I Am A Human Rights Violation

Once again, the United Nations has smacked down the United States for denying me and my fellow DC residents voting representation in Congress. This time, however, the statement from the U.N. committee on human rights puts our disenfranchisement on the level with torture, prisoner abuse, and Guantanamo Bay.

You see, the United States signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992. From the article:

Article 25 [of the treaty] says “every citizen . . . without unreasonable restrictions” has the right to participate in public affairs directly or through “freely chosen representatives” and to vote and to be elected “at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.”

In a letter accompanying the U.S. response, Warren Tichenor, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, denied that District residents are excluded from the nation’s political process: “The position of the District . . . is not a human rights violation; it is rather a justifiable and important aspect of the federal system of government freely chosen by citizens of the United States.”

Sure, Mr. Tichenor, freely chosen by the citizens of the United States - except for the 1/2 million citizens living in the District. Your words ring hollow as someone who does not suffer the burden of Federal income taxation without even the right to vote in exchange. Unless the United Nations has classified you as a human rights violation, please consider this my formal request to you to get bent.