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The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices",
the US State Department, 202
2-4-12

 

China criticized the US 

"The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2021"
《2020年美國侵犯人權報告》, 2022-2-28

https://state.gov/reports/2021-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/china/ 

 

 

Abuses range from arbitrary detention and torture to restrictions on freedoms and the prosecution of critics.

 

serious limits on free expression and the media.
Journalists, lawyers, writers and bloggers
have suffered from physical attacks and criminal prosecution.


https://english.news.cn/20220228/3120e00203a94a86a85fd8ee748e1053/c.html

 

I. A HEAVY PRICE FOR U.S. EPIDEMIC PREVENTION AND CONTROL
II. ENTRENCHED VIOLENT THINKING THREATENS LIVES
III. PLAYING WITH FAKE DEMOCRACY TRAMPLES ON POLITICAL RIGHTS:
The American-style democracy has descended to a game of transferring interests. Money politics become increasingly rampant in the United States, which makes politicians more neglectful of people's interests and demands...America's current system is democratic only in form, not in substance.
IV. INDULGING IN RACIAL DISCRIMINATION EXACERBATES SOCIAL INJUSTICE
V. CREATING A MIGRANT CRISIS AGAINST HUMANITY: the migrants have already been subject to extended custody, cruel torture, forced labor and many other inhumane treatments.
VI. ABUSE OF FORCE AND SANCTIONS VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES: At the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, many countries blasted the United States for being the "biggest destroyer" of human rights in the world and urged the country to address its own severe human rights violations.

 

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices",
the US State Department, 3-30-202
1

 

China criticized the US 

"The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2020"
《2020年美國侵犯人權報告》3-24-2021

 

full text:  https://preview.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/china/

jp.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUSKBN2BM2RI : In addition to the “more than one million” Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minority groups it said were in extrajudicial internment camps, the report said there were “an additional two million subjected to daytime-only ‘re-education’ training”...


FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, INCLUDING FOR THE PRESS
INTERNET FREEDOM
ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND CULTURAL EVENTS

POLITICALLY MOTIVATED REPRISAL AGAINST INDIVIDUALS LOCATED OUTSIDE THE COUNTRY
POLITICAL PRISONERS AND DETAINEES

FREEDOMS OF PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY AND ASSOCIATION
FREEDOM OF RELIGION

FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
PROTECTION OF REFUGEES

Freedom to Participate in the Political Process
Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government

Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Abuses of Human Rights
ARBITRARY OR UNLAWFUL INTERFERENCE WITH PRIVACY, FAMILY, HOME, OR CORRESPONDENCE
TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT

etc

 

Chinese full text:  www.xinhuanet.com/2021-03/24/c_1127250234.htm
  English full text:  www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1219304.shtml
                              www.xinhuanet.com/english/northamerica/2021-03/24/c_139832301.htm

 

The epidemic went out of control and turned into a human tragedy due to the government's reckless response.

 Disorder in American democratic institutions led to political chaos,

 Ethnic minority groups suffered systematic racial discrimination.  One in four young Asian Americans has been the target of racial bullying.

 Gun trade and shooting incidents hit a record high, and people's confidence in social order waned

 The U.S. government suppressed demonstrators for George Floyd death by force, and more than 10,000 people were arrested. A large number of journalists were attacked and arrested for no reason.

 The gap between the rich and the poor widened

 Trampling on International Rules Results in Humanitarian Disasters

The U.S. government exposed its double standards and hypocrisy on human rights.

 

PS: globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1219784.shtml

PS2: China defend Xinjiang camps : irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/china-defends-xinjiang-camps-as-details-of-programme-emerge-1.4358594

 

The US criticized Russia

politico.com/news/2021/06/16/biden-derides-putins-ridiculous-whataboutism-494885

Independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-putin-geneva-summit-b1867301.html

 

Russia criticized the US

politico.com/news/2021/06/16/biden-derides-putins-ridiculous-whataboutism-494885

Independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-putin-geneva-summit-b1867301.html

 

respond to Putin’s assertions, Biden said they were not remotely comparable.

