Full text: Chronology of Human Rights Violations of the United States in 2015

MARCH

March 1

The Washington Post website reported that Charly Leundeu Keunang, an unarmed 43-year-old homeless black man, was shot by police on a street in Los Angeles, California, in an altercation with police officers patrolling Skid Row.

March 4

The USA Today website reported that the U.S. Department of Justice found through review that police in Ferguson, Mississippi, commonly had racial discrimination. They used force against African Americans inappropriately. The record of Ferguson police showed that in 88 percent of cases in which Ferguson documented the use of force, those actions were used against African Americans. A review of 161 such cases by Justice investigators found that none of the incidents resulted in disciplinary action.

March 6

The website of the U.S. News & World Report quoted a researcher of the National Gang Center as saying that in the past five years the United States had seen an 8 percent increase in the number of gangs, an 11 percent increase in members and a 23 percent increase in gang-related homicides.

March 13

The Associated Press reported that it was getting harder and more expensive to use public records to hold government officials accountable. Authorities were undermining the laws that are supposed to guarantee citizens' right to information, turning the right to know into just plain "no."

March 16

"The Best 'Democracy' Money Can Buy," an article published on the website of Zerohedge, said that between 2007 and 2012 in the United States, 200 most politically active corporations spent a combined 5.8 billion U.S. dollars on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. They got 4.4 trillion U.S. dollars in federal business and support in return.

On the same day, a USA Today report said the U.S. government did a bad job in implementing legislation on freedom of information. Though the laws were well written, the public record revealed that it was fairly difficult to obtain information from key departments.

March 19

The Washington Post website reported that Brandon Jones, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, was shot by police on a street in Cleveland, Ohio, as he came out of a grocery store that he had broken into.

March 20

A USA Today report, which was published on its website, said the nation had its lowest midterm-election voter turnout in 2014 since the 1940s. The average turnout across the United States was 37 percent, with a low of 28.8 percent recorded in Indiana. Only seven states saw more than half of their voters cast ballots in the election.

On the same day, The Washington Post said on its website that since 9/11, more than 500 drone strikes had killed nearly 4,000 individuals. Drone operators, called the "stick monkeys," had trouble distinguishing women and children from the high-value targets they were seeking.

March 26

A report on the Time magazine's website quoted an investigation by the BBC as saying that tens of thousands of children were sexually exploited each year in the United States. Hundreds of U.S. children were sold into sex, according to the BBC. Poverty and neglect were thought to be some of the main reasons why children were vulnerable to sex trafficking.

APRIL

April 2

The Washington Post website reported that Eric Harris, an unarmed 44-year-old black man, was shot on a street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a police officer inadvertently fired a gun at him.

April 8

A report from USA Today website said the U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans' international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls.

April 9

The Fox News reported on its website that as a punishment, a 50-year-old mentally-ill inmate Darren Rainey was taken to the showers for nearly two hours with the water reportedly rigged to a scalding 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Corrections officers even taunted Rainey, asking him how he liked his shower. He was finally scalded to death.

April 12

Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man, was arrested in Baltimore on April 12. He died later while in police custody. His death, reportedly a result of inappropriate behavior by police, sparked large-scale "Justice for Freddie" protests. A curfew was instituted, and the National Guard was brought in.

April 15

Reuters reported that Walter Scott, an unarmed African-American man, was fatally shot in the back by a white police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, on April 4. In March, an unarmed black teen Tony Robinson Jr. was shot by a white police officer in Wisconsin, triggering a series of demonstrations. The demonstrators protested against the use of lethal weapons against minorities.

On the same day, Think Progress reported on its website that fast food workers walked off the job in 230 cities on April 15, staging the largest-ever strike in their movement aimed at a 15 dollar minimum wage and the right to form a union.

April 21

The Washington Post website reported that Daniel Covarrubias, an unarmed 37-year-old man, was shot by police in Lakewood, Washington.

April 25

The Washington Post website reported that David Felix, an unarmed 24-year-old black man, was shot by police in an apartment building in New York.