Following is the full text of the "Human Rights Record of the
United States in 2001," published by the Information Office of the
State Council of the People's Republic of China Monday.
Human Rights Record of the United States in
2001
By
Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of
China
On
March 4, 2002, the US State Department published "Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices -- 2001." Once again the United States,
assuming the role of "world judge of human rights," has distorted
human rights conditions in many countries and regions in the world,
including China, and accused them of human rights violations, all
the while turning a blind eye to its own human rights-related
problems. In fact, it is right in the United States where serious
human rights violations exist.
I.
Lack of Safeguard for Life, Freedom and Personal Safety
Violence and crimes are a daily occurrence in the US society, where
people's life, freedom and personal safety are under serious
threat. According to the 2001 fourth issue of Dialogue published by
the US Embassy in China, in 1998, the number of criminal cases in
the United States reached 12.476 million, including 1.531 million
violent crime cases and 17,000 murder cases; and for every 100,000
people, there were 4,616 criminal cases, including 566 involving
violent crimes. From 1977 to 1996, more than 400,000 Americans were
murdered, almost seven times the number of Americans killed in the
Vietnam War. During the years since 1997, another 480,000 people
have been murdered in the country. According to a report carried by
the Christian Science Monitor in its January 22, 2002 issue, the
murder rate in the United States at present stands at 5.5 persons
per 100,000 people. According to data provided by police stations
in 18 major US cities, the number of murder cases in many big
cities in 2001 increased drastically, with those in Boston and
Phoenix City increasing the fastest. In the year to December 18,
2001, the number of murder cases in the two cities increased by
more than 60 percent over the same period of the previous year. The
number of murder cases increased by 22 percent in St. Louis, 17.5
percent in Houston, 15 percent in St. Antonio, 11.6 percent in
Atlanta, 9.2 percent in Los Angeles and 5.2 percent in Chicago.
According to the same report of the Christian Science Monitor, on
campuses of colleges and universities in the United States in 2001,
the number of murder cases increased by almost 100 percent over
2000, that of arson cases by about 9 percent, that of break-ins by
3 percent.
The United States is the country with the biggest number of private
guns. On the one hand, worries about the threat of violence have
led to rush buying of guns for self-protection; on the other hand,
the flooding of guns is an important factor contributing to high
violence and crime rates. Statistics of the FBI show that sales of
weapons and ammunition in the United States in the three months of
September through November of 2001 grew anywhere from 9 percent to
22 percent. October witnessed a record 1,029,691 guns registered.
Statistics also show that shooting is the second major cause of
non-normal deaths after traffic accidents in the United States,
averaging 15,000 deaths annually. Over the history of more than 200
years, three US presidents were shot, with two dead and one wounded
seriously. There is much less personal safety for common people in
the United States. Since 1972, more than 80 people have been shot
dead every day on average in the United States, including about 12
children.
On
March 5, 2001, a 15-year-old student killed two and wounded 13
fellow students at Santana High School in California. This is the
deadliest school shooting following one in a high school in the
state of Colorado in April 1999, in which 13 were killed. Two days
later, that is, on March 7, a 14-year-old girl student shot dead a
schoolmate of hers in the cafeteria of a Roman Catholic school in
Pennsylvania. On the same day, police overpowered a gunman who was
about to shoot on the campus of the University of Albertus. On
April 14, a 43-year-old man with two rifles and two short guns
fired madly at a bar and its car park, killing two and wounding 20.
On September 7, a gunman burst into a family on the outskirts of
Simi Valley of Los Angeles and shot three people dead and wounded
two. Earlier on August 31, a demobilized policeman shot dead
another and set fire on himself. FBI called Los Angeles "the freest
city for crimes." On December 7, a worker at a woodworking factory
shot one fellow worker dead and wounded six others in Indiana.
On
January 15, 2002, a teenage student fired at fellow students at
Martin Luther King High School, seriously wounding two. This
coincided with the 73rd anniversary of Martin Luther King, leader
of the human rights movement in the United States and an advocator
of non-violence. More ironically, on March 4, 2002, the very day
when the US State Department published its annual report, accusing
other countries of "human rights violations," another shooting took
place: in New Mexico, a four-year-old boy, while watching TV in his
bedroom, shot dead an 18-month-old baby girl with his father's
gun.
