The State Department of the United States released its
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011 on May
24, 2012. As in previous years, the reports are full of
over-critical remarks on the human rights situation in
nearly 200 countries and regions as well as distortions and
accusations concerning the human rights cause in China.
However, the United States turned a blind eye to its own
woeful human rights situation and kept silent about it. The
Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 is hereby
prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the
United States to people across the world and urge the United
States to face up to its own doings.
I.
On life, property and personal security
The United States has mighty strength in human,
financial and material resources to exert effective control
over violent crimes. However, its society is chronically
suffering from violent crimes, and its citizens' lives,
properties and personal security are in lack of proper
protection.
A report published by the US Department of Justice on
Sept 15, 2011, revealed that in 2010 the US residents aged
12 and above experienced 3.8 million violent victimizations,
1.4 million serious violent victimizations, 14.8 million
property victimizations and 138,000 personal thefts. The
violent victimization rate was 15 victimizations per 1,000
residents (www.bjs.gov). The crime rate surged in many
cities and regions in the United States. In the southern
region of the United States, there were 452 violent crimes
and 3,438.8 property crimes per 100,000 inhabitants (in
2010) on average (The Wall Street Journal, Sept 20, 2011).
Just four weeks into 2011, San Francisco saw eight homicides
- compared with five during the same time of the previous
year, with Oakland racking up 11, when the previous year in
the same period it had four (The San Francisco Chronicle,
Jan 29, 2011). Grand larcenies in the subway in New York
City increased from 852 in 2010 to 1,075 cases in the first
nine months of 2011, a 25 percent jump (The China Press,
Sept 24, 2011). Homicide cases in Detroit in 2011 saw a 13.5
percent rise over 2010 (www.buzzle.com). Between January and
October 2011, a total of 123,924 serious crime cases took
place in Chicago (portal.chicagopolice.org). An
anti-bullying public service announcement declared in
January 2011 that more than six million schoolchildren
experienced bullying in the previous six months (CNN, Mar
10, 2011). According to statistics from the Family First
Aid, almost 30 percent of teenagers in the United States are
estimated to be involved in school bullying
(www.familyfirstaid.org).
The United States prioritizes the right to keep and
bear arms over the protection of citizens' lives and
personal security and exercises lax firearm possession
control, causing rampant gun ownership. The US people hold
between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world' s
civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns
(Online edition of the Foreign Policy, Jan 9, 2011).
According to a Gallup poll in October 2011, 47 percent of
American adults reported that they had a gun. That was an
increase of six percentage points from a year ago and the
highest Gallup had recorded since 1993. Fifty-two percent of
middle-aged adults, aged between 35 and 54, reported to own
guns, and the adults' gun ownership in the south region was
54 percent (The China Press, Oct 28, 2011). The New York
Times reported on Nov 14, 2011, that since 1995, more than
3,300 felons and people convicted of domestic violence
misdemeanors had regained their gun rights in the state of
Washington and of that number, more than 400 had
subsequently committed new crimes, including shooting and
other felonies (The New York Times, Nov 14, 2011).
The United States is the leader among the world's
developed countries in gun violence and gun deaths.
According to a report of the Foreign Policy on Jan 9, 2011,
over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence and
another 200,000 Americans are estimated to be injured each
year due to guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, Jan
9, 2011). According to statistics released by the US
Department of Justice, among the 480,760 robbery cases and
188,380 rape and sexual assault cases in 2010, the rates of
victimization involving firearms were 29 percent and 7
percent, respectively (www.bjs.gov). On Jun 2, 2011, a
shooting rampage in Arizona left six people dead and one
injured (The China Press, Jun 3, 2011). In Chicago, more
than 10 overnight shooting incidents took place just between
the evening of Jun 3 and the morning of Jun 4 (Chicago
Tribune, Jun 4, 2011). Another five overnight shootings
occurred between Aug 12 evening and Aug 13 morning in
Chicago. These incidents have caused a number of deaths and
injuries (Chicago Tribune, Aug 13, 2011). Shooting spree
cases involving one gunman shooting dead over five people
also happened in the states of Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Nevada
and Southern California (The New York Times, Oct 13, 2011;
CNN, Jul 8, 2011; CBS, Jul 23, 2011;USA Today, Aug 9, 2011).
High incidence of gun-related crimes has long ignited
complaints of the US people and they stage multiple protests
every year, demanding the government strictly control the
private possession of arms. The US government, however,
fails to pay due attention to this issue.
II.
On civil and political rights
In the United States, the violation of citizens' civil
and political rights is severe. It is lying to itself when
the United States calls itself the land of the free (The
Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).
Claiming to defend 99 percent of the US population
against the wealthiest, the Occupy Wall Street protest
movement tested the US political, economic and social
systems. Ignited by severe social and economic inequality,
uneven distribution of wealth and high unemployment, the
movement expanded to sweep the United States after its
inception in September 2011. Whatever the deep reasons for
the movement are, the single fact that thousands of
protesters were treated in a rude and violent way, with many
of them being arrested - the act of willfully trampling on
people' s freedom of assembly, demonstration and speech -
could provide a glimpse to the truth of the so-called US
freedom and democracy.
Almost 1,000 people were reportedly arrested in first
two weeks of the movement, according to British and
Australian media (The Guardian, Oct 2, 2011). The New York
police arrested more than 700 protesters for alleged
blocking traffic over Brooklyn Bridge on Oct 1, and some of
them were handcuffed to the bridge before being shipped by
police vehicles (uschinapress.com, Oct 3, 2011). On Oct 9,
92 people were arrested in New York (The New York Times, Oct
15, 2011). The Occupy Wall Street movement was forced out of
its encampment at Zuccotti Park and more than 200 people
were arrested on Nov 15 (The Guardian, Nov 25, 2011).