 

Biden challenges Putin on human rights, democracy and cyber hacking at Geneva summit

 

President Joe Biden  challenged Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on human rights including the detention of Alexei Navalny, as well as cyber crime committed by Russian-based actors.

 

election interference damaged Russia’s image around the world

 

about the possible death of Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition figure who has remained in prison for months after surviving an assassination attempt

 

ongoing operation of the Guantanamo Bay prison as well as its military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan 

 

George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

 

“What we saw was disorder, destruction [and] violations of the law,”  “We feel sympathy for the United States of America, but we don’t want that to happen on our territory. We’re doing our utmost in order to not allow it to happen.”

 

 equated Russia’s detention of opposition leader Alexi Navalny to those arrested in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol whom he said also had “political demands.”

 

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices",
the US State Department, 3-11-2020

 

 

China criticized the US

"The Record of Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2019," 3-13-2020

 

https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/china/
 

The report focused on Chinese Communist Party officials' intensified campaign of mass detention of members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang).
 
Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in…
 
Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, Sept. 4, 2018.
 
 the Chinese Communist Party uses high-tech surveillance systems to monitor potential dissidents. It's imprisoning religious minorities in internment camps, part of its historic antipathy to religious believers
 
Chinese authorities reportedly have "arbitrarily detained more than one million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslims in extrajudicial internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities."
 
official repression of the freedoms of speech, religion, movement, association and assembly of predominantly Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, and Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), was more severe than in other areas of the country.
 
China, human rights issues include arbitrary or unlawful killings, forced disappearances, and arbitrary detention by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members; and the forcible return of asylum-seekers to North Korea.
 

 

http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0313/c90000-9668152.html

The United States is a country with the worst gun violence in the world.

Elections have become money games for the rich.

The United States has the most serious polarization between the rich and poor among developed countries.

The United States is currently the only developed country where millions of people are hungry.


Racial hate crimes in the United States have shocked the world.

Shootings and brutal abuse of African Americans by policemen are frequent.

The racial gap in employment and wealth is striking.

Religious intolerance continues to deteriorate.

The United States has the most dangerous situation for women among high-income countries.  Every month, an average of 52 women were shot and killed by an intimate partner. Up to 70 percent of U.S. women had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime.

Child poverty is a shocking

Child poverty is a shockingproblem.

Poverty among the elderly is becoming more and more serious.

The U.S. government's treatment of immigrants has become increasingly harsh and inhumane.

The United States is "the most warlike nation in the history of the world."  The United States has spent 6.4 trillion U.S. dollars on wars it launched since 2001,
which resulted in more than 800,000 deaths and left tens of millions displaced.

 

 

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, 3-13-2019.

 

 China criticized the US

"Human Rights Record of the United States in 2018",  3-14-2019

 

https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the paramount authority. CCP members hold almost all top government and security apparatus positions. Ultimate authority rests with the CCP Central Committee’s 25-member Political Bureau (Politburo) and its seven-member Standing Committee. Xi Jinping continued to hold the three most powerful positions as CCP general secretary, state president, and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Civilian authorities maintained control of security forces.
During the year the government significantly intensified its campaign of mass detention of members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang). Authorities were reported to have arbitrarily detained 800,000 to possibly more than two million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities. Government officials claimed the camps were needed to combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism. International media, human rights organizations, and former detainees reported security officials in the camps abused, tortured, and killed some detainees.
Human rights issues included arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by the government; arbitrary detention by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; political prisoners; arbitrary interference with privacy; physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members; censorship and site blocking; interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws that apply to foreign and domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); severe restrictions of religious freedom; significant restrictions on freedom of movement (for travel within the country and overseas); refoulement of asylum seekers to North Korea, where they have a well-founded fear of persecution; the inability of citizens to choose their government; corruption; a coercive birth-limitation policy that in some cases included sterilization or abortions; trafficking in persons; and severe restrictions on labor rights, including a ban on workers organizing or joining unions of their own choosing. Official repression of the freedoms of speech, religion, movement, association, and assembly of Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas and of Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang worsened and was more severe than in other areas of the country.
Authorities prosecuted a number of abuses of power through the court system, particularly with regard to corruption, but in most cases the CCP first investigated and punished officials using opaque internal party disciplinary procedures. The CCP continued to dominate the judiciary and controlled the appointment of all judges and in certain cases directly dictated the court’s ruling. Authorities harassed, detained, and arrested citizens who promoted independent efforts to combat abuses of power.

