We are constantly being reminded that China is an oppressive
society with prisons full of political detainees and minimal
human rights, but now it has released a report on US human
rights abuses that makes it painfully clear that our country
has lost the moral high ground because of our own tragic
involvement in the use of torture.
Following is the full text of the Human Rights Record of the
United States in 2004, released by the Information office of
China's State Council Thursday, March 3, 2005:
In 2004 the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed
the dark side of human rights performance of the United
States. The scandal shocked the humanity and was condemned
by the international community. It is quite ironic that on
Feb. 28 of this year, the State Department of the United
States once again posed as the "the world human rights
police" and released its Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices for 2004.
As in previous years, the reports pointed fingers at human
rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions
(including China) but kept silent on the US misdeeds in this
field. Therefore, the world people have to probe the human
rights record behind the Statue of Liberty in the United States.
I. On Life, Liberty and Security of Person
American society is characterized with rampant violent
crimes, severe infringement of people's rights by law
enforcement departments and lack of guarantee for people's
rights to life, liberty and security of person.
Violent crimes pose a serious threat to people's lives.
According to a report released by the Department of Justice
of the United States on Nov. 29, 2004, in 2003 residents
aged 12 and above in the United States experienced about 24
million victimizations, and there occurred 1,381,259
murders, robberies and other violent crimes, averaging 475
cases per 100,000 people. Among them there were 16,503
homicides, up 1.7 percent over 2002, or nearly six cases in
every 100,000 residents, and one of every 44 Americans aged
above 12 was victimized.
The Associated Press reported on June 24, 2004 that the
number of violent crimes in many US cities were on the rise.
In 2003 Chicago alone recorded 598 homicides, 80 percent of
which involved the use of guns. The Washington D.C. reported
41,738 murders, robberies and other violent crimes in 2003,
averaging 6,406.4 cases per 100,000 residents. In 2004 the
District recorded 198 killings, or a homicide rate of 35 per
100,000 residents. Detroit, which has less than 1 million
residents, recorded 18,724 criminal cases in 2003, including
366 murders and 814 rapes, which amounted to a homicide rate
of 41 per 100,000 residents.
In 2003 the homicide rate in Baltimore was 43 per 100,000
residents. The Baltimore Sun reported on Dec. 17, 2004 that
the city reported 271 killings from January to early
December in 2004.
It was reported that on Sept. 8, 2004 that by Sept. 4, 2004
there had been 368 homicides in the city, up 4.2 percent
year-on-year. The USA Today reported on July 16, 2004 that
in an average week in the US workplace one employee is
killed and at least 25 are seriously injured in violent
assaults by current or former co-workers. The Cincinnati
Post reported on Nov. 12, 2004 that homicides average 17 a
week and there are nearly 5,500 violent
assaults a day at US job sites.
The United States has the biggest number of gun owners and
gun violence has affected lots of innocent lives. According
to a survey released by the University of Chicago in 2001,
41.7 percent
of men and 28.5 percent of women in the United States report
having a gun in their homes, and 29.2 percent of men and
10.2 percent of women personally own a gun. The Los Angeles
Times reported on Jul. 19, 2004 that since 2000 the number
of firearm holders rose 28 percent in California.
About 31,000 Americans are killed and 75,000 wounded by
firearms each year, which means more than 80 people are shot
dead each day. In 2002 there were 30,242 firearm killings in
the United States; 54 percent of all suicides and 67 percent
of all homicides were related to the use of firearms. The
Associated Press reported that 808 people were shot dead in
the first half of 2004 in Detroit.
Police violence and infringement of human rights by law
enforcement agencies also constitute a serious problem. At
present, 5,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States
use TASER - a kind of electric shock gun, which sends out
50,000 volts of impulse voltage after hitting the target.
Since 1999, more than 80 people died from TASER shootings,
60 percent of which occurred between November 2003 and
November 2004.
A survey found that in the 17 years from 1985 to 2002, Los
Angeles recorded more than 100 times increase in police
shooting at automobile drivers, killing at least 25 and
injuring more than 30 of them. Of these cases, 90 percent
were due to misjudgment. (The Los Angeles Times, Feb. 29, 2004.)
On Jul. 21, 2004 Chinese citizen Zhao Yan was handcuffed and
severely beaten while she was in the United States on a
normal business trip. She suffered injuries in many parts of
her body and serious mental harm.
The New York Times reported on Apr. 19, 2004 a comprehensive
study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which
the convicted person was exonerated suggests that there are
thousands of innocent people in prison today. The study
identified 199 murder exoneration, 73 of them in capital
cases. In more than half of the cases, the defendants had
been in prison for more than 10 years.
The United States characterizes itself as "a paradise for
free people," but the ratio of its citizens deprived of
freedom has remained among the highest in the world.
Statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
last November showed that the nation made an estimated 13.6
million arrests in 2003. The national arrest rate was
4,695.1 arrests per 100,000 people, 0.2 percent up than that
of the previous year (USA Today, Nov. 8, 2004).
According to statistics from the Department of Justice, the
number of inmates in the United States jumped from 320,000
in 1980 to 2 million in 2000, a hike by six times. From 1995
to 2003, the number of inmates grew at an annual rate of 3.5
percent in the country, where one out of every 142 people is
behind bars. The number of convicted offenders may total
more than 6 million if parolees and probationers are also
counted. The Chicago Tribune reported on Nov. 8 last year
that the federal and state prison population amounted to
1.47 million last year, 2.1 percent more than in 2003. The
number of criminals rose by over 5 percent in 11 states,
with the growth in North Dakota up by 11.4 percent and in
Minnesota by 10.3 percent.