Chicago police arrested around 300 members of the Occupy
Chicago protest in two weeks (The Herald Sun, Oct 24, 2011).
At least 85 people were arrested when police used teargas
and baton rounds to break up an Occupy Wall Street camp in
Oakland, California on Oct 25. An Iraq war veteran had a
fractured skull and brain swelling after being allegedly hit
in the head by a police projectile (The Guardian, Oct 26,
2011). A couple of hundred people were arrested when
demonstrations were staged in different US cities to mark
the Occupy Wall Street movement' s two-month anniversary on
Nov 17 (USA Today, Nov 18, 2011). Among them, at least 276
were arrested in New York only. Some protesters were
bloodied as they were hauled away. Many protesters accused
the police of treating them in a brutal way (The Wall Street
Journal, Nov 18, 2011). As a US opinion article put it, the
United States could be considered, at least in part,
authoritarian. (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).
While advocating press freedom, the United States in
fact imposes fairly strict censoring and control over the
press and "press freedom" is just a political tool used to
beautify itself and attack other nations. The US Congress
failed to pass laws on protecting rights of reporters' news
sources, according to media reports. An increasing number of
American reporters lost jobs for "improper remarks on
politics." US reporter Helen Thomas resigned for critical
remarks about Israel in June 2010 ("Report: On the situation
with human rights in a host of world states," the website of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, Dec 28, 2011).
While forcibly evacuating the Zuccotti Park, the original
Occupy Wall Street encampment, the New York police blocked
journalists from covering the police actions. They set
cordon lines to prevent reporters from getting close to the
park and closed airspace to make aerial photography
impossible. In addition to using pepper spray against
reporters, the police also arrested around 200 journalists,
including reporters from NPR and the New York Times
(uschinapress.com, Nov 15, 2011). By trampling on press
freedom and public interests, these actions by the US
authorities caused a global uproar. US mainstream media' s
response to the Occupy Wall Street movement revealed the
hypocrisy in handling issues of freedom and democracy. Poll
by Pew Research Center indicated that in the second week of
the movement, reports on the movement only accounted for
1.68 percent of the total media reports by nationwide media
organizations. On Oct 15, 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street
movement evolved to be a global action, CNN and Fox News
gave no live reports on it, in a sharp contrast to the
square protest in Cairo, for which both CNN and Fox News
broadcast live 24 hours.
The US imposes fairly strict restriction on the
Internet, and its approach "remains full of problems and
contradictions." (The website of the Foreign Policy
magazine, Feb 17, 2011) "Internet freedom" is just an excuse
for the United States to impose diplomatic pressure and seek
hegemony.
The US Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have
clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government
or law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block
any Internet content "harmful to national security."
Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010
stipulates that the federal government has "absolute power"
to shut down the Internet under a declared national
emergency. According to a report by British newspaper the
Guardian dated Mar 17, 2011, the US military is developing
software that will let it secretly manipulate social media
sites by using fake online personas, and will allow the US
military to create a false consensus in online
conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother
commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own
objectives. The project aims to control and restrict free
speech on the Internet (The Guardian, Mar 17, 2011).
According to a commentary by the Voice of Russia on Feb 2,
2012, a subsidiary under the US government' s security
agency employed several hundred analysts, who were tasked
with monitoring private archives of foreign Internet users
in a secret way, and were able to censor as many as five
million microblogging posts. The US Department of Homeland
Security routinely searched key words like "illegal
immigrants," "virus," "death," and "burst out" on Twitter
with fake accounts and then secretly traced the Internet
users who forwarded related content. According to a report
by the Globe and Mail on Jan 30, 2012, Leigh Van Bryan, a
British, prior to his flight to the US, wrote in a Twitter
post, "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and
destroy America?" As a result, Bryan along with a friend
were handcuffed and put in lockdown with suspected drug
smugglers for 12 hours by armed guards after landing in Los
Angeles International Airport, just like "terrorists". Among
many angered by the incident in Britain, an Internet user
posted a comment, "What's worse, being arrested for an
innocent tweet, or the fact that the American Secret Service
monitors every electronic message in the world?"
The US democracy is increasingly being influenced by
capitalization and becoming a system for "master of money."
Data issued by the US Center for Responsive Politics in
November 2011 show that 46 percent of the US federal
senators and members of the House of Representatives have
personal assets of more than a million dollars. That well
explains why US administration' s plans to impose higher tax
on the rich who earn more than one million dollars annually
have been blocked in the Congress (www.finance-ol.com). As a
commentary put it, money has emerged as the electoral trump
card in the US political system, and corporations have a
Supreme Court-recognized right to use their considerable
financial muscle to promote candidates and policies
favorable to their business operations and to resist
policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their
business interests (Online edition of Time, Jan 20, 2011).
According to a media report, nearly two thirds of all the
contributions that the chairman of the House Financial
Services Committee received during the 2010 election cycle
came from industries regulated by his committee. A ranking
Democrat Representative on the Agriculture Committee, who
served as chairman between 2007 and 2010, saw a 711 percent
increase in contributions from groups regulated by his
committee and a 274 percent increase in contributions over
all, in the same period (The New York Times, Nov 16, 2011).
According to a Washington Post report on Aug 10, 2011,
nearly eight in 10 of Americans polled were dissatisfied
with the way the political system is working, with 45
percent saying they are very dissatisfied (The Washington
Post, Aug 10, 2011).