The US media are inundated with violent contents, contributing to a
high crime rate in the United States, especially among young
people. Young people in the country get used to violence and crimes
from an early age. With the extensive use of cable TV, video tapes
and computers, children have more opportunities to see bloody
violent scenes. A culture beautifying violence has made young
people believe that the gun can "solve" all problems. An
investigative report issued on August 1, 2001 by a US
non-governmental watchdog group -- Parents Television Council (PTC)
-- says that violence in television programs from 8 to 9 p.m. in
the recent one-year period was up by 78 percent and abusive
language up by 71 percent. Even CBS, regarded as the " cleanest" TV
network, had 3.2 scenes of violence and abusive language per hour.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, TV stations and movie
houses in the United States exercised some restraint on the
broadcasting and screening of programs and films of violence. But
it was hardly two months before violence films, which have top
box-office value, staged a comeback. International Herald Tribune
reported that one American youth could see 40,000 murder cases and
200,000 other violent acts from the media before the age of 18. A
survey by California-based Ethical Code Institute shows that over
the past year, most American youth had the experience of using
violence, including 21 percent of the boys in high schools and 15
percent of the boys in junior middle schools who had the experience
of taking arms to school for at least once. The US National
Association of Education estimates that about 100,000 students in
the United States take arms to school every day.
In
recent years, voices for controlling guns and eliminating the
culture of violence have been running high. On Mother's Day on May
14, 2000, women from nearly 70 cities in the United States staged a
"Million Moms Mother's Day March," demanding that the US Congress
enact a strict gun control law. However, voices of the common
people can hardly produce any results.
II. Serious Rights Violations by Law Enforcement Departments
Police brutality and unfair adjudication are intrinsic stubborn
diseases of the United States. In March 2001, the family of a
French victim brought a lawsuit against the police and prison
guards of the state of Nevada. Nine prison guards were accused of
beating the victim, Phillippe Leman, to death. Forensic
examinations identified the cause of death as suffocation due to
fracture of the throat bone. Yet, a local court pardoned the nine
prison guards and acquitted them of responsibilities for the death
of the French man.
Torture and forced confession are common in the United States, with
the number of convicts on the death row that are misjudged or
wronged remaining high. In December 2001, a man on the death row,
Alon Patterson, claimed that his confession was forced due to
torture by Chicago police, who used a plastic typewriter cover to
suffocate him. The case aroused extensive attention. As Chicago is
under the jurisdiction of Cook County, Chicago Herald Tribune sent
reporters to investigate the archives of several thousand murder
cases in Cook since 1991. They found that verdicts were determined
in at least 247 cases without witness or evidence and that judgment
was based on confessions of the accused only. The credibility of
such "confessions" is subject to doubt.
US
federal laws and 38 states allow the death penalty. Since the
1990s, crimes punishable by death and the annual number of
executions in the United States have been on the increase. Annual
executions increased from 23 in 1990 to 98 in 1999. In the last 20
years, the United States has extended the death penalty to more
than 60 crimes and speeded up executions by restricting the right
of the convicted to appeal. Since 1976 when the US Supreme Court
restored the death penalty, about 600 persons have been executed in
the United States. According to a February 11, 2002 Reuters report,
from 1973 to 1995, the verdicts of 68 percent of convicts on the
death row were overturned owing to misjudgment by the court. In the
cases with overturned verdicts, 82 percent of the convicts were
sentenced to lesser penalties and 9 percent were set free. Since
1973, a total of 99 convicts on the death row have been proven
innocent. These people spent an average of eight years of terror in
death confines, sustaining tremendous mental trauma. According to
an analysis, main reasons for misjudgment were failure to get legal
counsel on the part of the accused, confession forcing by the
police and prosecutors, and misdirection of the jury by judges.
The United States has the biggest prison population in the world.
Prisons there are overcrowded, and inmates ill-treated. A study by
the Judicial Policy Institute under the Juvenile and Criminal
Hearing Center shows that during the 1992-2000 period, 673,000
people were sent to state or federal prisons and detention centers,
and 476 out of every 100,000 people were detained. With prisons
burdened with too many inmates, violent conflicts keep occurring.