 

 

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-03/14/c_137894687.htm

☉ Gun violence poses grave danger。
Religious intolerance remarks were on the rise
Internet surveillance becomes a common practice。The warrantless wiretapping program PRISM is operating around the clock, vacuuming up emails, Facebook messages, Google chats, Skype calls, and the like.

Money politics prevail in the United States
Secret money donations and "dark money" swept over the elections.
The  United  States  has  the  highest  rate  of  income  inequality  among Western countries.。
Hate crimes surged to new height. 。

 The living conditions of African-Americans are worrisome。
Worsening Racial Discrimination
Systematic racial discrimination was criticized by the United Nations

Minority voters were disenfranchised.
Minorities suffered judicial discrimination.
Anti-Semitism Prevails.

Serious racial discrimination exists in the financial sector.。
Children suffer from serious threats of abuse.
There were endless school shootings.。

☉  Gender Discrimination 
       High occurrence rate of seual harassment and assault.

       A survey found that 81 percent of women interviewed had experienced some form of sexual harassment, and 27 percent said they had been sexually assaulted.
☉ 
Women under violent offending
☉ 
Significant wage gap between men and women.
 Prevalent discrimination in workplace.
 Immigration policy separated children from parents

 Unilateralism is Losing Ground 。Flagrantly withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council. The Atlantic said in an online analysis that one of the most likely, and most insidious, arguments for the move is to prevent the United States from being called out on its own alleged human-rights abuses.

☉  Frequent Infringement on Civil Rights
 Press freedom suffered from unprecedented blow.
 The legitimate rights of interviewing by reporters were infringed.
☉ 
Religious intolerance remarks were on the rise.
☉ 
Politicians' corruption scandals were seen constantly.
☉ 
Income Inequality Continued to Rise

☉  Almost half of American households lived in financial difficulties
☉ 
Reduction of humanitarian aid.
☉ 
Refusal to close Guantanamo military prison.
☉ 
Civilian casualties as result of overseas military operations.
☉ 
A large number of protesters were arrested.
☉ 
Miscarriage of justice resulted in wrongful convictions.
☉ 
Public officers abusively exercised violence.

 

 

 

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, 4-20-2018.

 

 

China criticized the US

China's report on "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2017", 4-24-2018.

 

The most significant human rights issues for which the government was responsible included: arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life and executions without due process; extralegal measures such as forced disappearances, including extraterritorial ones; torture and coerced confessions of prisoners; arbitrary detention, including strict house arrest and administrative detention, and illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as “black jails”; significant restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, religion, and movement (for travel within the country and overseas), including detention and harassment of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members; censorship and tight control of public discourse on the internet, in print, and in other media; refoulement of asylum seekers to North Korea; the inability of citizens to choose their government; corruption; severe repression of organizations and individuals involved in human rights advocacy, as well as in public interest and ethnic minority issues; a coercive birth-limitation policy that in some cases included sterilization or abortions; trafficking in persons; and severe restrictions on labor rights, including a ban on workers organizing or joining unions of their own choosing. Official repression of the freedoms of speech, religion, movement, association, and assembly of Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas and of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) worsened and were more severe than in other areas of the country. In the XUAR officials imposed new regulations, increased severely repressive security measures, and subjected individuals engaged in peaceful expression of political and religious views to arbitrary arrest, detention harassment, and expedited judicial procedures without due process in the name of combatting terrorism and extremism.
in most cases the CCP first investigated and punished officials using opaque internal party disciplinary procedures. The CCP continued to dominate the judiciary and controlled the appointment of all judges and in certain cases directly dictated the court’s ruling. Authorities harassed, detained, and arrested citizens who promoted independent efforts to combat abuses of power.

