76 Market Street, Apt. D5
Perth Amboy, NJ 08861-4445
United States of America
25 August, 1997

The Honorable Mary Robinson
High Commissioner for Human Rights
Centre for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Dear Madam Commissioner:

Congratulations and best wishes on assuming the duties of your position.

Regrettably, the human rights mechanisms whose supervision you have undertaken exhibit very serious flaws. While granting lip service to the principles of human rights, the powerful can commit grievous abuses and yet avoid accountability, suppressing their victims' rights under international law as effectively as domestic remedies are withheld.

My personal situation is a harbinger of atrocities to come. Prisons now no longer need walls. Torture now often leaves no visible scars, and the screams of the victims are taken for the ravings of madmen. Horrifyingly effective is the concerted program of interference, discreditation, corruption, and intimidation that smothers all attempts to obtain advocacy or the protection of law.

I speak of the country I was once proud to call my own, the United States of America, as well as those associated nations moved to apostasy through her corrupt influence. In my experience, and probably that of others and of multitudes to come, the equal protection of the laws has become, on all levels and in all venues, a sick joke.

The attached "1503" communication, like all my other letters to United Nations agencies, has produced no acknowledgment or action. I do not know whether my complaints against the Netherlands and Denmark were ever received (see the attached "Human Rights Emergency" sheet). My complaint against these nations before the Committee Against Torture approaches its sixth birthday, while I languish in the land of my torturers -- a captive seized in heaven, held hostage in hell, trying to bear a sea of secrets in baskets woven of words.

Human rights, based on the inherent dignity of the human person, apply to all individuals, without distinction. No one should be subjected to discrimination on the basis of his national origin, age, or disability. The system is broken. Please fix it, preferably in time to save what is left of my life.

Yours truly,
(original signed)
James Henry Graf