The US continued to violate the freedom of its
citizens in the name of boosting security levels (The
Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012). The Electronic Frontier
Foundation in 2011 released a report, "Patterns of
Misconduct: FBI intelligence violations from 2001-2008,"
which reveals that domestic political intelligence apparatus
spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
continues to systematically violate the rights of American
citizens and legal residents. The report shows that the
actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001
to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law,
Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence
investigations. The FBI issued some 200,000 requests and
that almost 60 percent were for investigations of US
citizens and legal residents (www.pacificfreepress.com). The
New York Times reported on Oct 20, 2011, that the FBI has
collected information about religious, ethnic and
national-origin characteristics of American communities (The
New York Times, Oct 20, 2011). According to a Washington
Post commentary dated Jan 14, 2012, the US government can
use "national security letters" to demand, without probable
cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens'
finances, communications and associations, and order
searches of everything from business documents to library
records. The US government can use GPS devices to monitor
every move of targeted citizens without securing any court
order or review (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).
Abuse of power, brutal enforcement of law and overuse
of force by US police have resulted in harassment and hurt
to a large number of innocent citizens and have caused loss
of freedom of some people or even deaths. According to a
report carried by the World Journal on Jun 10, 2011, the
past decade saw increasing stop-and-frisks by the New York
police, which recorded an annual of 600,000 cases in 2010,
almost double of that in 2004. In the first three months of
2011, some 180,000 people experienced stop-and-frisks, 88
percent of whom were innocent people (World Journal, Jun 10,
2011). In early July of 2011, two police officers beat a
mentally ill homeless man to death in Orange County,
Southern California (FoxNews.com, Sept 21, 2011). In August
2011, North Miami police shot and killed a man carrying
realistic toy gun (The NY Daily News, Sept 1, 2011). On Jan
8, 2011, a Central California man was shot and killed by the
police, who thought of him as a gang member only because the
jacket he was wearing was red, "the chosen color of a local
street gang." (www.kolotv.com, Jan 19, 2011) In May 2011,
Arizona' s police officers raided the home of Jose Guerena
and shot him dead in what was described as an investigation
into alleged marijuana trafficking. However, the police
later found nothing illegal in his home (The Huffington
Post, May 25, 2011). Misjudged and wrongly-handled cases
continued to occur. According to media reports, Anthony
Graves, a Texas man, was imprisoned for 18 years for crimes
he did not commit (CBS News, Jun 22, 2011).
Forty-six-year-old Thomas Haynesworth spent 27 years in
prison after being arrested at the age of 18 for crimes he
didn't commit (Union Press International, Dec 7, 2011). Eric
Caine, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment
after being tortured by police into confessing to two
murders, spent nearly 25 years behind bars.(Chicago Tribune,
Jun 13, 2011).
The US lacks basic due lawsuit process protections,
and its government continues to claim the right to strip
citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion
(The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012). The National Defense
Authorization Act, signed Dec 31, 2011, allows for the
indefinite detention of citizens (The Washington Post, Jan
14, 2012). The Act will place domestic terror investigations
and interrogations into the hands of the military and which
would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of
anyone, including American citizens, so long as the
government calls them terrorists (www.forbes.com, Dec 5,
2011).
The US remains the country with the largest "prison
population" and the highest per capita level of imprisonment
in the world, and the detention centers' conditions are
terrible. According to the US Department of Justice, the
number of prisoners amounted to 2.3 million in 2009 and one
in every 132 American citizens is behind bars. Meanwhile,
more than 140,000 are serving life sentences (Report: On the
situation with human rights in a host of world states, the
website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, Dec 28,
2011). According to a Los Angeles Times report on May 24,
2011, in a California prison, as many as 54 inmates may
share a single toilet and as many as 200 prisoners may live
in a gymnasium (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2011). According
to data issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the
estimated number of prison and jail inmates experiencing
sexual victimization totaled 88,500 in the US between
October 2008 and December 2009 (www.bjs.gov). Since April
2011, officials stopped serving lunch on the weekend in some
US prisons as a way to cut food-service costs. About 23,000
inmates in 36 prisons are eating two meals a day on
Saturdays and Sundays instead of three (The New York Times,
Oct 20, 2011). Harsh conditions and treatment in prisons
have caused recurring protests and suicides of inmates.
There were two major hunger strikes in California prisons
staged by a total of more than 6,000 and 12,000 prisoners in
July and October 2011, respectively, to protest against what
they call harsh treatment and detention conditions (CNN, Oct
4, 2011; The New York Times, July 7, 2011). According to a
Chicago Tribune report on July 20, 2011, since 2000, at
least 175 youths have attempted to kill themselves inside
Department of Juvenile Justice lockup facilities in Chicago
and seven youths committed suicide. The UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture in a 2011 report noted that in the US,
an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 individuals are being held in
isolation, and the US government in 2011 for twice turned
down the Special Rapporteur's request for a private and
unmonitored meeting with detainees held in isolation.
III.
On economic, social and cultural rights
The United States is the world's richest country, but
quite a lot of Americans still lack guarantee for their
economic, social and cultural rights, which are necessary
for personal dignity and self-development.
The United States has not done enough to protect its
citizens from unemployment. At no time in the last 60 years
had the country's long-term unemployment been so high for so
long as it was in 2011. It has been one of the Western
developed countries that provide the poorest protection of
laborer's rights. It has not approved any international
labor organization convention in the last 10 years.
Moreover, the US lacks an effective arbitration system to
deal with enterprises that refuse to compromise with
employees. The New York Times reported on Dec 12, 2011, that
at last count, 13.3 million people were officially
unemployed and that 5.7 million of them had been out of work
for more than six months (The New York Times, Dec 12, 2011).