Authorities monitored telephone calls, text messages, faxes, email, instant messaging, and other digital communications intended to remain private. They also opened and censored domestic and international mail. Security services routinely monitored and entered residences and offices to gain access to computers, telephones, and fax machines. Foreign journalists leaving the country found some of their personal belongings searched

https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper

 

the United States 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 United States of serious infringement on citizens' civil rights, systematic racial discrimination, severe flaws in the American-style democracy, widening rich-poor divide, discrimination and assault against some specific groups such as women, children and people with disabilities as well as its continued violations of human rights in other countries.
The report noted that on the evening of October 1, 2017, almost 60 people were killed and more than 800 injured in a mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
It also quoted some reports of polls of American academics as saying that the respondents believed that American democracy is "drowning in money."
US human rights violations in other countries


According to the report, the US-led military operations in other countries have caused heavy civilian casualties. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp continued to detain and torture foreigners. The United States also made cyber warfare tools, hacking and spying foreign networks.

 

The US-led military operations in other countries have caused heavy civilian casualties, according to the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2017 released by China on Tuesday.
Military operations in Syria caused a large number of civilian casualties, the report said, citing media reports.

 

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, 2017 that the US military had attacked Syrian government forces "at least four times in recent months" , including a missile strike in April against a Syrian airfield. Myles Hoenig, an American political analyst, said the United States was violating the UN Charter by conducting a war of aggression against Syria.

 

In a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, former Guantanamo detainee Djamel Ameziane prepared a written statement saying 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 website as saying.

 

Also, according to a report of The USA Today website, the U.N. and human rights organizations had criticized U.S. 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 that the United States has made cyber warfare tools, citing WikiLeaks information that the U.S. National Security Agency operators had hacked into Pakistani mobile networks and had been spying on hundreds of IP addresses in the country.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-04/24/c_137133826.htm

 

 

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, 3-3-2017.

 

 

China criticized the US

China's report on "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2016", 3-9-2017.

 

https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2016&dlid=265328

Numerous former prisoners and detainees reported they were beaten, subjected to electric shock, forced to sit on stools for hours on end, hung by the wrists, raped, deprived of sleep, force-fed, and otherwise subjected to physical and psychological abuse. Although ordinary prisoners were abused, prison authorities reportedly singled out political and religious dissidents for particularly harsh treatment. In some instances close relatives of dissidents also were singled out for abuse.

The problem of torture was systemic, ...

Security forces reportedly committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. In many instances, few or no details were available...

authorities often did not respect the privacy of citizens. Although the law requires warrants before officers can search premises, officials frequently ignored this requirement. The Public Security Bureau and prosecutors are authorized to issue search warrants on their own authority without judicial review. Cases of forced entry by police officers continued to be reported.

Authorities monitored telephone calls, text messages, faxes, e-mail, instant messaging, and other digital communications intended to remain private. They also opened and censored domestic and international mail. Security services routinely monitored and entered residences and offices to gain access to computers, telephones, and fax machines. Foreign journalists leaving the country found some of their personal belongings searched. In some cases, when material deemed politically sensitive was uncovered, the journalists had to sign a statement stating they would “voluntarily” leave these documents behind in China.  (brief)

 

 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2017-03/09/c_136115481.htm

1.  The frequent occurrence of gun-related crimes led to heavy casualties and the incarceration rate remained high. /  second highest prisoner rate, with 693 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population .    There had been 70 million Americans incarcerated - that's almost one in three adults - with some form of criminal record (harvardlawreview.org, January 5, 2017).