Most prisons in the United States are overcrowded, but still
cannot meet the demand. The country has spent an average of
7 billion US dollars a year building new jails and prisons
in the past 10 years. California has seen only one college
but 21 new prisons built since 1984.
Jails have become one of the huge and most lucrative
industries, with a combined staff of more than 530,000 and
being the second largest employer in the United States only
after the General Motors. Private prisons are more and more
common. The country now has over 100 private prisons in 27
states and 18 private prison companies. The value of goods
and services created by inmates surged from 400 million US
dollars in 1980 to 1.1 billion US dollars in 1994. Abuse of
prisoners and violence occur frequently in US jails and
prisons, which are under disorderly management. The Los
Angeles Times reported on Aug. 15 last year that over 40
state prison systems were once under some form of court
order, for brutality, crowding, poor food and lack of
medical care.
The Newsweek [magazine] of the United States also reported
last May that in Pennsylvania, Arizona and some other
states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of others
before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within
their prison. Male inmates are often made to wear women's
pink underwear as a form of humiliation. New inmates are
frequently beaten and cursed at and sometimes made to crawl.
At a jail in New York City, some guards bump prisoners
against the walls, pinch their arms and wrists, and force
them to receive insulting checks nakedly. Some male inmates
are sometimes compelled to stand in the nude before a group
of women guards. Some female inmates go in shackles to
hospital for treatment and nursing after they get ill or
pregnant, some give birth without a midwife, and some are
locked to sickbeds with fetters after [their] Caesarian
operation.
Over 80,000 women prisoners in the United States are
mothers, and the overall number of the minor children of the
American women prisoners is estimated at some 200,000. The
country had more than 3,000 pregnant women in jails from
2000 to 2003 and 3,000 babies were born to the prisoners
during this period (see Mexico's Milenio on Feb. 21, 2004).
It is estimated that at least more than 40,000 prisoners are
locked up in the so-called "super jails," where the prisoner
is confined to a very tiny cell, cannot see other people
throughout the year, and has only one hour out for exercise
every day.
Sexual harassment and encroachment are common in jails in
the Unite States. The New York Times reported last October
that at least 13 percent of inmates in the country are
sexually assaulted in prison (Ex-Inmate's Suit Offers View
Into Sexual Slavery in Prisons, The New York Times, Oct. 12,
2004). In jails of seven central and western US states, 21
percent of the inmates suffer sexual abuse at least once
after being put in prison. The ratio is higher among women
inmates, with nearly one fourth of them sexually assaulted
by jail guards.
II. On Political Rights and Freedom
The United States claims to be "a paragon of democracy," but
American democracy is manipulated by the rich and
malpractices are common.
Elections in the United States are in fact a contest of
money. The presidential and Congressional elections last
year cost nearly 4 billion US dollars, some 1 billion US
dollars or one third more than that spent in the 2000
elections. The 2004 presidential election has been listed as
the most expensive campaign in the country's history (see
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview), with the cost jumping
to 1.7 billion US dollars from 1 billion US dollars in 2000.
To win the election, the Democratic Party and Republican
Party had to try their utmost to raise funds.
The Washington Post reported on Dec. 3 last year that the
Democratic Party collected 389.8 million US dollars in
electoral funds and the Republican Party raised 385.3
million US dollars, both hitting a record high (see
Fundraising Records Broken by Both Major Political Parties,
Washington Post on Dec. 3, 2004).
Data released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on
Dec. 14, 2004 show the average spending for Senate races was
2,518,750 US dollars in 2004, with the highest reaching
31,488,821 US dollars; and the average spending for House
races was 511,043 US dollars (see
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview), with the highest
reaching 9,043,293 US dollars (see
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topraces.asp?cycle=2004).
The Republican Party, the Democratic Party and their
periphery organizations spent a total of 1.2 billion US
dollars on TV commercials, making this presidential election
the most expensive in history. The TV commercials were
broadcast 750,000 times, twice of the airings in the general
election in 2000. In the Oct. 1 - 13 period in 2004, the
Republican Party spent 14.5 million US dollars on
advertising, and the Democratic Party's advertising spending
amounted to 24 million US dollars in the first 20 days of
October 2004.
In the elections, political parties and interest groups not
only donated money for their favorite candidates, but also
directly spent funds on maximizing their influence upon the
elections. In Maryland, some corporate bosses donated as
much as 130,000 US dollars. In return, the candidates after
being elected would serve the interests of big political
donators. The Baltimore Sun called this "Buying Power" (see
"Buying Power", The Baltimore Sun, April 5, 2004). Due to
the fact that local judges in 38 states need to be elected,
quite a number of candidates began campaign advertising and
looking for big donators. Some interest groups also got
themselves involved in the judge election campaign. The US
election system has quite a few flaws. The newly adopted
Help America Vote Act of 2004 requires voters to offer a
series of documents such as a stable residence or
identification in registering, which in reality
disenfranchises thousands of homeless people.
The United States is the only country in the world that
rules out ex-inmates' right to vote, which disenfranchises 5
million ex-inmates and 13 percent male black people (see
Milenio, Mexico, Oct. 22 2004).
