China Report on Human Rights
China issued the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003 Monday, March 1, 2004, in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2003 issued by the US on Feb. 25. The Human Rights Record is the fifth Chinese report in response to the annual country reports on human rights by the United States. On February 25, 2004, the State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2003 (called the "reports" thereafter). As in previous years, the United States once again acted as "the world human rights police" by distorting and censuring in the "reports" the human rights situations in more than 190 countries and regions across the world, including China. And just as usual, the United States once again "omitted" its own long-standing malpractice and problems of human rights in the "reports". Therefore, we have to, as before, help the United States keep its human rights record.
I.
On Life, Freedom and Personal Safety
The United States has long been in a violent, crime-ridden
society with a severe infringement of the people's rights
by law enforcement departments and with a lack of guarantee
for the life of people, their freedom and personal safety.
The United States is a country plagued most seriously by violence
and crimes. According to the statistical figures released
in June 2003 by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
a total of 11.9 million criminal cases were reported in 2002
in the United States, including homicides, rapes, robbery
and theft. Of these cases, 19,940 cases were reported in Detroit,
where 2,073 people committed crimes in every 100,000 people.
In Baltimore, where 2,055 people committed crimes in every
100,000 people. With regard to personal offenses, cases of
murders and rapes rose by 0.8 percent, and 4.0 percent, respectively,
over 2002 (see The Sun, USA on June 18, 2003).
On Sept. 15, 2003, US Surgeon General Richard Carmona admitted
at a workshop that the United States has always ranked first
in the world in terms of homicide incidence. In August 2003,
the US Department of Justice acknowledged in a report that
a total of 15,586 homicide cases occurred around the country
in 2000, as against 15,980 in 2001, and 16,110 in 2002, indicating
a rising trend year by year (see the edition of USA Today on Aug. 25, 2003).
In a report released by the FBI in December 2003, the FBI
said the overall incidence of offenses in the US somewhat
dropped, whereas the number of people murdered across the
country grew by 1.1 percent during the first half of 2003
(see the edition of USA Today published on Dec. 16,
2003).
From January to August of 2003, 166 homicides were reported
in Washington D.C., up 5.1 percent year on year. In Chicago,
which is known as America's "homicide capital",
there were 648 homicides in2002, compared with 599 in 2003,
or an average of 22.2 people victimized in every 100,000 residents
(AP dispatch from Chicago on Jan. 1, 2004). In New York, the
number of people murdered in 2003 amounted to 596 (AP dispatch
from Chicago on Jan. 2, 2004). In California, the number of
murder cases for 2002 went up 11 percent. The US Justice Policy
Institute held that the existing legal system could not ensure
the safety and health of community residents. The United States
ranked first in private ownership of guns, resulting in drastic
rise in gun-related crimes. According to a survey of crime
victims, 350,000 criminal cases involving the use of guns
were reported in the United States in 2002, and guns were
used in 63 percent of the 15,980 killings in 2001. On Aug.
27, 2003, a jobless man carrying a gun broke into a car part
supplying company, killing seven of his former colleagues.
Statistical figures from US National Center for Health Statistics
showed that 56.5 percent of Americans who committed suicides
in 2000 with the use of guns, involving 16,586 people (see Gun Violence, Related Facts. www.jointogether.org).
Improper management of firearms led to the frequent occurrence
of juvenile offenses involving the use of guns. At least 18
people in American public schools were reportedly killed in
violence with50 others wounded in mid Aug. of 2003. According
to data from US Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
more than 50 percent of the murderers in campus shootings
in the United States used guns owned by their families or
friends, while over 80 percent of the guns used by students
for suicides came from their families or friends (Most
Guns Used in School Shootings from Family, Friends, www.jointogether.org).
Unrestrained evil social forces and widespread drug abuse
endangered the people's life and safety. According to a report
released by US National Youth Gang Center, there were altogether
21,500 sinister gangs in the United States in 2002 with a
combined membership of 731,000. In April 2003, an innocent
woman was killed in a gang shootout in New York. Police had
to impose a state of citywide emergency in the summer of 2003
due to frequent gang-related violence (see the edition of USA Today on Dec. 16, 2003).
Drug-related crimes have been on the rise, with new characteristics
involving a growing number of gangs, intensified violence
and trans-national smuggling and collaboration with terrorist
groups. The rate of crimes induced by drug abuse has risen
year by year. Relevant data released by the US Department
of Justice showed that over half of the inmates in federal
jails have something to do with drug-related crimes (see Washington
Post on July 28, 2003).
According to the outcome of a survey released by Washington
D.C.Mayor Anthony A. Williams, 60,000 people out of the 600,000
population in Washington used drugs and indulged in excessive
drinking, causing an annual economic loss of 1.2 billion US
dollars. Half of those people arrested on charge of violence
in Washington D.C. took drugs (see Washington Post on Dec.
