{"id":142047,"date":"2014-11-17T19:13:20","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T19:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=142047"},"modified":"2014-11-17T19:13:20","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T19:13:20","slug":"rampant-use-solitary-confinement-us-constitutes-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/human-rights\/rampant-use-solitary-confinement-us-constitutes-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"Rampant Use of Solitary Confinement in the US Constitutes Torture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Alexis Agathocleous<\/em><\/p>\n<p>George Ruiz is 72 years old. For the past 30 years, he has spent every day alone \u2013 locked in a cramped, windowless cell inside the Security Housing Unit (SHU) first at California\u2019s Pelican Bay State Prison, then at Tehachapi prison. He is allowed out for only one hour per day to exercise \u2014 also alone \u2014 in another concrete cell.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz is in the SHU not for any rule violation, but because other prisoners claimed he was affiliated with a prison gang.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz barely sees or communicates with his family, as he is not allowed telephone calls and his children live hundreds of miles from the remote prison. Scribbled drawings from Ruiz\u2019s two-year-old great-grandson have been confiscated for supposedly containing \u201ccoded messages.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though he suffers from debilitating health issues, for years, Ruiz was told that the only way he could receive better medical care would be to inform on other prisoners, thereby putting himself and his family at great risk of violence \u2013 and no doubt landing someone else in the torture chamber called the SHU.<\/p>\n<p>The United States would like the global community to believe that Ruiz\u2019s experience is an aberration. Last week, as the U.S.\u2019s compliance with the Convention Against Torture (CAT) was under review by the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva, the U.S. delegation touted the country\u2019s progress on reducing and limiting its use of solitary confinement.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/msnbc\/solitary-confinement-torture\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alexis Agathocleous George Ruiz is 72 years old. For the past 30 years, he has spent every day alone \u2013 locked in a cramped, windowless cell inside the Security Housing Unit (SHU) first at California\u2019s Pelican Bay State Prison, then at Tehachapi prison. He is allowed out for only one hour per day to exercise [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-142047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-human-rights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}