The 2004 US presidential election reported many problems,
including counting errors, machine malfunctions,
registration confusion, legal uncertainty, and lack of
respect for voters. According to a report carried by the USA
Today on Dec. 28, 2004, due to counting errors, a review of
election results in 10 counties nationwide by the Scripps
Howard News Service found more than 12,000 ballots that
weren't counted in the presidential race, almost one in
every 10 ballots cast in those counties. Due to machine
malfunctions, 92,000 ballots failed to record a vote for
president in Ohio alone. Registration confusion made four
fifths of the states go into the election without
computerized statewide voter databases (see "Election Day
Leftovers," USA Today, Dec. 28, 2004). The Democratic Party
brought 35 lawsuits against the Republican Party in at least
17 states, charging the latter with threatening and blocking
voters from registering or voting, especially minority
ethnic groups. In Florida, the cases of black people being
removed from voter registration list or their votes being
denied were 10 times higher than people of other races. The
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported on Sept. 22,
2004 that during the period of election, someone often
distributed handbills to black voters to bilk and
intimidated them by saying that anyone who defaulted on
electricity bills, apartment bills or parking fines would be
arrested outside the polling booths. Some others pretended
to be plainclothes policemen outside polling booths and
demanded voters show their identifications. However, black
people who were able to present photo identification were
less than one fifth of white people, therefore, many of them
were rejected.
In the meantime, fabrications of disputable pictures and
statements were put in the agenda of political maneuvers.
Campaign advertisement and political debates were full of
distorted facts, false information and lies. According to
statistics of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of
University of Pennsylvania, campaign advertisements for the
2004 US presidential election had a large proportion of
false information that was enough to mislead voters, far
beyond 50 percent in 1996. In the Republican camp, at least
75 percent contained untrue information and personal
attacks. The website of the center
(http://www.FactCheck.org) listed at least 100 items of such
information.
The US freedom of the press is filled with hypocrisy. Power
and intimidation hang over the halo of press freedom. The
New York Times published a commentary on March 30, 2004,
saying that the US government's reliance on slandering had
reached an unprecedented level in contemporary American
political history, and the government is prepared to abuse
power at any moment to threat potential critics.
A collected works, Zensor USA, revealed that whenever the
faults of government dignitaries or big companies were
touched on, the strong American press censorship system
would snap at the journalists who insisted on investigation
and made them the last sacrificial lamb. (see Das Schweigen
der Journalisten, Handelsblatt, Germany, March 17, 2004).
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) kept watch on a
leader of freedom of speech movement in University of
California at Berkeley for a decade. Although no record
showed he violated federal laws, the FBI hired someone to
keep monitoring his daily activities and collect his
personal information without permission from the court. (see
SingTao Daily, Oct. 11, 2004).
On July 16, 2004, the US State Department made a regulation,
in violation of the norms of most other countries, that
foreign reporters should leave the country while waiting for
the valid period of their visas to be extended. The annual
report of the Native American Journalists Association
criticized the US administration for the move, which
severely infringes upon press freedom. (see AP story,
Antigua, Guatemala Oct. 24, 2004).
Someone with the American Society of Newspaper Editors said
that the US administration's measures reflected its
repulsion of foreign news media. (see Milenio, Mexico, June
20, 2004). In Iraq, the United States, on the one hand,
alleged that it had brought democracy to the Iraqi people,
on the other hand it suppressed public opinion. On March 28,
2004 US troops closed down a Shiite newspaper in Baghdad,
which triggered a protest demonstration by thousands of
Iraqi people.
On Sept. 27, the Association of American University Presses,
Association of American Publishers and other organizations
jointly lodged a complaint to the district court of
Manhattan, New York, charging the Office of Foreign Assets
Control under the Department of the Treasury with
deliberately preventing the literary works of Iranian, Cuban
and Sudanese writers from entering the United States and
turning the economic sanctions against the three countries
into a "censorship system" to stop free dissemination of
information and ideology. (see Xinhua story, Sept. 30, 2004).
In another case, eight reporters, including Jim Taricani of
the TV station in Providence, Rhode Island, with the
National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Judith Miller of The
New York Times, and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, were
declared guilty for they declined to disclose the
confidential sources of news. The New York Times pointed out
on Nov. 10, 2004 that through these cases, it was found out
that press freedom suffered rampant infringement.
In addition, in recent years, over a dozen foreign
journalists have been detained in airports in the United
States, including the one in Los Angeles. In March 2003, a
Danish press-photographer was expelled out of the country
after a DNA test. A Swiss journalist was rejected from entry
of an airport in Washington D.C. The airport staffs took
pictures and finger prints of the journalist by force.
Meanwhile, he was not permitted to contact the Swiss embassy
in the United States. In May, two groups of French
journalists, altogether six members, were rejected entry to
US territory. They simply came to the United States to cover
an exposition. Two Dutch journalists fell into trouble when
they were covering a film award ceremony. In October and
December, one British reporter and one Austrian journalist
were held up at US airports respectively. In early May,
2004, a British female journalist, who was sent by The
Guardian to Los Angeles to cover some events, was detained
at the Los Angeles airport and faced interrogation and a
body search, and then was handcuffed and taken to the
detention house downtown. There, she was detained for 26
hours before being sent back to Britain.
III. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The United States refuses to ratify the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights and took
negative attitude to the economic, social and cultural
rights of the laborers. Poverty, hunger and homelessness
have haunted the world richest country.
The population of people living in poverty has been on a
steady rise. According to a report by The Sun on July, 6,
2004, from 1970 to 2000 (adjusted for inflation), the bottom
90 percent's average income stagnated while the top 10
percent experienced an average yearly income increase of
nearly 90 percent. Upper-middle-and-upper-class families
that constitute the top 10 percent of the income
distribution are prospering while many among the remaining
90 percent struggle to maintain their standard of living.
Worsening income disparities have formed two Americas. (Two
Americas, The Baltimore Sun, July 6, 2004). According to a
report of the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2004, a study
in the fall of 2003 by Arthur Kennickell of the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System showed that the
nation's wealthiest 1 percent owned 53 percent of all the
stocks held by families or individuals, and 64 percent of
the bonds. They control more than a third of the nation's
wealth. (US Led a Resurgence Last Year Among Millionaires
World-Wide, The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2004). In
Washington D.C., the top 20 percent of the city's households
have 31 times the average income of the 20 percent at the
bottom. (D.C. Gap in Wealth Growing, The Washington Post,
July 22, 2004).