2, 2003).
In recent years, the number of AIDS patients has also increased
partly due to the widespread drug abuse. Statistical figures
released by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention
indicated that the number of people diagnosed as AIDS carriers
across the United States in 2002 rose by 2.2 percent over
the previous year to reach 42,136 (see Washington Post on July 28, 2003).
The infringement of lawful rights constitutes a malignant
obstinate disease of American society. Random assaults committed
by the police resulted in the frequent occurrence of tragedies
with heavy casualties. The New York City Police was reported
for several willful shooting cases when chasing suspects in
January 2003. Four people were killed by the police in the
city from Jan. 1 to 5 last year. In Dec. 2003, a black man
named Nathaniel Jones was beaten to death by six policemen
in Cincinnati, causing a great uproar against police brutality
across the country.
According to an AP report, a woman in the city of Detroit
had one of her fingers cut off and another finger injured
by the police simply for a dispute with them in a parking
lot. The report said the police also boxed her ears and tore
her hair.
The United States issued the Patriot Act in name of land security
and anti-terrorism after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, and
many substantial contents of this act encroached upon rights
and freedom of citizens, especially the people of ethnic minorities.
Under the authority of the Patriot Act, the government departments
are empowered to wiretap phone calls of citizens, trace their
online records, read their private mails and e-mails. The
FBI is even allowed to keep a watch on people's reading habits.
They check the booklists of what people borrow from libraries,
so as to judge whether they have been influenced by terrorism.
A resolution passed by Cambridge, Massachusetts, explicitly
noted that the civil rights of the American people are being
jeopardized by the Patriot Act and, therefore, the Sun in Aug. 2003 set forth an appeal for "freedom to read"
(see the Sun on Aug. 18, 2003).
The United States claim itself as a paradise for free people
but the ratio of inmates in the United States has remained
the highest in the world. The number of inmates in the country
exceeded 2.1 million in 2002, a year-on-year rise of 2.6 percent,
according to the statistical figures released by the Department
of Justice in July 2003. The jails nationwide receive 700
new inmates every week in the US where 701 out of every 100,000
people are in prison (see Washington Post on July
28, 2003).
Inmates have received inhumane treatment in the overloaded
jails. An International Herald Tribune story said the states
of Virginia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas and Arizona
had lowered the food supply standards of inmates so as to
curb the huge government budget deficit. They reduced the
calorie of each meal in jail and cut three meals a day to
two on weekends and holidays. According to a report by Amnesty
International, more than 700,000 inmates were held in high
security prisons and there they are compelled to stay in wards
for 23 hours a day and even longer, subjected to ruthless
and inhuman treatment and humiliation. Last year, at least
three inmates were hit to death by prison guards with guns
of high voltage electric prods (2003 Report: United States
of America, Amnesty International, www.amnestyusa.org).
Sexual harassment and encroachment are common in jails in
the United States. A report issued by Human Rights Watch in
Sept. 2003 said that one in five male inmates in the country
had faced forced sexual contact in custody and one in 10 has
been raped. For women inmates, they are objects of sexual
assault of jail guards, and one fourth of the women inmates
are sexually assaulted in a few jails (see Editorial, Doing
Something about Prison Rape, www.hrw.org,
26/09/2003).
Nine girls in a juvenile delinquent center of the state of
Alabama accused the guards of assaulting and raping them and
compelling them to have forced abortion. They also said male
guards watched girls take bath and unclothe themselves for
so-called frisk. They had to have sex with male guards in
the hope for better treatment, for instance, to get a can
of cola or food.
According to another Human Rights Watch report, one in six
US inmates suffer various kinds of mental illnesses. Many
of them suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and serious
depression. The proportion of inmates with mental illness
in the prison population is over three times higher than in
the general population (see United States: Mentally Ill
Mistreated in Prison, www.hrw.org/2003/10/US102203.htm).
The total population of these patients has reached as high
as 200,000 to 300,000. "Prisons have become the nation's
primary mental health facilities," said Human Rights
Watch. The prisoners with mental illness are likely to be
picked on, physically or sexually abused and manipulated by
other inmates. For example, a female inmate named Georgia,
who is both mentally ill and retarded, has been raped repeatedly
in an exchange for small items such as cigarettes and coffee.
II. On Political Rights and
Freedom
The presidential election, often symbolized as US democracy,
infact is the game and competition for the rich people. Presidential
candidates have to raise money far and wide for their expensive
campaign cost and most of the donors are big companies and
millionaires. President George W. Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney had raised as high as 113 million US dollars in
their 2000 presidential campaign, a record in US history,
and the fund raising is expected to reach 200 million US dollars
for this year's re-election campaign (see Britain's Independent newspaper on Jan.20, 2004).