The unemployment rate was 8.9 percent for 2011 (www.bls.gov),
and the unemployment rate for American youths between 25 and
34 stood at 26 percent in October of that year (The World
Journal, Nov 18, 2011), with more underemployed. A total of
84 metropolitan areas reported jobless rates of at least
10.0 percent, and El Centro, California, recorded the
highest unemployment rate of 29.6 percent in September of
2011 (www.bls.gov). The unemployed people suffered from not
only financial pressures but also mental pressures including
anxiety and depression.
There is a widening of the gap between the extreme top
and bottom (The USA Today, Sept 13, 2011), showing apparent
unfair wealth distribution. The United States claims to have
a large population of middle class, making up 80 percent of
its total population, while there is only very few
impoverished and extremely rich people (The China Press, Oct
13, 2011). However, this is not the truth. According to the
report issued by the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on
Oct 25, 2011, the richest one percent of American families
have the fastest growth of family revenue from 1979 to 2007
with an increase of 275 percent for after-tax income, while
the after-tax income of the poorest 20 percent grew by only
18 percent (The World Journal, Oct 26, 2011). Cable News
Network reported on Feb 16, 2011, that in the last 20 years,
incomes for 90 percent of Americans have been stuck in
neutral, while the richest 1 percent of Americans have seen
their incomes grow by 33 percent. Economic Policy Institute
published a paper on Oct 26, 2011, saying that in 2009 the
ratio of wealth owned by the wealthiest one percent to the
wealth owned by median households was 225 to 1 (www.epi.org).
Besides, in the United States, the best-off 10 percent made
on average 15 times the incomes of the poorest 10 percent
(Reuters, Dec 9, 2011). The wealthiest 400 Americans have
$1.5 trillion in assets (The China Press, Oct 13, 2011), or
the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans -
more than 150 million people (www.currydemocrats.org). The
annual incomes of the richest 10 chief executive officers
(CEO) were enough to pay the salary of 18,330 employees (The
World Journal, Oct 16, 2011). Roughly 11 percent of Congress
members had net worth of more than $9 million, and 249
members were millionaires. The median net worth: $891,506,
was almost nine times the typical household (The USA Today,
Nov 16, 2011). A commentary by the Spiegel said that the US
has developed into an economic entity of "winners take all".
American politician Larry Bartels said that fundamental
shifts in wealth allocation was caused by political
decisions rather than the consequences of market forces or
financial crisis (The Spiegel, Oct 24, 2011).
Contrary to the wealthiest 10 percent, the number of
Americans living in poverty as well as the poverty rate
continued to hit record highs, which is a great irony in
affluent America. A report published by the Census Bureau on
Sept 13, 2011, showed that 46.2 million people lived below
the official poverty line in 2010, 2.6 million more than
2009, hitting the highest record since 1959. The report also
said that the percentage of American who lived below the
poverty line in 2010 was 15.1 percent, the highest level
since 1993. An analysis done by the Brookings Institution
estimated that at the current rate, the recession would have
added nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor by
the middle of the decade. According to the analysis, 22
percent of children were in poverty (The New York Times,
Sept 13, 2011). Another survey showed that 12 states of the
US had poverty rates above 17 percent, with Mississippi's
poverty rate standing at 22.4 percent (The Huffington Post,
Oct 21, 2011). The US has grown into a country dependent on
food stamps (Reuters, Aug 22, 2011). The percentage of
Americans who did not have enough money to buy food grew
from 9 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2011 (The World
Journal, Oct 15, 2011). In 2010, 17.2 million households, or
14.5 percent, were food insecure (www. Worldhunger. org). In
2011, 46 million Americans lived on food stamps, about 15
percent of the total population, up 74 percent from 2007
(Reuters, Aug 22, 2011).
Millions of homeless people wandered around streets.
Reports said that about 2.3 million to 3.5 million Americans
did not have a place that they call home to sleep in the
night (www.homelessnessinamerica.com). Between 2007 and
2010, the number of homeless families grew by 20 percent
(The Huffington Post, Aug 26, 2011). Over the past five
years, the percentage of singles arriving at shelters after
living with family or elsewhere in the community has jumped
from 39 percent to 66 percent (The USA Today, Dec 9, 2011).
There was an all-time record of more than 41,000 homeless
people in New York City, including 17,000 homeless children
(www.coalitionforthehomeless.org). On any given night in
Santa Clara County, California, 7,045 people were homeless
according to a 2011 Santa Clara County Homeless Census and
Survey (www.santaclaraweekly.com). And advocates estimated
that Chicago had up to 3,000 homeless youths in need of
shelter on any given night (www.chicagonewscoop.org).
The US declared it has the best healthcare service in
the world, but quite a lot of Americans could not enjoy due
medication and healthcare. The Cable News Network reported
on Sept 13, 2011, that the number of people who lacked
health insurance in 2010 climbed to 49.9 million (Cable News
Network, Sept 13, 2011). Bloomberg reported on March 16,
2011, that 9 million Americans have lost health insurance
during the past two years. An additional 73 million adults
had difficulties paying for healthcare and 75 million
deferred treatment because they could not afford it
(Bloomberg, March 16, 2011).
Death and infection risks caused by AIDS grew. Since
the first American patient was diagnosed with AIDS in 1981,
600,000 people have died from the disease in the US By the
end of 2008, 1,178,350 Americans had been infected with AIDS
(The China Press, June 3, 2011). AFP reported that nearly
three quarters of Americans with HIV do not have their
infection under control and one in five people with human
immunodeficiency virus are unaware that they have the
disease. Among people who know their HIV status is positive,
only 51 percent get ongoing medical treatment (AFP, Nov 29,
2011). Statistics given by the US Center for Disease Control
and Prevention showed that, in the last 10 years, death
caused by prescription drugs in America had doubled and that
one would die from taking prescription drug every 14
minutes. Prescription drug overdose caused 37,485 deaths in
2009, exceeding traffic fatalities (The China Press, Sept
19, 2011).