Since November 2003, the average income of most American
families has been on the decline. The earning of many medium
and low-income families can not keep up with price rises.
They can barely handle the situation. According to the
statistics released by the US Census Bureau in 2004, the
number of Americans in poverty has been climbing for three
years. It rose by 1.3 million year-on-year in 2003 to 35.9
million. The poverty rate in 2003 hit 12.5 percent, or one
in eight people, the highest since 1998. (Census: Poverty
Rose By Million, USA Today, August 27, 2004, More Americans
Were Uninsured and Poor in 2003, Census Finds, The New York
Times, August 27, 2004).
The homeless population continues to rise nationwide. On
Dec. 15, 2004, an annual survey report released at the US
Conference of Mayors showed that the number of people
seeking emergency food aid has increased by 14 percent [each
year], while the number of people seeking emergency shelter
aid increased by 6 percent. (http://www.usmayors.org). It is
estimated that the homeless population has reached 3.5
million in the United States. But the US Federal budget has
stopped providing funds to build new affordable housing,
which has forced many local governments to cut the public
housing projects. The city of San Diego has a homeless
population of 8,000, but the government could only provide
3,000 temporary beds. Those without lodging tickets are
regarded as illegal [when they] live on the streets. They
would be summoned or detained. In January 2004, an
investigator with the US Commission on Human Right denounced
the US for large-scale infringements on human rights on the
housing issue.
The health insurance crisis has become prominent. A report
of the Washington Post on Sept. 28, 2004 said health
insurance costs posted their fourth straight year of
double-digit increases in 2004. Over the past four years,
health insurance costs have leaped 59 percent - about five
times faster than both wage growth and inflation. Around
14.3 million Americans [spent] one fourth of their income on
the health expenses. (Higher Costs, Less Care, The
Washington Post, September 28, 2004). Currently, family
health insurance plans costs more than 10,000 US dollars
each year. Many families cannot afford it. Fewer workers
have coverage - 61 percent in 2004, compared with 65 percent
in 2001. (Health Plan Costs Jump 11%, The Washington Post,
September 10, 2004) Compared with 2003, the number of people
without health insurance increased 1.4 million to 45
million, or 15.6 percent of the country's population.
(Census: Poverty Rose by Million, USA Today, August 27,
2004). In Texas, about one fourth of the workers don't have
health insurance. (Spain Uprising newspaper, May 11, 2004).
In California, around 6 million Californians don't have
health insurance and the welfare system with an annual cost
of 60 billion US dollars is about to collapse. (The Los
Angeles Times, May 6, 2004). Meanwhile, medical accidents
occurred one after another, becoming the third [largest]
killer, following heart disease and cancer. According to a
report of Boston Globe on July 27, 2004, one out of every 25
in-patients becomes the victim of medical accident. From
2000 to 2002, 195,000 people died of medical accidents each
year. The actual figure might be twice that.
IV. On Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination has been deeply rooted in the United
States, permeating into every aspect of society.
The colored people are generally poor, with living
conditions much worse than the whites. According to a report
of The Guardian of Britain on Oct. 9, 2004, the average net
assets of a white family were 88,000 US dollars in 2002, 11
times of a family of Latin American ancestry, or nearly 15
times of a family of African ancestry. Nearly one third of
the African ancestry families and 26 percent of the Latin
American ancestry families have negative net assets. 74
percent of the white families have their own houses, while
only 47 percent of families of African and Latin American
ancestry have their own houses. The market value of houses
bought by black families is only 65 percent of those of
white people. Black people's [turn downs] for mortgage loans
[or loans to] purchase furniture is twice that of white
people. Some black families don't even think of buying their
own houses. The death rate of illness, accident and murder
among black people is twice that of the white.
The rate of being victims of murders for the black people is
five times that of the whites. The rate of being affected by
AIDS for the black people is ten times that of the whites,
while the rate of being diagnosed [with] diabetes for the
black people is twice that of the whites. (The State Of
Black America 2004, Issued by National Urban League on March
24, 2004, http://www.nuL.org/pdf/sobaexec.pdf).
Statistics show that the number of black people living in
poverty is three times that of the whites. The average life
expectancy of blacks is six years shorter than whites.
People of minority ethnic groups [face discrimination] in
employment and occupations. The Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission of the United States received 29,000 complaints
in 2003 of racial bias in the workplace (Racism in the 21st
Century, published in USA Today May 5, 2004 issue).
Statistics provided by the United States Department of Labor
also suggest that by November 2004, the unemployment rate
for black and white people is 10.8 percent and 4.7 percent
respectively (http://bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf).
In New York City, one [out] of every two black men between
16 and 64 was not working by 2003 (see Nearly Half of Black
Men Found Jobless, published by The New York Times on Feb.
28 2004). Black people not only have fewer job
opportunities, but also earn less than white people. Even
with the same job, a black man only earns 70 percent of what
for a white man [earns]. Regions such as California, where
immigrants make up a larger proportion of the local
population, are almost like death traps. Mexican Laborers
who have come to work in the United States have a mortality
as high as 80 percent.
Teenagers from at least 38 countries work like slaves (EFE
San Francisco, Sept. 26, 2004). Out of 45 million people who
are unable to afford Medicare in the United States, 7
million are African-Americans, accounting for about one
fifth of the total African-Americans in the States. The
proportion is 77 percent higher than that for white people
(available at
http://www.johnkerry.com/communities/african-americans/gw_record.html).
The Declaration of Independence said all men are created
equal, so the gap between black and white people is simply
an insult to the founding essence of the United States (see
US News and World Report on March 29, 2004).