2. Livelihood of middle- and low-income groups was worrisome amid widening income gap. / Over the last three decades, nearly 70 percent of income ended up in the pockets of the wealthiest 10 percent.

3. Racism continued to exist and racial relations worsened.

4. no improvement to the protection of rights of women, children and elders, and the vulnerable groups' rights were seriously violated. / Roughly one in four women said they have been harassed on the job (www.usatoday.com, July 7, 2016). A total of 20 percent of young women who attended college during a four-year span said they had been sexually assaulted (www.washingtonpost.com, March 5, 2016).

5. US repeatedly trampled on human rights in other countries and willfully slaughtered innocent victims. /  The issue of illegal detention and torturing prisoners of other countries remained unsolved.

6. US refused to approve core international conventions on human rights

(brief)

 

 

                                       The Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace  < Global Peace Index >

                                                             The US's Global Peace Index 2007~2017 : world No.96, 100, 104, 85, 82, 88, 100, 101, 94, 103, 114.
                                                                China's Global Peace Index 2008~2017 : world No.60, 82, 83, 80, 80, 89, 101, 108, 124, 120, 116

 

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, 4-13-2016.

 

China criticized the US

China's report on "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2015", 4-14-2016.

 

Officials continued to harass, intimidate, and prosecute family members and associates to retaliate against rights advocates and defenders. Individuals and groups regarded as politically sensitive by authorities faced tight restrictions on their freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel... details pls. click
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper
The United States still brazenly and brutally violated human rights in other countries, treating citizens from other countries like dirt ... details pls. click

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2016-04/14/c_135278868.htm

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, 6-26- 2015

 

China criticized the US

China's report on "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014", 6-26-2015.

 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/china-criticises-human-rights-record-150626053605693.html

...in China "repression and coercion were routine, particularly against organisations and individuals involved in civil and political rights advocacy".

... Beijing's continued repression of ethnic Uighurs and Tibetans.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYShare

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the paramount authority. CCP members hold almost all top government and security apparatus positions. Ultimate authority rests with the 25-member Political Bureau (Politburo) of the CCP and its seven-member Standing Committee. China completed its once-in-a-decade leadership transition in March 2013, and Xi Jinping held the three most powerful positions as CCP general secretary, state president, and chairman of the Central Military Commission. Civilian authorities maintained control of the military and internal security forces.

Repression and coercion were routine, particularly against organizations and individuals involved in civil and political rights advocacy and public interest issues, ethnic minorities, and law firms that took on sensitive cases. Officials continued to employ harassment, intimidation, and prosecution of family members and associates to retaliate against rights advocates and defenders. Individuals and groups regarded as politically sensitive by authorities continued to face tight restrictions on their freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel. Authorities resorted to extralegal measures such as enforced disappearance and strict house arrest, including house arrest of family members, to prevent public expression of independent opinions. Authorities continued to censor and tightly control public discourse on the internet. Public-interest law firms continued to face harassment, disbarment of legal staff, and closure. There was severe official repression of the freedoms of speech, religion, association, and assembly of Uighurs in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and of Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas. These minorities also faced severe restrictions on movement. Following incidents of violence throughout China, authorities enforced additional restrictions on religious and cultural expression for Uighurs, especially within the XUAR. Officials also approved expedited judicial procedures and in some cases mass trials for Uighur terrorism suspects in the XUAR. Rights abuses peaked around high-profile events, such as the visit of foreign officials, national meetings, and commemorations.