The US government has significantly cut the expense on
education, reduced teaching staff, and shortened school
hours with tuition fees soaring. The guarantee for
teenagers' rights to education is weakening. The New York
Times reported on Oct 3, 2011, that since 2007, school
budgets in New York city have been cut by 13.7 percent every
year on average. Since 2008, 294,000 posts in the American
education industry, including schools of higher education,
have been cut (The China Press, Oct 25, 2011). Four-day per
week classes have been practiced in 292 school districts,
which was only put into use during the financial crisis in
the 1930s and the oil crisis in the 1970s (The World
Journal, Oct 30, 2011). A report by College Board showed
that the average tuition fee of American four-year public
universities in the school year of 2011 through 2012 was
$8,244, $631 more than the last school year, up 8.3 percent
(The China Press, Oct 27, 2011). About 3,000 people gathered
on Sproul Plaza to protest tuition increases at Berkeley on
Nov 9, 2011 (The New York Times, Nov 13, 2011). Reuters
reported that two-thirds of undergraduate students would
graduate with student loans about $25,000 on average owing
to expensive college tuition (Reuters, Feb 1, 2011).
Native American culture in the United States has long
been suppressed. The country assimilated the Native American
culture through legislation and mainstream culture. At the
end of the 19th century, the United States carried out
"white man's education" and implemented compulsory
English-only education. Most of the people who now speak
Native American languages are the seniors living in
reservations. It is estimated that only five percent of
Native Americans will speak their own languages 50 years
later if there are no measures from the US government.
The financial crisis was far from being the sole
reason for the inadequate guarantee of Americans' economic,
social and cultural rights. So far, the US has not approved
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights. The above problems concerning human rights are the
reflection of the US ideology and political system that
ignore people's economic, social and cultural rights.
IV.
On racial discrimination
Ethnic minorities in the United States have long been
suffering systemic, widespread and institutional
discrimination. And racial discrimination has become an
indelible characteristic and symbol of American values.
Ethnic minorities have low political, economic and
social positions due to discrimination. The number of ethnic
people in civil service is not proportional to their
population. New York Times reported on June 23, 2011, that
the number of Asian Americans in New York City has topped
one million, nearly 1 in 8 New Yorkers, but only one
Asian-American serves in the State Legislature, two on the
City Council and one in a citywide post of the New York
City. According to the annual report released by the
National Urban League of the US, African-Americans' 2011
Equality Index is currently 71.5 percent, compared to 2010's
72.1 percent, among which the economic equality index
declined from 57.9 percent to 56.9 percent, and the health
index, from 76.6 percent to 75 percent, and the index in the
area of social justice, from 57.9 percent to 56.9 percent.
Ethnic Americans are badly discriminated against when
it comes to employment. It was reported that the
unemployment rate of Hispanics rose to 11 percent in 2010
from 5.7 percent in 2007 (The New York Times, Sept 28,
2011). The unemployment rate of African Americans was 16.2
percent. For black males, it's at 17.5 percent; and for
black youth, it's nearly 41 percent, 4.5 times the national
average unemployment rate (CBS News, June 19, 2011).
Nationally, black joblessness stands at 21 percent, rising
to as high as 40 percent in major urban centers such as
Detroit (The Wall Street Journal, Aug 31, 2011). In Ziebach
County of South Dakota, a community mainly composed of
Native Americans, more than 60 percent of the residents live
at or below the poverty line, and unemployment rate hits 90
percent in the winter (The Daily Mail, Feb 15, 2011). A
study shows that of the seven occupations with the highest
salaries, six are overrepresented by whites (Washington
Post, Oct 21, 2011).
The poverty rate of African Americans doubles that of
whites, and the ethnic minority groups suffer severe social
inequalities. According to a report by the Pew Research
Center released in June 2011, the median wealth of white
households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times
that of Hispanic households (pewresearch.org). In 2010,
poverty among blacks rose to 27.4 percent, and poverty among
Hispanics increased to 26.6 percent, much higher than the
9.9-percent poverty rate among whites (www.census.gov). A
Pew Research Center report says the lopsided wealth ratios
among whites, Hispanics and African-Americans in 2009 were
the largest in the past 25 years (pewresearch.org).
According to an investigation done by the Washington-based
Bread for the World, "black children are suffering from
poverty at a rate of nearly 40 percent, and over a quarter
of Blacks reported going hungry in 2010". "The figures are
both startling and very telling," said Rev Derrick Boykin
(www.amsterdam.com).
Ethnic minorities are denied equal education
opportunities, and ethnic minority kids are discriminated
against and bullied in schools. According to a report by the
US Census Bureau on June 8, 2011, in 2008, among 18-to
24-year-olds, 22 percent were not enrolled in high schools
for Hispanics, 13 percent for African-Americans, whereas
only 6 percent for whites (www.census.gov). US Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan said on Oct 28, 2011, one-third of
American students are bullied at schools, and Asian-American
children bear the brunt. The teases and insults they get in
cyber space are three times more compared with kids from
other ethnic groups. A research finds 54 percent of
Asian-American students have been bullied in schools, 38.4
percent for African-Americans and 34.3 percent for Hispanics
(World Journal Oct 29, 2011).