Statistical figures from the Center for Responsive Politics
showed that Lockheed Martin Corp., the country's biggest arms
dealer, has been the biggest political donor. The company
had donated 10.6 billion US dollars for political campaigns
in the United States from 1999 to 2000 and has been the main
donor to the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives
as well as one of the top ten donors to the Committee on Appropriations
of the House.
The so-called "freedom of press" in the United States
has also been brought under intensive criticism. According
to an investigative report of the Sonoma State University
in the United States, freedom of press, speech and expression
of opinion in the United States is amid a crisis. An increasing
number of US media organizations are getting involved in false
reporting or cheating scandals. On June 5, 2003, two chief
editors of the New York Times resigned after their
role in a plagiarism scandal was exposed. John Barrie, head
of Plagiarism.org in Oakland, California, claimed that "every newspaper
in this country is not doing due diligence" and "everybody's
got this problem".
Meanwhile, the US government has exercised an extremely tight
control over news media, which went to the extreme during
the 2003 US-led war against Iraq. During the war, the US government
had tried every means to prevent the press from getting timely
and true information and had wielded its hegemony to override
the journalistic principle of "faithful and unbiased
reporting". Peter Arnett, a veteran reporter with the
US National Broadcasting Company (NBC), was fired simply because
he voiced some of his personal views on the Iraq war. News
coverage by international media in Iraq also often fell prey
to US restrictions and crackdown. Media watchdog Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) has accused US troops in Iraq of frequent
"obstruction of journalists trying to do their jobs in
Iraq" and described the number of attacks on press freedom
there as "alarming" (see Reuters story
on Oct. 20, 2003).
In January 2004, the US-installed Iraqi Interim Governing
Council issued an order to ban the Al-Qaida-based Al-Jazeera
TV station from covering any activity of the Council's members
between January 28 and February 27. A book named "Black
List", co-written by 15 American reporters, has warned
that America's press freedom is facing danger. In an interview
with the French newspaper Le Figaro, Kristina Borjesson,
one of the book's authors and a former reporter with the CBS
(Columbia Broadcasting System) and CNN (Cable News Network),
said that US authorities had controlled all information to
be spread by the media while journalists had degenerated into
the government's stenographers (see French newspaper Le
Figaro on May 8, 2003).
The US has also
time and again launched attacks on news media organizations
and journalists in Iraq. In one of such attacks on April 8,
2003, the US troops bombed the Baghdad branch of an Arab TV
station and killed one cameraman on the spot.
III. On Living Conditions of
US Laborers
Although the United States is the world's No. one developed
nation, the US government has to date refused to ratify the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
It is apathetic to the rights and interests of ordinary workers
in economic, social and cultural aspects, leading to serious
problems such as poverty, hunger and homelessness.
The disparity between the rich and the poor keep widening
in the United States. A 2003 report by the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) under the US Congress acknowledged that the
gap between the rich and the poor in the country today is
wider than anytime in nearly 70 years, with the wealth of
the country's richest one percent population exceeding the
overall possessions of the needy, who account for 40 percent
of the total population. In 2000, the rich people's wealth
makes up 15.5 percent of the country's overall national income,
as against 7.5 percent in 1979 (according to BBC report on
Sept. 25, 2003).
A report by the US Federal Reserve also showed that between
1998 and 2001, the wealth gap between the country's richest
and poorest had widened by 70 percent (see Britain's Guardian report on Jan. 24, 2003).
Certain policies of the US government, instead of helping
narrowing the country's wealth gap, have aggravated the rich-poor
disparity and led to an unfair distribution of wealth. According
to a report by the US Environmental Working Group in 2003,
the agricultural policy of the US government has ensured 70
percent ofthe government subsidies go to ranch owners, resulting
in a yawning income gap between ranch owners and ordinary
farmers and pushing many farmers to the verge of bankruptcy
(ABC report on Oct.9, 2003).
The population living in need and hunger in the United States
has been on a steady rise. According to statistics from the
2003 economic report of the US Census Bureau, the impoverished
population in the United States had been increasing for two
consecutive years, reaching 34.6 million, or 12.1 percent
of the total population, in 2002, up 1.7 million over the
previous year. The country's poverty ratio in 2002 had risen
by 0.4 percentage points over the previous year. Among the
impoverished population, the number of extremely needy people
had risen to 14.1 million from the previous 13.4 million,
and the proportion of children in need had gone up to 16.7
percent in 2002 from 16.3 percent in 2001.Since 2001, the
number of needy families in the United States has been growing
at 6 percent a year, and there are now 7.3 million impoverished
families in the country, which means 31 million people are
facing the threat of hunger. In the 25 leading metropolises
of the United States, the number of people who need emergency
food aid has increased by 19 percent on average, while the
number of people who live on charity food coupons, or those
who have to queue up for free food distributions, has surged
to 22 million (see Spain's El Mundo on May 19, 2003).