As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to change their government, and citizens had limited forms of redress against official abuse. Other human rights problems during the year included alleged extrajudicial killings, including executions without due process; enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention, including prolonged illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as “black jails”; torture and coerced confessions of prisoners; detention and harassment of lawyers, journalists, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others who sought to exercise peacefully their rights under the law; a lack of due process in judicial proceedings; political control of courts and judges; closed trials; the use of administrative detention; restrictions on freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel; failure to protect refugees and asylum seekers; pressure on other countries to return PRC citizens forcibly; widespread corruption; intense scrutiny of and restrictions on NGOs; discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities; a coercive birth-limitation policy that in some cases resulted in forced abortion (sometimes at advanced stages of pregnancy) or forced sterilization; trafficking in persons; prohibitions on independent unions; lack of protection for workers’ right to strike; forced and child labor; and poor enforcement of wage, overtime, and occupational safety and health laws.

Although authorities prosecuted a number of abuses of power through the court system, particularly with regard to corruption, in most cases the CCP first investigated and punished officials using opaque and selectively applied internal party disciplinary procedures. In many of these cases, the information uncovered by party proceedings was turned over to courts, which “validated” the decisions. Citizens who promoted independent efforts to combat abuses of power were themselves prosecuted. For example, throughout the year the government convicted at least 10 persons associated with the New Citizens Movement on charges stemming from activities to promote transparency and good governance.

 

.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-06/26/c_134357934_9.htm 

Below is brief edited by XinHua, China

The report, titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014," was released by the Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet, in response to "the 2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" issued by the U.S. State Department on June 25 local time.

China's report states that the U.S. made comments on the human rights situations in many countries while showing not a bit of regret for or intention to improve its own terrible human rights record.

"The U.S., a self-proclaimed human rights defender, saw no improvements in its existent human rights issues, but reported numerous new problems," it says.

While its own human rights situation was increasingly grave, the U.S. violated human rights in other countries in a more brazen manner, and was given more "red cards" in the international human rights field, according to the report.

The U.S. was haunted by spreading guns, frequent occurrence of violent crimes, which threatened citizens' civil rights. The excessive use of force by police officers led to many deaths, sparking public outcry, the report says.

An unarmed 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, a town in Missouri. After the grand jury of both Missouri and New York decided to bring no charges against the white police officer, massive protests broke out in more than 170 cities nationwide, it cites cn.nytimes.com as saying.

"The U.S. used cruel tortures indiscriminately, notably those carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)," it says.

To acquire intelligence from suspects of terrorism and extremism, the CIA used brutal methods, such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners against the wall, lashing, death threat and even "rectal rehydration" or rectal feeding, according to the report.

"The U.S. is a country with grim problems of racial discrimination, and institutional discrimination against ethnic minorities continued," according to the report.

Serious racial bias persisted in the police and justice systems. Minority groups and indigenous people are subject to unfairness in environment, election, health care, housing, education and other fields, it says.

In August 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in its concluding observation on the periodic report of the U.S. on the latter's implementation of relevant convention, slammed the U.S. for violating the rights of ethnic minorities, indigenous people, immigrants and other minority groups.

Members of racial and ethnic minorities continued to be disproportionately arrested, incarcerated and subjected to harsher sentences, according to the report.

"American women and children's rights were not fully protected," it says, adding that women were discriminated at workplaces, and domestic violence was prevalent.

The report quotes media reports as saying that 2.1 million American women on average were assaulted by men each year. Three females were murdered by their partner each day, and four females died each day as a result of abuse.

Also, "millions of American children were homeless." Three children died each day as a result of abuse. School violence and sex assaults were pervasive and gun shootings happened from time to time, it says.

 

VI. On Violations of Human Rights in Other Countries

In the field of international human rights, the U.S. has long refused to approve some core human rights conventions of the United Nations and voted against some important UN human rights resolutions. More than that, the U.S. continued to go even further to violate human rights in other countries, including infringing on the privacy of citizens of other countries with the overseas monitoring project, killing large number of innocent civilians of other countries in drone strikes, and raping and killing locals by U.S. soldiers garrisoned overseas.

