Chinese report catalogs how US got it all wrong on human rights
Print Edition
CHINA yesterday published a report on America’s human rights situation.
The report, “Human Rights Record of the United States in 2017,” was released by the Information Office of the State Council, in response to the “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2017” issued by the US State Department last Friday.
A “Chronology of Human Rights Violations of the United States in 2017” was also released by the office yesterday.
China’s report said the US posed once again as “the guardian of human rights” and a self-styled “human rights judge” while its own human rights record remained tarnished and showed a continued deterioration tendency.
The report accused the US of serious infringement on citizens’ civil rights, systematic racial discrimination, severe flaws in American-style democracy, a widening rich-poor divide, discrimination and assault against specific groups such as women, children and the disabled, as well as its continued violations of human rights in other countries.
The report noted that on October 1, almost 60 people were killed and more than 800 injured in a mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
US-led military operations in other countries have caused heavy civilian casualties, according to the report. It cited military operations in Syria that caused a large number of civilian casualties.
The US-led coalition and Marines had reportedly bombed or shelled at least 12 schools, 15 mosques, 15 bridges as well as residential neighborhoods, hospitals, cultural relics and refugee camp, according to www.motherjones.com.
The Muslim Times website reported on June 24 that the US military had attacked Syrian government forces “at least four times in recent months,” including a missile strike last April against a Syrian airfield.
Myles Hoenig, an American political analyst, said the US was violating the United Nations Charter by conducting a war of aggression against Syria.
According to the report, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp continued to detain and torture foreigners.
In a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, former Guantanamo detainee Djamel Ameziane said he was detained for 11 years, faced prolonged incommunicado detention, multiple forms of torture, and never received a judicial determination regarding the legality of his detention, the report quoted Al Jazeera as saying.
Also, according to a report from The USA Today website, the UN and human rights organizations had criticized US authorities for creating a “legal black hole” in Guantanamo allowing for the infinite detention of suspects without charge, and for holding many of the detainees for more than a decade.
The report also said the US has made cyber warfare tools, citing WikiLeaks information that US National Security Agency operators had hacked into mobile networks in Pakistan and had been spying on hundreds of IP addresses in that country.
Money politics counted more than ever in the US in 2017, widening inequality, the Chinese report said.
Money politics has made American economic policies over the past 40 years “strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent, but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans.”
The report noted that an expert survey on American democracy showed that 89 percent of respondents believed the democratic quality in the US had declined over the past 10 years.
The media was suppressed in the US, the report added.
In 2017, a number of news organizations were rejected by the US government in press conferences and other official activities, and CNN and The New York Times, among others, were barred from White House briefings.
Press freedom in the US was at its lowest point for 13 years, according to a CNN report in 2017.
Another survey from the Pew Research Center on April 4, 2017, showed that 73 percent of adult respondents in the US believed the tensions between the government and the news media were getting in the way of access to important national political news and information.
Meanwhile, the rich-poor divide expanded in the US, with an increasing number of homeless people.
According to official statistics from the US Census Bureau, more than 40 million American people were living in poverty. Nearly half of them, 18.5 million, were living in deep poverty.
According to the World Income Inequality Database, the US has the highest Gini rate (measuring inequality) of all Western countries. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the US ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality.
The US government has also failed to effectively control use of drug and addictive medicine. A Medical Press report revealed that 7.7 million Americans abused illicit drugs.
The report added that the US health care system was deeply flawed.
Results of a survey released by Pew Research Center on December 14 showed positive ratings for the government’s handling of ensuring access to health care had declined 20 percentage points since 2015.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