In October 2003, the US Department of Agriculture released
a report, which showed that in 2002 there were 12 million
American families worrying about their food expenditures and
3.8 million families with members who actually suffered from
hunger. On December 18, 2003, an annual survey report released
at the US Conference of Mayors showed that in the 25 cities
surveyed, the number of people seeking emergency food aid
in 2003 had increased by 17 percent on average over 2002.
Moreover, 87 percent of the surveyed cities believed that
the number of such people would continue to rise in 2004.
The homeless population continues to rise. According to information
released by the US National Law Center on Homelessness and
Poverty, more than 3 million people were homeless in the United
States in 2002 (Homeless and Poverty in America, www.nlchp.org).
Washington D.C. has the highest rate of homelessness of any
city in the United States, with an estimated 20,000 people
having experienced homelessness and nearly 400 families having
applied for emergency shelters in 2002 (A snapshot of
Homelessness in the Metropolitan, www.naeh.org).
In April of 2002 alone, 38,476 people in New York spent their
night in aid centers, including 16,685 children. According
to a survey released by the US Conference of Mayors in December
2003, requests for emergency shelter assistance rose by an
average of 13 percent in the past year; 88 percent of the
cities surveyed predicted that the situation would be even
worse in 2004.
Recently, the US Christian Science Monitor reminded the United
States that it should regard "a home for every American"
as the most rudimentary human right. Chicago Coalition for
the Homeless said the government was unable to provide the
basic subsistence guarantee for people, and that the local
government had violated international human rights law by
forcibly taking over 8,000 local residential houses in five
years.
There is a lack of work safety. According to US laws, only
the accidents of industrial injuries resulting from "intended"
violation of safety rules by the employers are eligible to
be submitted to the judicial authorities. Even when alarming
cases occur, the employers are seldom confirmed as "intended"
and rarely face public prosecution. The New York Times quoted a surveyed report of the US Occupational Safety &
Health Administration as saying that in 20 years from 1982
to 2002, there were 1,242 cases involving the death of workers
caused by the employers' "intended" violation of
safety rules, yet 93 percent of the cases were not brought
to the court. In these two decades, there were a total of
2,197 accidents caused by employers' violation of safety rules
and resulted in death of the workers in the United States,
and the combined prison terms for employers involved were
less than 30 years.
The situation of health insurance worsened. According to a
report released by the US Census Bureau in September 2003,
the number of Americans without health insurance climbed by
5.7 percent over 2001, to reach 43.6 million in 2002, the
largest single increase in a decade. Overall, 15.2 percent
of the Americans were uninsured in 2002 (see Washington
Post on Sept. 30, 2003).
Based on a survey, the ratio of employees uninsured in big
US companies rose from seven percent to 11 percent during
the 1987-2001 period (see Wall Street Journal on
Oct. 22, 2003). More and more people cannot afford medical
treatment. In Nebraska, 250,000 single mothers lost free medical
care they previously enjoyed, and in Arizona, approximately
60,000 children were no longer covered by free medical care
(see Spain's El Mundo on May 19, 2003).
IV. On Racial Discrimination
Forty years have elapsed since late civil rights leader Martin
Luther King made the famous speech "I Have a Dream",
yet the equal rights pursued by the American blacks and minority
ethnic groups remained an unattainable dream today.
Racial discrimination
in the United States has a long history with age-old malpractice.
It has been permeated into every aspects of society. According
to an investigative report released by the United Nations,
the blacks and colored people received twice or three times
more severe penalties than the whites for the crimes of the
same kind; the number of black people who received death penalty
for killing white people was four times that of the white
people for killing black people. In state prisons nationwide,
about 47 percent of the inmates were black people, and the
16 percent were people of Latin American ancestry. The blacks
accounted for 13 percent of the total US population, yet 35
percent of the people arrested for drug abuse crimes were
blacks and 53 percent of the people that were convicted for
drug abuse crimes were blacks.
At present, more than 750,000 black inmates were in US jails,
or over 35 percent of the total number of inmates in the country;
approximately 2 million black people were disciplined or put
under various forms of surveillance; 22 percent of black males
in the 30-34 age group had jail records, while the white inmates
only make up three percent; 36 of 1,000 black females have
possibilities of being jailed in their lives, while only five
of 1,000 white females have such a possibility.
The poverty rate and joblessness rate of the US blacks remained
high. According to statistics of the US Department of Labor,
the white people's unemployment rate in the US was 5.2 percent
in November 2003, while the rate was as high as 10.2 percent
for the blacks, almost twice that of the whites (Employment
Status of the Civilian Population by Race, Sex, and Age, www.bls.gov/news.release/empgit.to2.htm,
05/12/2003).