Ethnic minorities and non-Christians are also badly
discriminated against in fields such as law enforcement,
justice and religion, rendering the so-claimed ethnic
equality and religious freedom nothing but self-glorifying
forged labels. A New York Times story (Dec 17, 2011) says
the New York Police Department recorded more than 600,000
stops in 2010 and 84 percent of those stopped were blacks or
Latinos. It was reported that black non-Hispanic males are
incarcerated at a rate more than six times that of white
non-Hispanic males (World Report 2011: United States,
www.hrw.org). On Dec 1, 2011, the American Civil Liberties
Union said that "the FBI is using its extensive community
outreach to Muslims and other groups to secretly gather
intelligence in violation of federal law". (Washington Post,
Dec 2, 2011) A survey by Pew Research Center finds that 52
percent of Muslim-Americans surveyed said their group is
under government's surveillance, about 28 percent said they
had been treated or viewed with suspicion and 21 percent
said they were singled out by airport security
(articles.boston.com). More than half of Muslim-Americans in
another poll said government anti-terrorism policies singled
them out for increased surveillance and monitoring, and many
reported increased cases of name-calling, threats and
harassment by airport security, law enforcement officers and
others (Washington Times, Aug 30, 2011).
Illegal immigrants also live under legal and
systematic discrimination. It was reported that after
Arizona passed its anti-illegal immigration bill, Alabama
began implementing its immigration law on Sept 28, 2011. The
Alabama immigration law provides differentiated treatments
to illegal immigrants in each of its term, rendering their
daily lives rather difficult. Critics argued that the law
runs counter to the US Constitution and to certain terms in
relevant international human rights law regarding granting
equal protections to illegal immigrants (www.hrw.org). The
New York Times reported on May 13, 2011, that Georgia passed
an anti-illegal immigration law which outlaws illegal
immigrants working in the state and empowers local police
officers to question certain suspects about their
immigration status. Illegal immigrants suffer ferocious
mistreatments. Internal reports from the Office of Detention
Oversight of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
revealed grave problems in many US detention facilities for
immigrants, including lack of medical care, the use of
excessive force and "abusive treatment" of detainees (The
Houston Chronicle, Oct 10, 2011). A report released on Sept
21, 2011, by an Arizona-based non-profit organization
revealed that thousands of illegal immigrants detained
across the border between Mexico and Arizona are generally
mistreated by US border police, being denied enough food,
water, medical care and sleep, even beaten up and confined
in extreme coldness or heat, suffering both psychological
abuse and threats of death (The World Journal, Sept 24,
2011).
Native Americans are denied their due rights. From
January to February 2011, UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya
lodged two accusations against the United States, including
accusing the Arizona State government of approving the use
of recycled wastewater for commercial ski operations on the
San Francisco Peaks, a site considered sacred by several
Native American tribes (www.forgottennavajopeople.org), as
well as the case of imprisoned indigenous activist Leonard
Peltier. Peltier was sentenced to life in prison in 1977 for
the alleged murder of two FBI agents. However, Peltier has
been claiming he is innocent and persecuted by the US
government for participating in the American Indian Movement
(www.ohchr.org). On April 26, 2011, Farida Shaheed,
independent expert in the field of cultural rights, Heiner
Bielefeldt, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or
belief, and James Anaya, special rapporteur on the rights of
indigenous peoples, of the UN Human Rights Council, jointly
lodged accusations against the US, claiming that the city of
Vallejo, California, is planning to level and pave over the
Sogorea Te, held sacred to indigenous people in northern
California, in order to construct a parking lot and public
restrooms (www.treatycouncil.org).
Race-motivated hate crimes occur frequently. According
to an FBI report, 6,628 hate crime incidents were reported
in 2010, 2,201 of which were against African-Americans, 534
against Hispanics and 575 against whites. And 47.3 percent
of all were motivated by racial bias, 20 percent by religion
and 12.8 percent by an ethnicity/national origin bias
(ww.fbi.gov). According to a report released by the Center
for American Progress in August 2011, seven American
charitable groups, over the past decade, had spent 42.6
million US dollars on inciting hatred against Muslim
communities (The New York Times, Nov 13, 2011). There are
three active white supremacy groups in the city of San
Francisco, which focus on attacking ethnic minorities and
immigrants (www.abclocal.go.com). On Nov 10, 2010, two
Mexican nationals were beaten by a group of whites who were
members of these organizations (www.sfappeal.com). According
to an investigation, black men aged 15 to 29 years old were
most likely to be victims of murders. In New York City, they
make up less than 3 percent of the city's population but in
2010 represented 33 percent of all homicide victims (The
Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2011).
The sufferings of civil rights activists who oppose
racial discriminations arouse attention. The Huffington Post
reported on May 31, 2011, Catrina Wallace, a civil rights
activist in Jena, Louisiana, was sentenced to 15 years in
prison by authorities only based on a drug dealer's
accusation. Previously, Wallace had taken part in organizing
a 50,000-people protest against racial discrimination that
won freedom for six black high school students. The article
deemed the sentence was revenge taken by authorities on
Wallace's human rights activism. "I am a freedom fighter,"
she says. "I fight for people's rights."
V.
On the rights of women and children
To date, the US has ratified neither the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women, nor the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As the
US neglects the rights of women and children, their
situation deteriorates.
Gender discrimination against women widely exists in
the US. According to statistics, women are not fully
represented in governments at all levels in the US, as women
hold only 17 percent of the seats in Congress (www.wcffoundation.org).
Women doing the same work as men often get less payment in
the US, and the wage gap has narrowed by only 18 cents in
the past half century (www.thedailybeast.com). According to
a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union, in
2009, women working full-time, year-round were paid 77 cents
on average for every dollar paid to men (www.aclu.org).
Women in the US widely suffer discrimination in terms of
employment, promotion and work. A new study confirms that
American tech companies are woefully behind in including
women among their board members and highest-paid executives.
On average, fewer than one in 28 of the highest-paid tech
executives is a woman. At California's biggest public
companies, only about 10 percent of the board members and
top executives are women (The New York Times, Dec 9, 2011).