The Central Intelligence Agency abused torture. As of December 2014, 136 prisoners remained locked up in the Guantanamo Bay military prison (www.latimes.com, December 8, 2014). As disclosed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report released on December 9, the CIA paid a contractor 80 million U.S. dollars to come up with ways to torture people. To acquire intelligence from suspects of terrorism and extremism, the CIA used brutal methods, such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners' head against the wall, lashing, death threat and even the appalling "rectal rehydration" (www.intelligence.senate.gov, December 3, 2014). Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a prisoner held by the CIA in Afghanistan, was tortured with water-boarding for 183 times (www.foxnews.com, April 1, 2014). According to CIA records, many agents implementing waterboarding felt sick, wanted to vomit, and some wanted to cry and felt suffocated (www.intelligence.senate.gov, December 3, 2014). Some detainees also underwent sexual assault. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, held in Guantanamo for 12 years without evidence and court trial, published a diary he wrote in prison. According to the diary, published by German weekly Der Spiegel, Slahi suffered from a variety of tortures, including savage beating, starvation, prohibition of prayer and sexual abuse (www.spiegel.de, January 20, 2015). The Los Angeles Times said in an editorial that the report showed American post-9/11 shame, as well as stomach-turning details of torture. On April 9, 2014, the U.S. executed Mexican citizen Ramiro Hernandez Llanas without granting him access to consular assistance, a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. On April 11, 2014, the spokesperson for the UN high commission for human rights slammed the U.S. saying that its execution of foreign nationals while depriving them of the rights of obtaining consular assistance constituted an act of arbitrary deprivation of life, which violated the international law, including the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights approved by the U.S.

Massive overseas surveillance program violated other countries' sovereignty and civil rights. Ever since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the PRISM data mining program of the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013, more surveillance programs of the U.S. authorities were revealed, and in larger scales. The NSA intercepted phone conversations of 35 world leaders, including Secretary-General of the United Nations, German chancellor and Brazilian president (www.theguardian.com, October 25, 2013). According to a Washington Post report on January 2, 2014, the NSA had a quantum computer development project, coded as "Penetrating Hard Targets," for the purpose of cracking common passwords on the Internet, and stealing encrypted information of government organs, enterprises and banks around the world (www.washingtonpost.com, January 2, 2014). In another project, code-named "Quantum," the NSA installed micro circuit boards or USB storage cards in nearly 100,000 computers around the world, through the channels of "spies, computer makes and unwitting users," obtained data from the computers via receiving radio waves emitted from these devices, and launched cyber attacks on target computers (www.washingtonpost.com, January 14, 2014 and www.huffingtonpost.com, January 14, 2014). Another program, codenamed "Dishfire," collected up to 200 million mobile phone text messages each day from around the globe, while program "Prefer" conducted automated analysis on these messages to acquire users' locations, networks and credit card transaction details (www.theguardian.com, January 6, 2014).

Frequent use of drones producing massive civilian casualties in other countries. Statistics showed that as of November 24, 2014, U.S. drones claimed the lives of 1,147 people in attacks against 41 persons, which meant the death of 28 civilians including women and children to kill every 'bad guy' the U.S. went after (www.theguardian.com, November 14, 2014). In Yemen, U.S. drone bombing and air strikes killed estimated 753 to 965 people, including at least 81 civilians, from the beginning of 2014 to mid April. (www.washingtonpost.com, September 11, 2014).

Frequent violation of human rights by U.S. troops overseas. On July 25, 2014, two American soldiers based near the northern Italian town Vicenza, Gray Lamarcus and Ides McCough, were accused of raping and beating a six month pregnant Romanian woman (www.thedailybeast.com, July 25, 2014). On October 15, 2014, the Philippine police accused American marine Joseph Scott Pemberton of murdering a transgender (www.cbsnews.com, October 15, 2014).