In December 2001, about 300 inmates in a California prison staged a
riot, which was put down by prison guards, using tear gas and
wooden bullets. Seven prisoners were seriously wounded. The prison
in question incarcerated more than 4,000 inmates though it was
designed to keep no more than 2,200. Overcrowding often leads to
violent clashes among prisoners. In 2000 alone, more than 120
prisoners staged riots, in which ten people were wounded. Drug
taking is prevalent in US prisons. In the last ten years, at least
188 inmates died of drug abuse.
Punishment for sex offenders in the United States has become more
and more severe. Many phased-out cruel punishments have been
reinstated. Some criminals would select the extreme penalty of
castration in exchange for a penalty reduction. Castration had been
removed as a penalty scores of years before. According to the Los
Angeles Times, in California in the last three years, two sex
offenders received castration in return for release.
In
February 2002, the world was shocked to learn of a scandal
involving a crematorium in the United States. Tri-State Crematory
in the state of Georgia, instead of cremating human bodies after
receiving money for the service, threw the corpses in the woods or
stacked them in wooden sheds like cordwood, leaving them to rot
there. The shocking practice is said to have lasted 15 years. More
than 300 bodies have been found on the grounds of the crematorium
so far. The crime is shocking enough, but the state of Georgia does
not have a law that is applicable for the crime. What verdict to
pass on the suspect remains a legal difficulty.
III. Plight of the Poor, Hungry and Homeless
While the best-developed country in the world, the United States
confronts a serious problem of polarization between the rich and
the poor. Never has a fundamental change been possible in
conditions of the poor, who constitute the forgotten "third world"
within this superpower.
The gap between high-income and low-income families in terms of the
wealth owned by either group has further widened over the past two
decades. In 1979, the average income of the families with the
highest incomes, who account for 5 percent of the total in the
United States, was about ten times as great as that of the families
with the lowest incomes, who account for 20 percent of the total.
By 1999, the figure had grown to 19 times. According to a New York
Times analysis of a US Census Bureau survey in August 2001, the
economic boom the United States experienced in the 1990s failed to
make the American middle class richer than in the previous decade.
The true fact is that the poor became even poorer and the rich,
even wealthier. For most of those in between the two opposite
groups, life was worse at the end of the 1990s than at the
beginning of the decade. Right now, the richest 1 percent of the
Americans own 40 percent of the national wealth. In contrast, the
share is a mere 16 percent for 80 percent of the American
population. The richest 20 percent of the families in Washington D.
C. are 24 times as rich as the poorest 20 percent, up from 18 times
a decade ago.
Problems facing the poor, hungry and homeless have become
increasingly conspicuous. According to a 2002 report of the
American Food Research and Action Center on its website, 10 percent
of the American families, in other words 19 million adults and 12
million children, suffered from food insecurity in 1999. In a
national survey of emergency feeding program (Hunger in America
2001), America's Second Harvest emergency food providers served 23
million people in the year, 9 percent more than in 1997. The figure
included nine million children. Nearly two-thirds of the adult
emergency food recipients were women, and more than one in five
were elderly.
In
its annual report published in December 2001, the United States
Conference of Mayors reported a sharp increase in the number of the
hungry and homeless in major cities. In the 27 cities covered by a
USCM survey, the number of people asking for emergency food
increased by an average of 23 percent, and the increase averaged 13
percent for those asking for emergency housing relief. Demand for
emergency food supplies grew in 93 percent of the cities covered by
the survey. Of those who asked for emergency food, many -- 19
percent more than in the previous year -- had children to support.
Of the adults who asked for emergency relief, 37 percent were
employed. Hunger in these cities was attributed to low incomes,
unemployment, high housing rent, economic recession, welfare
reforms, high medical bills and mental disorders. According to a
report issued by the US Department of Labor on November 29, 2001,
4.02 million Americans -- the highest number in 19 years -- were
living on relief. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has
reported that 750,000 Americans are in a permanent state of
homelessness, and that up to two million have had experiences of
having no shelter for themselves. People without a roof over
themselves have to spend the night in places like street corners,
abandoned cars, refuges and parks, where their personal safety
cannot be guaranteed.
Lives of the rich seem more valued than lives of the poor.
