, 2009   The number of executions worldwide nearly doubled last year compared with 2007, Amnesty International reported Tuesday, and China put to death more people, by far, than any other nation.   Asian countries accounted for more executions than the rest of the world put together, the rights group said in its annual report on the death penalty.   The group chronicled beheadings in Saudi Arabia; hangings in Japan, Iraq, Singapore and Sudan; lethal injections in China; electrocutions in the United States; firing squads in Afghanistan, Belarus and Vietnam; and stonings in Iran.   In all, 59 countries still have the death penalty on their books, but only 25 carried out executions last year. Two nations, Uzbekistan and Argentina, banned the death penalty last year for all crimes.   Amnesty said at least 2,390 people were executed worldwide in 2008, compared with its 2007 figure of at least 1,252.   With at least 1,718 executions, China was responsible for 72 percent of all such penalties in 2008, the report stated. After China were Iran (346), Saudi Arabia (102), United States (37) and Pakistan (36), according to the group.   "Together, they carried out 93 percent of all executions worldwide," its report said.   The Chinese authorities also handed down at least 7,003 new death sentences last year, although the report said the true total of both executions and death sentences "remains shrouded in secrecy."   Some countries, including China and North Korea, do not disclose the number of executions they carry out. In China''s case, "real figures are undoubtedly higher," the report stated.   Although they are admittedly incomplete, the figures from Amnesty International are widely accepted as authoritative. The U.S. State Department, for example, cited the group''s statistics and findings in its recent report on human rights.   Amnesty International, which has long opposed the death penalty, said that Europe and Central Asia have become "virtually a death-penalty-free zone" with only Belarus, the former Soviet republic, continuing to execute prisoners.   "In the Americas, only one state — the United States — consistently executes," the group said, noting that the number of executions carried out in the United States last year, 37, was the lowest since 1995.
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