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Byline: Jack Beaudoin
Haitian immigrant Abner Louima lived quietly and without trouble in his adopted homeland. The 30-year-old electrical engineer never broke the law. He never had an argument with a neighbor or a run-in on the street. Yet one muggy night in August, during a melee outside a night club, he was picked up by the police, taken to a station house, interrogated, and savagely beaten and tortured. The officers allegedly shoved the handle of a toilet plunger into Louima’s rectum and mouth.
Louima doesn’t live in China, Bosnia, or Rwanda. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. And the men who beat him were members of New York City’s police force. Read more
Keywords #politics #human-rights
Published in Scholastic Update ( Vol. 130, Issue 7).
Scholastic Update was originally published by Scholastic, Inc., a New York City-based publisher of books and periodicals. In 1999, Scholastic partnered with The New York Times, and Update became The New York Times Upfront. The idea was to combine the journalistic resources of the Times and the reporting from its news bureaus around the world with Scholastic’s ability to create magazines that meet the curricular needs of high school teachers. Upfront is also a way to introduce the Times brand and its journalism to a new generation of readers, complementing the Times website and its other education efforts.