The poverty rate among American women reached a record
high. According to data from the US Census Bureau, over 17
million women lived in poverty in 2010, including more than
7.5 million in extreme poverty and 4.7 million single
mothers in poverty. The poverty rate among women climbed to
14.5 percent in 2010 from 13.9 percent in 2009, the highest
in 17 years; the extreme poverty rate among women climbed to
6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009, the highest
rate ever recorded (www.merchantcircle.com). According to a
report of the Associated Press on April 12, 2011, a single
mother named Lashanda Armstrong drove her four kids in a
minivan into the Hudson river in Newburgh, New York, due to
the unbearable burden of raising the kids. Only her
10-year-old boy survived.
Women in the US often experience discrimination,
violence and sexual assault. Ethnic minority women face
discrimination during pregnancy. According to a report
provided by the LAMB (The Los Angeles Mommy and Baby
Project), 32.4 percent of Asian-American mothers felt
discriminated against during pregnancy, second only to
African-American mothers among whom the ratio amounts to
47.9 percent, while the ratio among Latin American mothers
is 31.1 percent (The China Press, June 1, 2011). According
to statistics from the website of the Los Angeles Police
Department, more than 2 million American women are victims
of domestic violence annually. The National Intimate Partner
and Sexual Violence Survey shows nearly one in five women
has been raped in her lifetime, and one in four has
experienced serious physical violence from an intimate
partner at some point in her life (Los Angeles Times,
December 14, 2011). Throughout the military, sexual assault
affects about 19 percent of female troops but most of them
choose to keep silent, according to a survey of sexual
assault conducted by the US military (www.csmonitor.com).
From March to October in 2011, a string of 20 sexual
assaults happened in Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Park Slope
and the victims were all young women (The New York Times,
Oct 19, 2011). Reports say many of the 1 million women in
prison in the US experienced harsh treatment and even had
their arms and legs chained when they were giving birth
(www.globalissues.org).
The poverty rate for children in the US reached a
record high. According to the report released by the US
Census Bureau, more than 1 million children were added to
the poverty population between 2009 and 2010, making the
total number of children living below the poverty line reach
more than 15 million, the greatest since 2001. The poverty
rate for children in 2010 climbed to 21.6 percent in 2010
from 20 percent in 2009, with 653 counties seeing a
significant increase in poverty rate for children aged 5 to
17 and about one-third of counties having school-age poverty
rates above the national poverty rate (www.census.gov). The
Daily Mail reported on Aug 17, 2011, that child poverty
increased in 38 states from 2000 to 2009 and Mississippi is
the state with the highest level of 31 percent. The US
Census Bureau said that children living in poverty,
especially small children, are more likely to develop
cognitive and behavioral difficulties and may have a shorter
education time and a longer time being unemployed when they
grow up (The China Press, Nov 21, 2011).
The number of homeless children has surged. In 2010,
1.6 million children in the US were living on the street, in
homeless shelters or motels, up 33 percent from that in
2007, according to the National Center on Family
Homelessness (USA Today, Dec 15, 2011). According to the
Education Department of New York, there are 53,503 homeless
students and children of 3 to 21 years old in New York, and
the Homeless Service Department's count also shows an
average of 6,902 children of 6 to 17 years old a month are
homeless in the city (The New York Times, Nov 14, 2011).
Nearly 17,000 children slept in the municipal shelters in
New York on Halloween night in 2011. From May 2011 to
November 2011, children in shelters rose 10 percent (The
Wall Street Journal, Nov 9, 2011).
Children are severely exposed to violence and
pornography. BBC reported on Oct 17, 2011, that over the
past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children were
believed to have been killed by their family members. More
than 1 million children are confirmed each year as victims
of child abuse (www.preventchildabuse.org), and one in every
two families in the US is involved in domestic violence at
some time (www. reverepolice.org). The Wall Street Journal
reported on Nov 14, 2011, that roughly 120,000 calls were
made to the state hotline for child abuse calls
administrated by the state Department of Public Welfare in
Pennsylvania, but only about 24,000 cases were investigated.
A 13-year-old boy named Christian Choate was allegedly
beaten to death in 2009 by his father. The report said
prosecutors had alleged that the boy endured beating daily
and was kept locked in a 3-foot-high dog cage, where he had
little to eat and often soiled himself (Chicago Tribune,
June 24, 2011). Campus violence and cyber bullying are
growing more malicious in the US. According to a report of
the US News & World Report on June 3, 2011, at least 40
percent of high school students have been bullied by cyber
bullies (www.usnews.com). The Women's eNews reported on May
23 last year, the sex-trafficking problem is acute in the
state of Georgia, with an estimated 250 to 300 underage
teens and girls being sexually exploited each month there
(womensenews. org). According to a report published by
Stanford University, the number of reports of sexual
assaults received in its campus in 2010 rose by 75 percent
over that in 2009 (CBS, Sept 30, 2011).
Infant mortality rate remains high in the US.
According to a report of The New York Times on Oct 15, 2011,
the infant mortality rate in the US is 6.7 deaths per 1,000
live births. The rate among African-Americans is 13.3 deaths
per thousand, while the rates among whites, Hispanics and
Asian-Americans are respectively 5.6, 5.5 and 4.8 per
thousand. In Pittsburgh, the infant mortality rate for black
residents of Allegheny County was 20.7 per thousand in 2009,
while the rate among whites in the county was only 4 per
thousand in the same period. Nationally, black babies are
more than twice as likely as white babies to die before the
age of 1.
VI.
On US violations of human rights against other
nations
The US has been pursuing hegemony in the world,
grossly trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries
and capriciously violating human rights against other
nations. It "appears more and more to be contributing to
international disorder" (After the Empire: The Breakdown of
the American Order, by Emmanuel Todd).