Apartheid runs rampant at schools of the United States. On
May 17, 1954, Chief justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court
announced the court's decision over a case known as Brown v.
Board of Education that the doctrine of "separate but equal"
had no place in US public schools. Fifty years later, white
children and black children in the United States still lead
largely separate lives. One in eight southern black students
attends a school that is 99 percent black. About a third
attend schools that are at least 90 percent minority. In the
Northeast, by contrast, more than half of blacks attend such
schools (Schools and Lives Are Still Separate, The
Washington Post, May 17, 2004).
Racism recurs on campuses of American universities. Fascist
slogans and posters promoting the superiority of white
people, along with threats by weapons or words, were found
on college campuses, including University of California at
Berkeley. Protests were sparked off when Santa Rosa Junior
College in California published anti-Semitic opinions in a
column in its campus newspaper and the chat room of its
website was dominated by white-superior surfers. At
Dartmouth College, white girl students auctioned off black
slaves in fund-raising activities. At the University of
Southern Mississippi, hordes of white students assaulted
four black students, chanting racist slogans after a
football match was over. At Olivet College in Michigan,
where there are only 55 black students, 51 of the black
students quit school after [incidents] of violence or racial
harassment (see The China Press, a Chinese language
newspaper published in New York, on April 17, 2004).
Racial prejudice has made social conflicts acute, causing a
rise in hate crimes. Racial prejudice, most often directed
at black people, was behind more than half of the nation's
7,489 reported hate crime incidents in 2003, the FBI said on
Nov.22 2004. Race bias was behind 3,844 of the total cases
in 2003, the FBI claimed?hate crimes were handled by 16
percent of the law-enforcement organizations in the States.
Reports of hate crimes motivated by anti-black bias totaled
2,548 in 2003, accounting for 51.4 percent of the total,
more than double the total hate crimes against all other
racial groups. There were 3,150 black victims in these
reports, according to the annual FBI figures (AP,
Washington, Jan. 26, 2004). And with regard to the attribute
of race, among the 6,934 reported offenders, 62.3 percent
were white
(http:/www.fbi.gov/pressrel/presssrel04/pressel/12204.htm).
In a related development, because of the "lingering
atmosphere of fear" stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks and
fallout from the Iraq War, there were 1,019 anti-Muslim
incidents in the United States in 2003, representing a 69
percent increase. There were 221 incidents in 2003 of
anti-Muslim bias in California, tripled [from] a year ago
(Los Angeles Times, May 3).
Racial prejudice is ubiquitous in judicial fields. The
proportion for persons of colored races being sentenced or
being imprisoned is notably higher than whites. In
accordance with a report published in November 2004 by the
US Department of Justice, colored races accounted for over
70 percent of inmates in the United States. And 29 percent
of black people have the experience of being in jail [at
least] once. Black people make up 12.3 percent of the
population in the United States, but by the end of 2003, out
of 1.4 million prisoners who are serving jail terms above
one year at the federal or state prisons, 44 percent were
blacks, or on average, 3,231 of every 100,000
African-Americans were criminals. Latino-American inmates
make up 19 percent of the total prisoners, or 1,778 [out of]
every 100,000 Latino-Americans are inmates. Inmates of other
colored races account for 21 percent
(http://wwww.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/P03.htm). At the end
of 2003, 12.8 percent of black men aged 25 to 29 were in
prison (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 8, 2004), compared 1.6 percent
of white men in the same [age] group (A Growing Need for
Reform, The Baltimore Sun, June 20, 2004). Blacks receive,
on average, a longer felony sentence than whites. A black
person's average jail sentence is six months longer than a
white's for the same crime. Blacks who are arrested are 3
times more likely to be imprisoned than whites who are
arrested. White felons are more likely to get probation than
blacks. (see the State Black America 2004, issued by
National Urban League on March 24, 2004,
http://www.nul.org/pdf/sobaexec.pdf).
After the Sept. 11 incident, the United States openly
restricts the rights of [its] citizens, under the cloak of
homeland security, [using] diverse means, including wire
tapping of phone conversations and secret investigations,
checks on all secret files, and monitoring transfers of fund
and cash flows, [in order] to supervise [the] activities of
its citizens?People of ethnic minority groups, foreigners
and immigrants [are the] main victims.
Statistics show that after the Sept. 11 attacks, 32 million
[people] were investigated [due to] racial prejudice
concerns throughout the United States. Among the people
being investigated?African-Americans made up 47 percent,
followed by people of Latino and Asian origins. White
Americans only account for 3 percent. On June 23, 2004,
authorities with the Los Angeles Police Department and the
US Federal Bureau of Investigation authorities investigated
the televised beating of a black suspect by white police in
Los Angeles that has resurrected the explosive specter of
the 1991 Rodney King assault. Eight police officers have
been removed from regular duties following the incident on
June 23, in which three of them were seen tackling [a]
suspected black car thief, one beating him repeatedly with a
metal flashlight (AFP, Los Angeles, June 24, 2004).
In the meantime, the anti-immigrant trend has become
increasingly serious in the States. The US Department of
Homeland Security announced in November 2004 that 157,281
immigrants were repatriated in one year, up 8 percent from a
year ago, a record high. The number of foreigners arrested
without any documents also went up by 112 percent (Argentina
La Nacion, Nov. 21, 2004).
Another report says [that] starting from last year, [in]
many American cities such as San Francisco, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, Miami, Saint Paul, Denver, Kansas and
Portland, dozens of immigrants from Mexico or other
countries are arrested each day and are forced to wear
fetters like suspects. The practice of treating illegal
immigrants like criminals has become a national trend. The
limit in the definition [between] terrorists and illegal
immigrants has become very blurry.