According to la Liberation on January 9, 2002, the federal fund set
up by the American government would compensate victims of the
September 11, 2001 attacks according to their ages, salaries and
the number of people in their families, plus a sum in compensation
for the mental trauma the family members suffered. This way of
fixing the compensations produced shocking results. If a housewife
was killed, her husband and two children would be entitled to 500,
000 US dollars in compensation from the fund. If the victim
happened to be a Wall Street broker, the compensation would be as
much as 4.3 million US dollars for his widow and two children.
Families of many victims protested against this inequality,
compelling the American government to commit itself to revising the
method.
IV. Worrying Conditions for Women and Children
Gender discrimination is an important aspect of social inequality
in the United States. Until this day, there has been no
constitutional provision on equality between men and women. On
September 18, 2000, with support of some NGOs, a dozen surviving "
comfort women" brought a class action with a federal court in
Washington D.C., demanding public apology and compensation from the
Japanese government. The US government, however, issued a statement
of interest in July 2001, calling for dismissal of the lawsuit on
the ground that recruiting of "comfort women" by the Japanese army
during the Second World War was a "sovereign act." The statement
aroused protects from the US National Organization for Women, the
Truth Council for World War II in Asia and other NGOs. This
incident, in its own way, reflects current conditions in protection
of women's human rights in the United States and America's official
attitude towards women's rights demand.
Violence against women is a serious social problem in the United
States. According to US official statistics, one American woman is
beaten in every 15 seconds on average and some 700,000 cases of
rape occur every year. According to the 121st edition of the
American Census published on January 24, 2002, in 1998 about one
million people were suspected of involvement in violence between
spouses and between men and women as friends. In March 2001,
Amnesty International USA issued a report after two years'
investigation, saying that the human rights of female prison
inmates in the United States are often fringed upon and that they
often fall victim to sexual harassment or rape by prison guards.
Seven states even do not have laws or legal provisions banning
sexual relations between prison officials and female inmates.
Protection of American children's rights is far from being
adequate. The United States is one of the only two countries that
have not acceded to Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is
one of the only five countries that execute juvenile offenders in
violation of relevant international conventions. More juvenile
offenders are executed in the United States than in any of the
other four. In 25 states, the youngest age eligible for death
sentence is set at 17; and 21 states set that age at 16 or do not
impose an age limit at all. Besides, the United States is among the
few countries where psychiatric and mentally retarded offenders
could be executed. According to the Human Rights Watch, in the
1990s, nine juveniles were sentenced to death in the United States,
and the number was greater than that reported by any of the other
countries.
American children are susceptible to violence and poverty.
According to a report published on November 28, 2001 by the US
Violent Policy Center, analysis of the murder data released by FBI
shows that from 1995 to 1999, 3,971 infants and juveniles aged one
to 17 years were murdered in handgun homicides. The firearm
homicide rate for American children was 16 times the figure for
children in 25 other industrialized countries. Black children have
the highest rate of handgun homicide victimization, seven times
higher than that for white children. In April 2000, the US Fund for
the Protection of the Child published a green paper on conditions
of American children. It quotes the poverty statistics of the
American government for 1999 as saying that more than 12 million
children were living below the poverty line set by the federal
government, accounting for one-sixth of the total number of
children in the country. A report by the US Health and Public
Service Department released at the beginning of 2001 says that 10
percent of the American children have mental health problems and
that one out of every ten children and children in adolescence
suffered from mental illnesses that are serious enough to hurt.
Nevertheless, those able to receive treatment could not exceed one-
fifth.
The problem of missing children is serious. Figures published by
FBI in 2001 showed that in 1999, 750,000 children went missing,
accounting for 90 percent of the total number of people who went
missing in the year. To put it another way, an average of 2,100
children at 17 or younger went missing every day. Since the Missing
Children Act was enacted in 1982, the number of children registered
by police as missing has increased by 468 percent.
American children often fall prey to sexual abuse. According to a
report published in September 2001 by a group of researchers at the
University of Pennsylvania after three years' investigation, about
400,000 American children are streetwalkers or engage in various
obscene activities for money near their schools. Children who have
fled their homes or are homeless suffer most severely from sexual
abuse. Sexual harassment against children by clergymen in the
United States is serious. According to Newsweek published on
February 26, 2002, the Boston archdiocese of the US Roman Catholic
Church has over the past decade paid 1 billion US dollars in
compensation in lawsuits of sexual harassment by its clergymen
against children. About 80 Boston clergymen are suspected of having
molested children sexually. One has been accused of sexually
molested more than 100 children. This, the greatest scandal in the
United States following the Enron case, has aroused nationwide
attention to the problem that is also common among clergymen
elsewhere and, as a result, a string of similar cases have been
brought to light.