The revelation of the history of human experiments
conducted in the US is yet another scandal sparking public
outcry around the world after the prisoner abuse scandal.
The British newspaper The Telegraph reported on Aug 30,
2011, that from 1946-1948, a US government-paid medical
experiment program had made nearly 5,500 people in Guatemala
subjected to diagnostic testing, and the researchers
deliberately exposed more than 1,300 people, including
soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients, to
syphilis and other venereal diseases. Seven women with
epilepsy were injected with syphilis below the back of the
skull, and a female syphilis patient with a terminal illness
was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes and elsewhere. These
experiments had caused over 80 deaths. An article on a
US-based journalistic website said that "these revelations
are only the latest in an ongoing series of scandals
regarding government illegal and unethical experimentation"
and that "there are plenty of other underreported and
important stories out there on the terrible scandal that has
been US illegal experimentation. "The article said that the
list of such illegal experiments is quite long, including
government radiation experiments, human mind control (also
known as MKULTRA) experiments and the CIA and DoD
(Department of Defense) experiments on "enemy combatants" in
the "war on terror" (Pubrecord.org). Newspaper The Hindu
reported on Aug 30, 2011, that in 1932, the US public health
service agency started a study of untreated syphilis in the
human body in Alabama. The researchers told the subjects
that they were being treated for some ailments, and nearly
400 African-American men were infected with syphilis without
informed consent. In fact, the men infected did not receive
proper treatment needed. The study lasted until 1972 after
media disclosures. Austrian national TV commented that this
was a disgraceful event in the US history and a dark period
in US medical ethics.
The US-led wars, albeit alleged to be "humanitarian
intervention" efforts and for "the rise of a new democratic
nation", created humanitarian disasters instead. For Iraqis,
the death toll in the US-initiated Iraq war stands at
655,000 (Tribune Business News, Dec 15, 2011). According to
figures released by the Iraq Body Count, at least 103,536
civilians were killed in the Iraq war (Reuters, Dec 18,
2011). In 2011, there were an average of 6.5 deaths per day
from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs (www.iraqbodycount.org).
It is estimated that civilian casualties in the military
campaign in Afghanistan could exceed 31,000 (Tribune
Business News, Oct 17, 2011). According to a news report, on
May 28, 2011, a US-led NATO airstrike killed 14 civilians
and wounded six others in the southern region of Afghanistan
(The New York Times, May 29, 2011). Separately, on May 25, a
total of 18 Afghan civilians and 20 police were killed in a
NATO airstrike in the province of Nuristan (BBC News, May
29, 2011). The British newspaper The Guardian reported on
March 11, 2012, that an American soldier stationed in
Afghanistan burst into three civilian homes in two villages
in the small hours of March 11, shot dead 16 sleeping Afghan
villagers, injured five others and burned the dead bodies.
The victims included nine children and three women.
According to a Reuters report, witness accounts said there
were several US soldiers involved (Reuters, March 11, 2012).
Another Deutsche Presse-Agentur report quoted a member of
the Afghan parliamentary investigative team as saying that
there were 15 to 20 soldiers who had conducted the night
raid operation in several areas in the village. The source
also told DPA that some of the Afghan women who were killed
were sexually assaulted, according to the findings (DPA,
March 18, 2012). Such "American-style massacre" against
innocent civilians has once again pierced the veil of the US
proclaiming itself "a country under the rule of law" and "a
human rights defender." Incomplete statistics revealed that
the US has launched more than 60 drone attacks in Pakistan
in 2011, killing at least 378 people (USA Today, Jan 11,
2012; Newamerica.net). The number of civilian deaths in
Afghanistan increased 15 percent in the first half of 2011
over the same period of 2010 (The New York Times, Aug 6,
2011). According to media reports, on the night of Feb 20,
2012, some American soldiers of the NATO troops at the
Bagram air base in Afghanistan transported copies of Koran
and other religious books to a rubbish pit and burned them
(BBC News, Feb 23, 2012). The acts of desecration of the
Quran have sparked strong protests and large-scale
demonstration activities among the people across Afghanistan
as well as in the countries of Pakistan and Bengal (www.pakistantoday.com.pk;
www.firstpost.com).
The US does not support the right to development,
which is a concern of most of the developing countries. In
September 2011, the 18th session of the United Nations Human
Rights Council adopted a resolution on "the right to
development." Except for an abstention vote from the US, all
the HRC members voted for the resolution.
The US continues its conduct that seriously violates
the right of subsistence and right of development of Cuban
people. On Oct 26, 2011, the 66th session of the UN General
Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution titled
"Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial
embargo imposed by the United States of America against
Cuba," the 20th such resolution in a row. A total of 186
countries voted in favor of the resolution, three countries
abstained, and only the US and Israel voted against the
resolution. The resolution urged the US to repeal or
invalidate the almost 50-year-long economic, commercial and
financial embargo against Cuba as soon as possible (www.un.org).
The US, however, continues to defy the resolution. The
blockade imposed by the US against Cuba qualifies as an act
of genocide under Article II of the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which
was adopted in 1948.
The above-mentioned facts are but a small yet
illustrative enough fraction of the US' dismal record on its
human rights situation. The US' own tarnished human rights
record has made it in no condition, on a moral, political or
legal basis, to act as the world's "human rights justice,"
to place itself above other countries and release the
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to
accuse and blame other countries. We hereby advise the US
government once again to look squarely at its own grave
human rights problems, to stop the unpopular practices of
taking human rights as a political instrument for
interference in other countries' internal affairs, smearing
other nations' images and seeking its own strategic
interests, and to cease using double standards on human
rights and pursuing hegemony under the pretext of human
rights.
(China Daily 05/26/2012 page4)