According to statistics of the US Census Bureau, poverty rate
among the blacks reached 24.1 percent in 2002, up 1.4 percentage
points over the 22.7 percent rate in the previous year; 20.2
percent of the blacks were without health insurance; average
annual income of median black families was 40 percent less
than the ordinary median US families (see USA Today on Oct. 3, 2003).
Racial discrimination exists on the US real estate market,
too. In 2002, the US federal government received a total of
25,246 discrimination accusations on housing market, 72 percent
of which were from the families of black people, disabled
people or those families with children, according to a report
released by the National Fair Housing Alliance in April 2003.
Discrimination over the birth place nationality of house purchasers
rose from 10 percent in 2001 to 12 percent in 2002 (see the Sun newspaper, USA on Aug. 17, 2003).
Black people usually spend more money than white people on
housing purchase, but their houses are not as good as those
of white people and they have to accept loans with higher
interests. The market value of houses bought by black people
with same amount of money is only 82 percent of those of white
people, and houses with high mortgage interest rate in black
people communities are five times more than those in white
people communities, the Sun newspaper quoted the
US Department of Housing and Urban Development as saying in
on July 3, 2003.
Apartheid recurs at school. More than one third of American
students of the African origin are studying in schools where
over 90 percent of students are non-white people, according
to an investigation made by Harvard University in 2004. Since
1988, many schools abandoned the compulsory racial integration
in class due to a series of court verdicts and changes in
federal policies. According to a verdict passed in 1991 by
the Supreme Court, the resumption of community schools was
allowed and it was no longer mandatory to carry black students
from other communities by school bus, which led to the disappearance
of black students in white people's schools. Meanwhile, wealthy
white people in some southern areas withdrew from publicly-owned
school systems and sent their kids to private schools where
most students were white. Racial differentiation in US middle
and elementary schools is serious, noted a commentary of the New York Times on Jan. 21, 2003. Those black students
in schools where most are white students often feel unwelcome,
discriminated or even scared (The New York Times on Jan.21, 2003).
Less proportion of colored races can go to universities than
white people. According to a report issued by the America
Council on Education in Oct. 2003, 40 percent of black people
and 34 percent of Hispanic-Americans of the age group from
18 to 24 can go to university, while 46 percent of white people
can go to university (www.accnet.edu/news/press_release/2003/10october/minority_report.
cfm).
According to the census result in March 2003, the income of
black people with bachelor degree was 24.5 percent lower than
white people with same degree, that of black people with master
degree 21.2 percent lower than white people with same degree,
and that of black people with doctoral degree 28.1 percent
lower than white people (see USA Today on Sept. 9,
2003).
The US discrimination toward immigrants tends to become serious.
After the Sept. 11 incident, the US congress adopted anti-terrorism
act containing items infringing on human rights. The act permits
the arrest of immigrants with indefinite duration, checks
on all secret files, inspection in public and private occasions,
wiretapping of phone conversations and secret investigations.
In June 2003, US Procurator-General Glenn Fine revealed in
his investigative report that after the Sept. 11 incident,
US authorities detained 762 foreign immigrants for an average
of about three months in excuse of violation of immigrant
law, but later investigation showed they had nothing to do
with the Sept. 11 incident (see Washington Post on
June 3, 2003).
In the Operation Landmark launched in Chicago from Dec. 2002
to May 2003, the backgrounds of some staff working in public
places such as airports and high-rises were surveyed secretly,
with some immigrants being detained and deported without criminal
acts, and the government refused to publicize any details
of this special policy toward immigrants and information about
the detainment and deportation of immigrants. According to
the report, this kind of "secret policing" activity
in excuse of national security infringed on the civil rights
and freedom of millions of immigrants in the United States
(see Los Angeles Times on May 29, 2003).
Another report shows that 1,200 immigrants were detained in
the United States with no indictment, and at least 484 people
are still in custody. To date, the US government still refuses
to reveal the identity of these people (see a report by Britain's Independent newspaper on June 26, 2003).
Immigrant children are maltreated. According to a report from
the Amnesty International, at least 5,000 children going to
the United States to find relatives, or avoid abuses and mistreatment,
wars and recruiting by domestic rebels were put into custody
in the United States. These children were jailed together
with adult inmates, and were abused in ways of frisk by being
unclothed, handcuffed and flogged. These children aged one
to ten years from all over the world were often imprisoned
for months, or even for years. A kid jailed in a detention
center in Pennsylvania was beaten up for minor faults such
as saying "Can I use the toilet" instead of "May
I use the toilet."
Staffs in a detention house in Texas will take back blankets
and mattress and switch off air-conditioners just because
children make faults (Reuters dispatch from Miami on June
18, 2003). The United States reportedly jailed a number of
prisoners regarded as illegal fighters, three of whom were
13 to 15 years of age (see Britain's Guardian newspaper
on April 24, 2003).
V. On Conditions of Women, Children
and Elderly People
Little can be spoken of the human rights record in the US
in view of protecting the rights of women, children, elderly
people and other special disadvantageous social groups.