V.
Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination is the most serious human rights problem in
the United States, a problem that the United States has never
resolved since its founding. The United States, as a matter of
fact, was notorious for genocide against aboriginal Indians, trade
of African blacks and black slavery. In recent years, scandals of
racial discrimination have occurred, one after another.
On
April 7, 2001, a white police officer shot to death an unarmed
black youth in Cincinnati, Ohio, as he was trying to run away after
breaking traffic rules. Black people in the city staged mass
protests following the death of Timothy Thomas, which culminated in
a racial conflict. The incident once again aroused worldwide
attention to the problem of racial discrimination in the United
States. According to the Observer of Britain published on April 15,
2001, Cincinnati is one of the eight large cities in the United
States where the problem of racial discrimination is most serious.
Even though the world is already in the 21st century, racial
segregation is still practiced by virtually all schools in the
city. Timothy Thomas was the fourth black person killed by white
police in succession from November 2000 to April 2001, and the 15th
black suspect killed by white police in the same city since 1995.
It is beyond people's comprehension that during the same period,
killing of white suspects by the police never occurred. According
to the Associated Press, the mass protests in Cincinnati matched
those that broke out after the killing of Martin Luther King.
Racial discrimination is discernible everywhere in the United
States. The proportion of federal government posts taken by ethnic
minority Americans is much smaller than the proportion of their
population in the national total. According to an article in the
July-August issue of the bimonthly World Economic Review, of the
535 senators and Congress men and women, those of Latin-American
origin with voting rights number only 19, or 3.5 percent of the
total, even though ethnic Latin-Americans account for 12.5 percent
of the country's total population. Blacks account for 13 percent of
the American population, but are able to win only 5 percent of the
public posts through election. There are legal provisions to the
effect that colored people must account for a certain percentage in
the police force. The true fact, however, is that few black people
are able to join the police force and even fewer serve as senior
police officers. Take for example Cincinnati. Black people account
for 43 percent of the local population but, of the 1,000 members of
the local police force, only 250 are blacks. None of the CEOs and
presidents of the top 500 companies in the Unites States are
blacks. Blacks holding senior posts at Wall Street investment
companies are rare, if any.
Social conditions are bad for ethnic minority Americans. According
to the 2000 population census, blacks unable to enjoy medical
insurance are twice as many as whites. Only 17 percent of the black
population are able to finish higher education, in contrast to 28
percent for whites. The unemployment rate was twice as high for
blacks as for whites. Meanwhile, blacks employed for menial service
jobs are more than twice as many. Incomes for the average white
family averaged 44,366 US dollars in 1999. For an average black
family, however, the figure was 25,000 US dollars. According to
statistics provided by the US Equal Employment Opportunity
Committee, the number of employed ethnic minority Americans has
increased by 36 percent since 1990, but the number of charges
against racial or ethnical harassment at work-sites has doubled,
averaging 9,000 a year. Of the five largest dumps of harmful
wastes, three are in residential areas inhabited mainly by blacks
and other ethnic minority Americans. Up to 60 percent of the blacks
and ethnic Latin-Americans are living in places where harmful
wastes are dumped.
Racial discrimination is frequently seen in America's judicature.
Half of the 2 million prison inmates are blacks, and ethnic
Latin-Americans account for 16 percent of the total. According to
an investigative report published by the United Nations, for the
same crime the penalty meted out against the colored can be twice
or even thrice as severe as against the white. Blacks sentenced to
death for killing whites are four times as many as whites given
death penalty for killing blacks. The US Department of Justice
reported on March 12, 2001 that threats by the police with force
against blacks and ethnic Latin-Americans are twice as possible as
against whites.