V. On The Rights of Women and Children
The situation of American women and children [is]
disturbing. The rates of women and children [who are]
physically or sexually victimized [is] high. According to
FBI Crime Statistics, in 2003 the United States witnessed
93,233 cases of raping. Virtually 63.2 in every 100,000
women fell victim [to this]. The statistics also showed that
every two minutes, one woman [is] sexually assaulted, and
every six minutes, one woman [is] raped.
The number of women abused and treated at First Aid Centers
exceeds one million every year. More than 1,500 women in the
United States are killed every year by their husbands,
lovers or roommates (The Milenio, Mexico, Sept. 26, 2004).
Nearly 78 percent of American women are physically
victimized at least once in their lifetime, and 79 percent
of women are sexually abused at least once. A survey
released in November 2004 by the US National Institute of
Justice showed that by the time they concluded four years of
college education, 88 percent of women [have] had
experiences of physical or sexual victimization and 64
percent of them experience both. In the past decade, charges
handled by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
against sexual harassment of women surged 22 percent (The
Sun, Jul. 16, 2004).
Sex crimes in the US military are on the rise. According to
the Washington Post (Jun. 3, 2004), from 1999 to 2002 the
number of lawsuits against sexual crimes in the US army that
were formally filed grew from 658 to 783, up 19 percent. And
the number of rape cases went up from 356 to 445, up 25
percent. The number of such cases rose?5 percent between
2002 and 2003. The British Guardian reported on Oct. 25,
2004 that by the end of September 2004, the Miles Foundation
had dealt with 242 cases filed between September 2002 and
August 2003 [of] US woman soldiers being raped or sexually
harassed in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain or Afghanistan. In
addition, there were 431 cases of US women soldiers being
sexually harassed at other military bases.
Women's labor and social rights were [also] violated.
According to The Sun newspaper (Jul. 16, 2004), the charges
handled by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on
sexual discrimination against women grew 12 percent in the
past decade. In 2004, two cases drew wide attention. They
were a bias class lawsuit involving 1.6 million women
employees at Wal-Mart, and another case involving 340 women
staffers of Morgan Stanley (New York Times, Jul. 13, 2004).
Men and women on the same jobs are not paid the same.
Statistics released by the US Labor Department in Jan. 2004
showed a woman who worked full time had a median [salary]
81.1 percent that for a man. The Chicago Tribune said on
Aug. 27, 2004 that the rate of women in poverty [has gone]
up fast, to 12.4 percent of the entire female population.
The health care for American women is at a low level. The US
Family Medical Leave Act guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave
for childbirth to about half of all mothers and nothing for
the rest. A study of 168 countries conducted by the Harvard
School of Public Health indicated that US workers have fewer
rights to time off for family matters than workers in most
other countries, and rank near the bottom in pregnancy and
sick leave. "The United States trails enormously far behind
the rest of the world when it comes to legislation to
protect the health and welfare of working families," said
Jody Heymann, a Harvard associate professor who led the
study. (AP Boston, Jun. 17, 2004)
Child poverty is a serious problem. The Chicago Tribune
reported on Aug. 27, 2004 that the number of children in
poverty climbed from 12.1 million in 2002 to 12.9 million in
2003, a [yearly] increase of 0.9 percent. About 20 million
children live in "low-income working families" -- with
barely enough money to cover basic needs (AP Washington,
Oct. 12, 2004). In California, one in every six children
[does] not have medical insurance. The Los Angeles Times
said on May 6, 2004 that in the metropolitan area the number
of homeless children found wandering on the streets at
nights numbered 8,000, which had stretched the 2,500-bed
government-run emergency shelter system well beyond
capacity. Poverty deprived many children [of] the
opportunity to obtain higher education. In the 146 renowned
institutions of higher learning, only 3 percent of the
students came from the low-income class, while 74 percent of
them were from the high-income class.
Children are victims of sex crimes. Every year about 400,000
children in the US were forced to engage in prostitution or
other sexual dealings on the streets. [Runaway] or homeless
children were the most likely to fall victims of sexual
abuse. Reports on children [being] sexually exploited, which
were received by the National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children, soared from 4,573 cases in 1998 to 81,987 cases in
2003 (The USA Today, Feb. 27,2004).
In recent years, scandals about clergymen molesting children
kept breaking out. According to a study commissioned by the
American Catholic Bishops, in 2004 a total of 756 catholic
priests and lay employees were charged with child sexual
harassment. It is believed that from 1950 to 2002 more than
10,600 boys and girls were sexually abused by nearly 4,400
clergymen (AFP, Feb. 17, 2005). Moreover, every year over
4.5 million kids in the United States were molested in
kindergartens and schools, which amounted to one in every
ten (AP, Jul. 14, 2004).
Violent crimes occurred frequently. Studies show nearly 20
percent of US juveniles live in families that possess guns.
In Washington D.C. 24 people younger than 18 were killed in
2004, twice as many as in 2003 (The Washington Post, Jan. 1,
2005). In Baltimore, 29 juveniles were killed from Jan. 1 to
Sept. 27 in 2004. In 2003 35 were killed (The Washington
Post, Sept. 28, 2004).
A report released by the US Justice Department on November
29, 2004 said about 9 percent of school kids aged 9 to 12
admitted being threatened with injury or having suffered an
injury from a weapon while at school in 2003.
More and more [students] are reluctant to go to school
because of security concerns. Child abuses and neglect were
widely reported in the United States. The Sun newspaper
reported on May 18, 2004 that in 2002, a total of 900,000
children in the United States were abused, of whom nearly
1,400 died.