American women cannot enjoy the equal rights with men to take
part in government and political affairs. Statistics from
the Center for American Women in Politics indicated that in
2003, women hold 59, or 13.6 percent of the seats in the House
of Representatives, and 14, or 14 percent of the seats in
the Senate. Despite an increase in the number of women seated
in state legislatures in 2003, they made up only 22.3 percent
of the total 7,382 state legislators in the US. (Women
in Elected Office 2003 Fact Sheet Summaries, www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts/Officeholds/cawpfs.html).
Women are not entitled to equal treatment with regard to employment
and income. American women are still largely pigeonholed in
"pink collar" jobs, such as secretaries, saleswomen
and restaurant attendants, according to a report released
by the American Association of University of Women in May,
2003 (www.aauw.org/about/newspress_releases/230505.cfm).
Statistics from the US Department of Labor indicated that
in 2002, the average weekly income for women aged 16 and above
were 530 US dollars, or 77.9 percent of the 680 dollars for
their male counterparts. Analysis by the department noted
that there were twice as many as women whose earnings were
below the Federal minimum wage, compared with men. Among the
whites and Hispanics, women are more likely than men to become
low income earners (Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department
of Labor, www.bls.gov).
There has been serious domestic and sexual violence against
women. According to figures released by the White House in
October 2003, a total of 700,000 incidents of domestic violence
were reported in the US in 2001. One-third of women murdered
each year are murdered by their current or former husbands
or partners (National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, 2003,
by George W. Bush, www.whitehouse.gov).
According to a survey conducted by the US National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 92 percent of American women cite domestic and sexual violence as one of their top worries. One out of every three women experiences at least one physical assault during adulthood, and only one out of every seven cases of domestic violence, however, drew the attention of the police. A report by the US military on sexual harassment scandals in the US Air Force Academy showed that 109 out of the 579 female cadets, or almost 20 percent, that were interviewed said they had been sexually harassed and assaulted in different ways and to varying extent.
The protection
of children provided in the US is far below the international
standards. The United States is one of the only two countries
in the world that have not ratified the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. Since 1980s, all the states in the US
have lowered the age of criminal culpability against juvenile
offenders, and in some states, juvenile offenders aged 10
even stood on trial in courts for adults.
According to the Department of Justice, 27 out of the 50 US
states have set minimum age of criminal culpability. Most
states such as California set the age at 14, states like Colorado
at 12 and two states including Kansas at 10. In states where
there is no minimum age of criminal culpability, judges can
decide to try juvenile offenders in juvenile courts or transfer
them to ordinary criminal courts according to the seriousness
of the crimes. In 2002, a 15-year-old student, who killed
two of his classmates in a shooting rampage, was sentenced
to 50 years in prison. In the same year, Brian Robertson,
an 18-year-old student in a high school in Oklahoma was arrested
for his writing a novel with "extraordinary violent"
plots on a school computer and if convicted, he faces up to
10 years in prison.
The US is the country that has handed most of the death penalties
to juvenile offenders and carried out the executions in the
world. According to a report released by the Amnesty International
on Jan. 21, two-thirds of the documented executions of juvenile
offenders in the world occurred in the US in the past decade
and more. Since 1990, there have been a total of 34 documented
executions of juvenile offenders worldwide, and 19 of them
happened in the US (an AP dispatch from London on Jan. 2,
2004).
While many countries around the world are abolishing executions
of minors, some politicians in the US are asking to lower
the minimum age for death penalty, and the Federal Supreme
Court has even set the age at 16. Up to date, there are 80
such juvenile inmates on the death row waiting to be executed
(a Prensa Latina from Havana on Aug. 4, 2003).
Among the developed nations, the United States ranks the first
in terms of the number of children living under the poverty
line and the last in the life expectancy of its children (Britain's Guardian newspaper on Nov. 3, 2003). According to
statistics released by the US Census Bureau in September 2003,
10.4 percent of all US minors lived in poverty by the definition
of income in 2002 (Poverty: 2002 Highlights, www.census.gov),
up to 13 million people (Britain's Guardian newspaper
on Nov. 3, 2003).
Of all the children, 11.6 percent could not afford health
insurance. Of the millions of homeless population in the United
States, kids account for a considerable proportion. The US
Conference of Mayors said in its 2003 annual report that of
all homeless families, 40 percent were families with children,
and among all the families applying for food subsidies, 59
percent of them had at least one kid. And according to the
United Nations Children's Fund, of the 27 well-off nations
in the world, the United States ranks the first in the number
of deaths of its children as a result of violence and negligence
(see Reuters dispatch from Geneva on Sept. 18, 2003).