VI. Wantonly Infringing upon Human Rights of Other Countries
The United States ranks first in the world in terms of military
spending and arms export. Its military expenditure accounts for
nearly 40 percent of the world total, more than the combined
military expenditure of the nine countries ranking next to it. Its
arms exports account for 36 percent of the world total. US defense
budget for the 2003 fiscal year announced by the US Defense
Department on February 4, 2002 totaled 379 billion US dollars, up
48 billion US dollars, or 15 percent, over the previous year and
representing the highest growth rate in the past two decades.
The United States ranks first in the world in wantonly infringing
upon the sovereignty of, and human rights in, other countries.
Since the 1990s, the United States has used force overseas on more
than 40 occasions. On April 1, 2001, a US military reconnaissance
plane flew above waters off China's coast in violation of flight
rules, causing the crash of a Chinese aircraft and the death of its
pilot. It presumptuously entered China's territorial airspace
without permission from the Chinese side and landed on a Chinese
military airfield, seriously encroaching upon China's sovereignty
and human rights. After the incident, the United States made all
sorts of excuses to defend itself, refusing to make a public
apology for the serious consequences of its intruding aircraft and
trying to shirk its responsibilities. This aroused great
indignation and strong protests from the Chinese people.
The United States has built many military bases all over the world,
where it has stationed hundreds of thousands of troops, violating
human rights everywhere in the world. Before the September 11
incident, the United States had stationed its troops in more than
140 countries. Today, the United States has expanded its so-called
security interests to almost every corner of the world. In recent
years, US troops stationed in Japan have frequently committed
crimes. In 1995, three American soldiers raped a Japanese
schoolgirl in Okinawa, sparking massive protests by the Japanese
people and arousing the alert of world public opinion. In fact,
scandals like this happen almost every year. On January 11, 2001,
an American soldier was arrested for molesting a local schoolgirl
in Okinawa. On January 19, the Okinawa parliament adopted a
resolution of protest against frequent criminal activities by
American soldiers, calling for reduction of US troops in Japan.
However, in an e-mail message to his subordinates, the US commander
in Okinawa insulted the Okinawa magistrate and parliament. On June
29, another soldier of the US air force sexually assaulted a
Japanese girl in Kyatan of Okinawa.
The NATO headed by the United States dropped a large number of
depleted uranium bombs during the Kosovo war, subjecting peace-
keeping soldiers as well as the local people to serious danger. The
US side claimed that one of the reasons for the withdrawal of US
troops from Kosovo is that "it would not let radiation hurt our
boys." Latest reports say that the United States knew the dangers
of depleted uranium bombs and where they were dropped, and that,
when dividing up peacekeeping zones, it allocated the most
seriously contaminated areas to allied forces. After the US army
entered Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, it gave a boost to the sex
industry in the two places. Over the past year, Bosnia-Herzegovina
uncovered dozens of women trafficking cases, many of which were
associated with the US army. Most of the US soldiers were involved
in prostitution and some of them were even involved in selling
women. In September 2000, the US Army published a report of more
than 600 pages, detailing all kinds of bad behaviors committed by
the No.82 air-borne division of its First Army during their
peace-keeping mission in Kosovo, admitting that the general
atmosphere of the US army in Kosovo is very inhumane.
Available data indicate that in the Gulf War the United States
dropped more than 940,000 depleted uranium bombs with a total
weight of 320 tons onto Iraqi land, causing serious destruction to
the environment of Iraq and the health of its people. The Ministry
of Health of Iraq pointed out in a report that the number of cancer
patients in Iraq increased dramatically after the Gulf War, from
6,555 in 1989 and 4,341 in 1991 to 10,931 in 1997. In the ten years
since the end of the Gulf War, the incidence rate of leukemia,
malicious tumors and other difficult and complicated cases in areas
hit by depleted uranium bombs in southern Iraq was 3.6 times higher
than the national average and the proportion of women with
miscarriage was ten times as high as in the past. On February 22,
2002, Emad Sa'doon, a medical expert with Basra University in
southern Iraq, disclosed to the media that after many years of
research the medical group led by him found that in the 1989-1999
period, the number of patients with blood cancer doubled and the
number of women with breast cancer increased 102 percent.
The United States always flaunts the banner of "freedom of the
press". Yet according to an Agence France-Presse report on February
21, 2002, the annual report of International Journalism Institute
published on the same day pointed out that the way in which the US
government dealt with the media during the Afghan War and its
attempt at suppressing freedom of speech by independent media were
"the most amazing in 2001."