Every year, 1.98 out of every 100,000 American children are
killed by their parents or guardians. In Maryland, the rate
was as high as 2.4 per 100,000. (Md Child Abuse Deaths
Exceed National Average, The Sun, May 18, 2004). The Houston
Chronicle newspaper reported on Oct. 2, 2004 that in Texas,
each staff [member] of local government departments
responsible for protecting children's rights handles 50
child abuse cases every month.
Two thirds of juvenile detention facilities in the United
States lock up mentally ill youth; every day, about 2,000
youth are incarcerated simply because community mental
health services are unavailable. In 33 states, juvenile
detention centers held youth with mental illness without any
specific charges against them.
(http://demonstrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/200408171941-41051.pdf).
The USA Today reported on July 8, 2004 that between Jan. 1
and June 30 of 2003, 15,000 youths detained in US youth
detention centers were awaiting mental health services,
while children [of] the age of 10 or younger were locked up
in 117 youth detention centers. The detention centers
totally ignored human rights and personal safety with
excessive use of drugs and force, and failed to take care of
inmates with mental problems in a proper way. They even
locked up prisoners in cages. There were reports about
scandals involving correctional authorities in California,
where two juvenile inmates hanged themselves after they were
badly beaten by jail police (San Jose Mercury News and
Singtao Daily, March 18, 2004).
VI. On the Infringement of Human Rights of Foreign Nationals
In 2004, US army service people were reported to have abused
and insulted Iraqi POWs, which stunned the whole world. The
US forces were blamed for their fierce and dirty treatments
for these Iraqi POWs. They [forced] the POWs [to strip]
naked by, masking their heads with underwear (even women's
underwear), [leashing] their necks with a belt, towing them
over the ground, letting military dogs bite them, beating
them with a whip, shocking them with electric batons?and
putting chemical fluids containing phosphorus on their
wounds. They even forced some of the these POWs to [form]
"human-body pyramids" while?naked, in the presence of US
soldiers, who were standing on the roof and mocking at them.
They sometimes sodomized these POWs with?broom [handles].
Some Iraqi civilians were also fiercely abused.
The newspaper Pyramid pointed out that the true face of
America was exposed through this incident. A spokesman of
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said,
sarcastically, that the US has made the whole world see what
the hell a democratic, law-ruled nation is.
According to US media like Newsweek and the Washington Post,
as early as several years ago, in US [military] prisons in
Afghanistan, interrogators used various kinds of torture
tools to acquire confessions, causing many deaths.
The British newspaper The Observer reported on March 14,
2004 that according to a report by the ICRC, US soldiers had
formed [this] mode for arresting people even before the Iraq
war, [saying] "Torture is part of the process."
Over 100 former Iraqi high-ranking government and military
officials were put under special custody by the US military.
They stayed 23 hours a day in dark, small and tightly closed
concrete?wards, [which] they were allowed to leave the
[only] twice a day, with 20 minutes available for taking a
bath or going to the toilet.
On Nov. 26, Iraqi Lieutenant General Abid Hamid Mahmud
al-Tikriti was put in a sleeping bag by force and died after
he was physically tortured during an interrogation.
According to a Feb. 18, 2005 report by AP, in November 2003,
the CIA hung one of the so-called "ghost" prisoners in the
Abu Ghraib Prison with his hands cuffed behind his back.
When he was released and lowered [to the ground], blood
gushed from his mouth "as if a faucet had been turned on."
Among the 94 abuse cases confirmed and published by the
Office of the US Inspector General for the Army, 39 people
were killed, and 20 of these cases were confirmed as murder.
There were also several cases of child abuse conducted by
the US forces.
At least 107 children were imprisoned in seven prisons,
including the Abu Ghraib Prison, run by the US forces in
Afghanistan. They were not allowed to contact their
families. Their term in prison was undetermined. It was not
clear when they were going to be [taken to] court. Some of
these children had been abused. One low-ranking US officer
who served in the Abu Ghraib Prison testified that US
soldiers abused some of these children in custody, and they
had even assaulted young girls sexually.
What's [worse] is that US soldiers used military dogs to
frighten these juvenile prisoners, to see whose dog could
scare them to lose control [of their bowels]. US forces
violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, by
detaining two Palestinian diplomats to Iraq in a prison ward
of the Abu Ghraib Prison, together with 90 other men. They
spent one year in the prison, suffering from very poor
living conditions.
The ICRC believed that abuse of detained Iraqis in the
notorious Abu Ghraib Prison was not a single case, it was
systematic behavior. According to some White House documents
that were made public on June 22, 2004, the Department of
Defense approved the use harsh means to interrogate
prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba.
The US Secretary of Defense said in public that the Geneva
Convention does not mean that all detainees, especially
those who are so-called "non-fighting personnel", should be
treated as POWs. A draft memorandum [from] the Department of
Defense also claimed that US laws and international
conventions, including the Geneva Convention, which strictly
bans the use of torture, do not apply to the US President as
General Commander of the US Army. A memorandum fron the US
Department of Justice makes it even more clear that the
United States can use international laws to measure [the
behavior of] other countries on the issue of the treatment
of POWs, while it is not necessary for Washington to abide
by these laws. The interrogators were trained to find ways
to torture prisoners physically, while [not technically
exceeding] the Geneva Convention.
The media found that the US soldiers' behaviors in
humiliating Iraqi prisoners, as shown in photos, were?what
they were trained for. US Brigadier General Yanis Karpinski
told the press that her boss once said to her that
"prisoners are dogs." If they were made to think that they
were [no] better than dogs, [things] could get out of control.
Meanwhile, the US government has tried for the third
successive year to extend the term of a resolution by the UN
Security Council that soldiers could be exempted from
lawsuits by the International Criminal Court, even if they
break the relevant rules. In view of prisoner abuses in
Iraq, this has been strongly criticized by the UN Secretary
General. (Reuters' story on June 17,2004).