The under-aged population are under threat in terms of physical
and mental health. According to statistics from the US Federal
Government, of all the kids under the age of 18, 10 percent
suffer from psychological illness to varying extent, some
to the point of committing crimes. But only one fifth of them
have been provided with medical treatment (see the edition
of USA Today on Oct. 26, 2003).
Violent acts plaguing the US public media are bringing adverse
impact to the minors. Statistics show that before coming of
age at 18, kids and youngsters could be exposed to at least
40,000 murder scenes and 200,000 other acts of violence in
various public media (an AP dispatch on Feb. 5, 2004). They
are so accustomed to fist fights, bloody killings that some
have been worshipping for violence, which gives rise to more
malignant acts of violence in the country accordingly.
Children are often the victims of sexual assault. In recent
years, more and more scandals have come to light that children
were harassed, molested and raped by priests in the US In
June 2003, USA Today reported that in the past 18
months, of all the 46,000 clergymen in the United States,
around 425 were dismissed by churches for crime allegations
involved, including the crime of sexual assault against children
(edition of USA Today on June 17, 2003). According
to other reports, at least 1,000 people were arrested in the
United States for accused acts of eroticism targeting at kids
since June 2003. Of all the arrested, 400 were charged with
the crime of making and spreading erotic materials relating
to children via the Internet.
The senior citizens are prejudiced against and mistreated,
which led to a higher rate of suicides among them. In the
United States, people aged over 65 account for 13 percent
of the national population, and of all the people who committed
suicide, the senior population make up 19 percent. According
to a report of the Christian Science Monitor, of
every 100,000 people between the age of 15 to 24, 10.3 such
people killed themselves in 1999, and the number rose to 15.9
for the elderly people above the age of 65, which was nearly
50 percent higher than the national average level. All the
numbers boiled down to the fact that more than 6,000 senior
citizens committed suicide in the United States in 1999.
VI. On Infringement upon Human Rights of Other Nations
In recent years, the United States has been practicing unilateralism
in the international arena, indulging itself in military aggression
around the world, brutal violation of sovereign rights of
other nations. Its image has been tarnished by numerous misdeeds
of human rights infringement in other countries.
The United States tops the world in terms of military expenditure,
and is the largest exporter of arms. Its military spendings
for the 2004 fiscal year reaches 400.5 billion US dollars,
exceeding the total amount of defense budgets of all other
countries in the world in summation. The New York Times reported on September 25, 2003, that the United States export
of conventional arms accounted for 45.5 percent of the world's
arms trade volume in 2002, ranking the first in the world.
And according to a Capitol report, the United States sold
8.6 billion US dollars worth of conventional arms to the developing
nations, or 48.6 percent of all the arms procured by the developing
world in 2002.
The United States
has been active in sabre-rattling and launching wars. It is
No. One in terms of gross violation of other countries' sovereign
rights and other people's human rights. The United States
has resorted to the use of force against other countries 40
times since 1990s. Well-known US journalist and writer William
Blum said in his recent book Rouge State: A Guide to the
World's Only Superpower that since 1945, the United States
has attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments,
suppressed over 30 national movements, in which millions of
people have lost their precious lives and many more people
been plunged into misery and despair.
In March 2003, without authorization by the United Nations,
the United States unilaterally waged a large-scale war on
Iraq based on its claim that the Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction (WMD). In its wanton and indiscriminate bombing
of Iraq, many bombs of the US army were dropped on residential
areas, shopping malls and civilian vehicles.
According to an article carried by Britain's Independent newspaper in January 2004 titled "George W. Bush and
the real state of the Union," in the war on Iraq by then,
more than 16,000 Iraqis had been killed, of which 10,000 were
civilians (see the edition of Britain's Independent on Jan. 20, 2004). On April 2, 2003, the US armed forces attacked
a Baghdad maternity hospital installed by the Red Crescent,
a local market and other adjacent buildings for civilian use,
claiming a lot of human lives and injured at least 25 people.
Five cars were bombed and drivers were burned to death inside
their cars (see the edition of San Diego Union-Tribune,
US on Aug. 5, 2003).
Based on a report by Britain's Independent newspaper
on Feb. 8, 2004, more than 13,000 civilians, many of them
women and children, have been killed so far by the US army
and its allied forces in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in
the wake of Sept. 11 incident in 2001, "making the continuing
conflicts the most deadly wars for non-combatants waged by
the West since the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former US
President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, said "it is a serious
matter when the world's Number One superpower undertakes a
war claiming a causus belli that turns out to have been false."
(Washington Post on Feb. 2, 2004).
Depleted uranium (DU) shells and cluster bombs were used recklessly
during wars in violation of international laws. In December
2003, the Human Rights Watch disclosed in a report that the
13,000 cluster bombs US troops used in Iraq contained nearly
2 million bomblets, which have caused causalities of over
1,000 people. The "dub" cluster bombs that did not
blast on the spot continued to menace the lives of innocent
people. The US troops also used large quantities of depleted
uranium shells during their military operations in Iraq. The
quantity and residue of pollutants from these bombs far exceeded
those of the Gulf War in 1991. Through a spokesman for the
Central Command, the Pentagon acknowledged that ammunition
containing depleted uranium was used during the Iraq war.
