US hurricane victims 'have had their human rights violated'

VICTIMS of Hurricane Katrina have had their human rights consistently violated by the US government and individual states, Amnesty International has said.

The storm, in August 2005, killed about 1,800 people and caused widespread devastation in and around New Orleans.

Amnesty's report, Un-Natural Disaster, said the treatment of hurricane victims and government actions in housing, health care and policing had prevented poor minority communities from rebuilding and returning to their homes on the Gulf Coast.

Government actions had amounted to human rights violations and "as a result, the demographics of the region are being permanently altered", the report said.

Amnesty took particular aim at New Orleans, where public housing was bulldozed, hospitals were slow to reopen and the criminal justice system has been plagued by police brutality, lengthy pre-trial detentions and an underfunded indigent defence system.

"You have the demolition of most of the public housing units in New Orleans without a one-for-one replacement, as well as a lack of rebuilding affordable rental housing," said Justin Mazzola, an Amnesty researcher. "Orleans Parish Prison is now the largest mental health psych facility in the city of New Orleans."

A White House spokeswoman said the Obama administration had cut through the red tape that delayed assistance and improved co-ordination among agencies that often failed to collaborate in the years after the storms. She said its actions had freed $2.4 billion (1.5bn) in rebuilding money that had stalled for years.

Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said the state had worked "diligently since the hurricanes to rebuild housing, restore critical infrastructure – including schools and health care facilities – and protect our citizens from future harm".

New Orleans' former public housing was being replaced with new mixed-income communities, she said, with $1.2bn set aside for rental housing.

Amnesty said that in the neighbouring state of Mississippi, public and affordable housing were lacking and that the rebuilding programme had done people an injustice by not paying for wind damage, leaving many homes in poor shape.

It also criticised a plan by Mississippi governor Haley Barbour to use $600 million in federal recovery money for a port. Democrats in Congress say the money was meant to rebuild housing.

Amnesty has urged Congress to amend the nation's main disaster response legislation, the Stafford Act, to guarantee the humane and fair treatment of all disaster victims, as stipulated by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

These say governments need to allow victims of war or natural disaster to "return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes" or "resettle voluntarily in another part of the country".

It also says governments have a duty to help victims recover their property and possessions.