Former US President Jimmy Carter also criticized that US
policies?as a kind of retrogression, which has damaged the
principles of democracy and rule of law and lacks respect
for fundamental human rights.
To avoid international scrutiny, the United States keeps
under wraps half of its 20-odd detention centers worldwide,
which are holding terrorist suspects. And at least seven
US-controlled clandestine prisons, one of which [has been]
dubbed "[the] inferno," in Afghanistan, have not been kept
within the bounds of law. (Prensa Latina, Aug. 16, 2004)
In a report by the [organization] Human Rights First on 24
US secret interrogation centers, these secret facilities are
believed to "make inappropriate detention and abuse not only
likely but virtually inevitable." (British newspaper the
Times, Sept. 11, 2004)
Moreover, an executive jet is being used by the American
intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to other
countries, in a bid to use torture and evade American laws.
The plane is leased by the US Defense Department and the CIA
from a private company in Massachusetts. ?The jet has
conducted [more than 300]?so-called "torture flights," ?to
49 destinations outside the United States, including the
Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. The suspects are
frequently bound, gagged and sedated before being put on
board the plane (British newspaper the Times, Nov. 14,
2004). The United States has secretly shifted thousands of
captives [to prisons] worldwide in the past three years,
most of whom were not indicted officially.
The United States is the No. 1 military power in the world,
and its military spending has kept shooting up. Its fiscal
2005 defense budget hit a historical high of 422 billion US
dollars, an increase of 21 billion dollars over fiscal 2004.
As the biggest arms dealer in the world, the United States
has made a fortune out of war. Its transactions of
conventional weapons exceeded 14.5 billion dollars in 2003,
up 900 million dollars per year and accounting for 56.7
percent of the total sales worldwide. The Iraq War
has?[helped] US economic development.
The United States frequently commits wanton slaughters
during external invasions and military attacks. Spain's
Uprising newspaper on May, 12, 2004 published a list of
human rights infringement incidents committed by the US
troops, quoting?bloodthirsty sayings [by] two American
generals: "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead," by
General Philip Sheridan and "We should bomb Vietnam back to
the stone age," by air force general Curtis LeMay. We can
[sense] a similar [bloodthirsty point of view] in the Iraq
War waged by the United States.
Statistics from the health department of the interim Iraqi
government show [that] 3,487 people, including 328 women and
children, have been killed, and another 13,720 injured, in
15 of Iraq's 18 provinces between April 15 and Sept. 19, 2004.
A survey of Iraqi civilian deaths, based on the natural
death rate before the war, estimates that the US-led
invasion might have led to 100,000 more deaths in the
country, with most victims being women and children.
[The survey was] jointly designed and conducted by
researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University
and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, [and found]
that the majority of the additional unnatural deaths since
the invasion were caused by violence, [with] air
strikes?[being] the main factor. (Associated Press, Oct. 28,
2004)
On Jan. 3, 2004, four US soldiers stationed in Iraq pushed
two Iraqi civilians into the Tigris River, making one of
them drowned.
On May 19, 2004, an American helicopter fired on a wedding
party in a remote Iraqi village close to the Syrian border,
killing 45 people, including 15 children and 10 women. On
Nov. 20, 2004, seven people were killed in Ramadi in the
Anbar province, when US troops opened fire on a civilian bus.
According to a Staff Sergeant in the US Marines, his platoon
killed 30 civilians in six weeks?He has [also] witnessed
the?gradual rotting of many corpses, [since] a lot of
wounded civilians were deserted without any medical
treatment. (British newspaper The Independent, May 23, 2004)
In addition, US troops often plunder Iraqi households when
tracking down anti-US militants?American forces have so far
committed?thousands of robberies and 90 percent of the
Iraqis [who] have been [robbed in this way] are innocent.
The United States has been hindering the work of the United
Nation's human rights mechanism. And it either took no
notice of or used delaying tactics of the requests of
relevant UN agencies to visit its Guantanamo Bay prison camp
in Cuba.
Some justice-upholding developing countries introduced draft
resolutions on America's democracy and human rights
situation to the 59th UN General Assembly, to show their
strong concern over the US [infringement of] human rights?,
prisoner abuse, media control, and [the] loopholes in its
election system.
It is the common goal and obligation for all countries in
the world to promote and safeguard human rights. No country
in the world can claim [to be] perfect [to have] no room for
improvement in the human rights area. And no country should
exclude itself from the international human rights
development process, or view itself as the incarnation of
human rights which can reign over other countries and give
orders to [them]. Even the United States [is] be no exception.
Despite tons of problems in its own human rights, the United
States continues to stick to its belligerent stance,
[to]wantonly trample on the sovereignty of other countries,
and constantly stage tragedies of human rights infringement
in the world.
Instead of indulging itself in publishing the "human rights
country report" to censure other countries unreasonably, the
United States should reflect on its erroneous behavior on
human rights and take its own human rights problems
seriously. The double standard of the United States on human
rights and its exercise of hegemonies and power politics,
under the pretext of promoting human rights, will certainly
put it in an isolated and passive position and beget
opposition from all just members of the international community.
Art credit: http://www.freeimages.co.uk
Is the U.S. really a
Christian
country, as government officials keep trying to tell us??or
did our Founding Fathers believe instead in the principles
of Masonry, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians and more?
Don't miss Whitley Strieber's extraordinary interview with
William Henry on this week's
Dreamland!
Subscribers will
be able to download this show to an MP3 disc--as they can with
all Dreamland and Mysterious Powers shows--and listen to it
in their cars. They'll also get to hear a special interview
with William, in which he reveals some of his most
provocative information!
For more information, click here.