Indeed, Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted
uranium project, former professor of environmental science
and onetime US army colonel, said after the Iraq War that
the willful use of DU bombs to contaminate any other nation
and bring harm to the people and their environment is a crime
against humanity (see Spain's Uprising newspaper
on June 2, 2003).
Another investigation report said that in the Iraqi capital
Baghdad alone, numerous places were found to have the amount
of radioactive materials that exceeded the normal level by
1,000 times. The US troops also used "Mark-77" napalm,
a kind of bomb banned by the United Nations, in Iraq, which
negatively impacted on environment there. On July 7, 2003,
Dato Param Cumaraswamy of the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights, openly voiced his shock at the fact that the
US Government did not abide by international human rights
rules and humanism in its counter-terrorism military actions.
(United Nations Rights Expert "Alarmed" over
United States Implementation of Military Order, United
Nations Press Release, July 7, 2003, www.un.org).
The United States put behind bars 3,000 Taliban and Al-Qaida
inmates in Afghanistan, 680 alleged die-hard Al-Qaida elements
from 40-odd countries in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and an undefined
number of prisoners in the US army base on Diego Garcia island
on the India Ocean leased from Britain. All these prisoners
locked upby the US were not indicted officially (Britain's Independent newspaper on June 26, 2004). The New
York Times quoted a high-ranking official from the US
Department of Defense on February 13,2003 as saying that the
United States planned to jail most of the prisoners currently
in Guantanamo for a long time or indefinitely. The US Government
said the detainees in Guantanamo were not "prisoners
of war" and therefore not subjected to the protection
of the Geneva Conventions.
"The main concern for us is the US authorities... have
effectively placed them beyond the law," said Amanda
Williamson, spokeswoman for the Washington office of the Geneva-based
International Committee of the Red Cross. (Overseas Chinese
newspaper in US, Oct. 11, 2003). A report entitled People
the Law Forgot, carried on the British Guardian in Dec.
2003, depicted the plight of the 600-odd foreigners detained
by the US in Guantanamo Bay. These people had been detained
in Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, where they were tortured
both mentally and physically (Britain's Guardian newspaper on Dec. 3, 2003). The detainees were given only
one minute a week for taking shower and only through a hunger
strike did they win the weekly five-minute shower time and
the weekly ten-minute break for physical exercises. At a clandestine
interrogation center of the US troops in Bagram of Afghanistan,
prisoners were even more tortured. They were forced to stand
or kneel down for hours in varied awkward positions while
wearing hoods over their heads or colored glasses. Exposed
to strong light 24 hours a day, they could not go to sleep
(Britain's Independent newspaper on June 26, 2003).
The US is the nation with the most troops stationed overseas,
about 364,000 troops in over 130 countries and regions. The
violations of human rights against local people frequently
occurred. In 2003, the US military authority received 88 reports
about "misbehavior" of its overseas troops. On May
25, 2003, a soldier of the US Marine Corps in Okinawa of Japan
wounded and raped a 19-year-old Japanese girl. The soldier
was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. In the
past dozen years, such cases occurred frequently in Okinawa
and up to 100 US soldiers have been reported of committing
crimes. On February 7, 2004, Australian police detained three
soldiers of the US Marine Corps suspected of committing sexual
harassment of two Australian women.
In September 2003, three officers and soldiers from the US
Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier robbed and seriously wounded a
taxi driver in Kanagawa-Ken of Japan. The three officers and
soldiers were sentenced to four years in prison. In October
2002, a female engineer in Baghdad of Iraq was handcuffed
and made to stand in the scorching sun for one hour because
she refused to be snuffed at by police dogs as she was taking
a copy of Alcoran with her. The case sparked large-scale protest
and demonstration in Iraq.
For a long time, the US State Department has been publishing Country Reports on Human Rights Practices every year.
It presumes to be the "Judge of Human Rights in the World"
and, regardless of the differences and disparities among different
countries in politics, economy, history, culture and social
development and strong opposition from other countries, denounces
other countries unreasonably for their human rights status
in compliance with its own ideology, value and human rights
model. Meanwhile, it has turned a blind eye to its own human
rights problems. This fully exposed the dual standards of
the US on human rights and its hegemonism. The human rights
record of the US is absolutely not in accord with its position
as a world power, which constitutes a strong irony against
its self-granted title of a big power in human rights. The
United States should take its own human rights problems seriously,
reflect on its erroneous position and behavior on human rights,
and stop its unpopular interference with other countries'
internal affairs under the pretext of promoting human rights. P
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