On Thursday, the Information Office of the State Council issued
its report on US human rights, in response to the Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004 issued by the US
State Department on February 28.
The Human
Rights Record of the United States in 2004 listed a
multitude of serious human rights violations that took place in the
American homeland.
This is the sixth consecutive year that the Information Office
has issued such a report after the release of the US Country
Reports.
The Chinese report reviewed the human rights record of the US
last year from six perspectives: Life, Liberty and Security of
Person; Political Rights and Freedoms; Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights; Racial Discrimination; Rights of Women and
Children; and Infringement of Human Rights of Foreign
Nationals.
US citizens are threatened by rampant violent crime and
infringement of civil rights by law enforcement departments, said
the report, quoting the US Department of Justice as saying on
November 29 that, in 2003, people aged 12 and above encountered 24
million crimes, including 1.38 million violent crimes like murder
and robbery, averaging 475 cases per 100,000 people.
"Police violence and infringement of human rights by law
enforcement agencies also constitute a serious problem," the report
said.
Chinese citizen Zhao Yan was handcuffed and severely beaten on
July 21 while she was in the US on a business trip. She suffered
injuries all over her body and serious mental distress, according
to the report.
It said that, though presented as "a paragon of democracy," the
US electoral system is actually manipulated by the rich.
The presidential and congressional elections last year cost
nearly US$4 billion, around a third more than that spent in the
2000 elections.
According to the US website www.opensecrets.org, the 2004
presidential election was the most expensive in the country's
history, with costs jumping to US$1.7 billion from US$1 billion in
2000.
Poverty, hunger and homelessness have also haunted the US, the
world richest country, according to the report.
It said the US refused to ratify the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and took a negative attitude
toward the economic, social and cultural rights of workers.
According to 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 report
said.?
Racial discrimination is deeply rooted in the US, said the
report, permeating every aspect of society.
It said that people of color are generally poor, with living
conditions much worse than that of white people. According to
The Guardian newspaper on October 9, the average net
assets of a white family was US$88,000 in 2002, 11 times that of a
family of Latin American ancestry, and nearly 15 times that of a
family of African ancestry.
Racial prejudice is ubiquitous in judicial fields, the report
said. The US Department of Justice said in November that non-white
people accounted for over 70 percent of inmates.
The situation of women and children was also disturbing, with
rates of those physically or sexually victimized high, said the
report.
According to FBI figures, in 2003 there were 93,233 cases of
rape, affecting 63 in every 100,000 women. The US Labor Department
said in January 2004 that women working full time had a median
income 81.1 percent of that of a man.
Child poverty was also identified as a serious problem. A story
released by AP Washington on October 12 said that about 20 million
children lived in "low-income working families" with barely enough
money to cover basic needs.
Children were also victims of sex crimes; every year about
400,000 children in the US were forced to engage in prostitution or
other forms of sexual exploitation on the streets.
The atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the
infringement of human rights of foreign nationals by the US, said
the report.
The International Committee of the Red Cross believed that abuse
of detained Iraqis in the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison was not a
single case but a result of systematic behavior, the report
said.
It pointed out that a survey of Iraqi civilian deaths, basing
comparisons on natural death rates before the war, estimated that
the US-led invasion might have led to 100,000 more deaths in the
country, with most victims being women and children.
Jointly designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins
University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University
in Baghdad, the survey also found that the majority of the
additional deaths since the invasion were violent, and of these the
main cause was coalition force air strikes.
Despite problems in its own human rights record, the US
continues to stick to a belligerent stance, trampling on the
sovereignty of other countries, said the report.
The report concluded that the US should reflect on its own
behavior and take its own human rights problems seriously instead
of indulging itself in publishing reports on other countries.
(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2005)