In
the United States, close to 100 companies manufacture and export
considerable quantities of instruments of torture that are banned
in international trade. They have set up sales networks overseas.
In its February 26, 2001 report, Amnesty International said some 80
American companies were involved in the manufacture, marketing and
export of instruments of torture, including electric- shock tools,
shackles and handcuffs with saw-teeth. Many instruments of torture
and police tools are high-tech products, which can cause serious
harms to the human body. For instance, handcuffs,which would tear
apart the flesh of the tortured if the victim slightly exerts
himself, are very cruel, and so is a high- pressure rope for tying
up a person. Although categorically prohibited by US law, the
Commerce Department of the United States has given official export
licenses for exporting such tools. According to statistics,
American companies have secured export licenses and sold tools of
torture overseas valued at 97 million U. S. dollars since 1997
under the category of "crime control equipment." It is
inconceivable that, while the US State Department is talking about
human rights, the US Department of Commerce has given export
licenses for products determined as instruments of torture in
statutes of the US government, said Dr. William Schulz, who
conducted the investigation.
The United States has also conducted irradiation experiments with
the dead bodies of babies from overseas. The Daily Telegraph and
the Observer of the United Kingdom disclosed in June of 2001 that
the United States has recently declassified some top-secret
documents, which indicate that in the 1950s the United States
carried out what was called "Project Sunshine" experiments. For
these experiments, about 6,000 dead babies were obtained from
overseas and cremated without permission of their parents. The
ashes were sent to laboratories for irradiation studies.
The US government has until this day refused to sign the Basel
Convention, which restricts the transfer of waste materials. It
often transfers dangerous waste materials by different methods to
developing countries, damaging the health of the people of other
countries. The Associated Press reported on February 25, 2002 that,
according to an estimate by environmental protection organizations,
as much as 50 percent to 80 percent of the electronic wastes
collected by the United States in the name of recycling have been
shipped to a number of countries in Asia for waste treatment,
causing serious environmental and health problems to the local
people.
The United States has announced its withdrawal from the Kyoto
Protocol, refusing to bear the responsibilities of improving the
environment for human survival and bringing about negative impacts
on environmental protection efforts in the world.
The Third UN Conference Against Racism held in Durban of South
African in September 2001 was an important gathering in the area of
international human rights at the beginning of the new century. It
attracted representatives from more than 190 countries, which
reflected the burning desire of the international community to
eliminate hatred accumulated over time and eradicate the remnants
of racism through dialogue and cooperation. The United States,
however, turned a deaf ear to the voices of the international
community. Ignoring its international obligations, it asserted
openly to boycott the conference before it was opened. Although the
United States sent a low-level delegation to the conference as a
result of prompting and persuasion by the United Nations, it took
the lead in opposing discussing slave trade and colonial
compensation, expressed opposition to putting Zionism on a par with
racism, and walked out of the conference midway. Behaviors of the
United States at the conference revealed its hypocrisy when it
professes itself as "a world judge of human rights" and show how
arrogant and isolated the hegemonic acts of the US government
are.
For many years, the US government has year after year published
reports on human rights conditions in other countries in disregard
of the opposition of many countries in the world, cooking up
charges, twisting facts and censoring all countries except itself.
It also publishes a report every year to make a so-called appraisal
of anti-drug trafficking campaigns of 24 countries including all
Latin American countries. The United States deals with any country
it deems "inefficient in cracking down on drug trafficking" with
condemnation, sanctions, interference in the latter's internal
affairs, or outright invasion.
In
2001, without support from the majority of member countries, the
United States was voted out of the United Nations Human Rights
Commission and the International Narcotics Committee. This shows,
from one aspect, that it is extremely unpopular for the United
States to push double standards and unilateralism on such issues as
human rights, crackdowns on drug trafficking, arms control and
environmental protection. We urge the United States to change its
ways, give up its hegemonic practice of creating confrontation and
interfering in the internal affairs of others by exploiting the
human rights issue, go with the tide of the times characterized by
cooperation and dialogue in the area of human rights, and do more
useful things for the progress and development of the human
society.
(Xinhua News
Agency March 11, 2002)