Take its own way on international human rights law. To date, the U.S. still denies that the right of development is a human right. In September 2014, when a draft resolution on the right of development was tabled for a vote at the 27th session of the Human Rights Council, the U.S. once again was the only nation to vote against it (www.ohchr.org, adopted resolution A/HRC/RES/27/2). Though the U.S. signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1977, it has not ratified it so far. Though the U.S. claimed it valued the rights of women and children, yet 34 years after it signed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, it has not ratified the treaty. It has neither ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child 19 years after signing it. Besides, the U.S. remained inactive on foreign debts and human rights to evade its responsibility. It voted against the draft resolution of "the effects of foreign debt on the enjoyment of all human rights" at meetings of the UN Human Rights Council in March and September in 2014 respectively (UN document A/HRC/RES/25/16)

 

 

 

The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, Feb. 27, 2014

China criticized the US

China's report on "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013", Feb. 27, 2014

 

Repression and coercion, particularly against organizations and individuals involved in civil and political rights advocacy and public interest issues, ethnic minorities, and law firms that took on sensitive cases, were routine. Increasingly officials employed harassment, intimidation, and prosecution of family members and associates to retaliate against rights advocates and defenders. Individuals and groups seen as politically sensitive by authorities continued to face tight restrictions on their freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel. Authorities resorted to extralegal measures such as enforced disappearance and strict house arrest, including house arrest of family members, to prevent public expression of independent opinions. Authorities implemented new measures to control and censor the internet and particularly targeted bloggers with large numbers of followers, leading some to close their online accounts. Public-interest law firms continued to face harassment, disbarment of legal staff, and closure. There was severe official repression of the freedoms of speech, religion, association, and assembly of ethnic Uighurs in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and of ethnic Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas. These minorities also faced harsh restrictions on movement. Abuses peaked around high-profile events, such as the visit of foreign officials, national meetings, and commemorations.

As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to change their government, and citizens had limited forms of redress against official abuse. Other human rights problems during the year included extrajudicial killings, including executions without due process; enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention, including prolonged illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as “black jails”; torture and coerced confessions of prisoners; detention and harassment of lawyers, journalists, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others who sought to exercise peacefully their rights under the law; a lack of due process in judicial proceedings; political control of courts and judges; closed trials; the use of administrative detention; restrictions on freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel; failure to protect refugees and asylum seekers; pressure on other countries to return PRC citizens forcibly; widespread corruption; intense scrutiny of and restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities; a coercive birth-limitation policy that in some cases resulted in forced abortion (sometimes at advanced stages of pregnancy) or forced sterilization; trafficking in persons; prohibitions on independent unions; lack of protection for workers’ right to strike; forced and child labor; and poor enforcement of wage, overtime, and occupational safety and health laws.

Although authorities prosecuted a number of abuses of power, particularly with regard to corruption, in many cases the internal disciplinary procedures of the CCP were opaque and only selectively applied to senior officials. Citizens who promoted efforts to combat corruption were themselves detained and arrested. For example, throughout the year, NGO sources reported that authorities arrested at least 29 persons associated with the New Citizens Movement on charges stemming from activities to promote good governance.

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/ 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/28/c_133150579.htm  (full text)

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013" was released by the Information Office of the State Council, China's cabinet, in response to "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013" made public by the U.S. State Department on Thursday.

China's report states that there were serious human rights problems in the U.S in 2013, with the situation deteriorating in many fields. Once again posing as "the world judge of human rights", the U.S. government "made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks" on almost 200 countries and regions, the report says.

The United States carefully concealed and avoided mentioning its own human rights problems, according to the report.

THE WORLD THROUGH PRISM

The U.S. government spies on its own citizens to a "massive and unrestrained" degree, the report says.

The report calls the U.S. PRISM surveillance program, a vast, long-term mechanism for spying on private citizens both at home and abroad, "a blatant violation of international law" and says it "seriously infringes human rights."

The U.S. intelligence services, by virtue of data provided by Internet and telecom companies -- including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo -- "recklessly" track citizens' private contacts and social activities.

KILLER ROBOTS AND DEAD CONVENTIONS

The report quantifies drone strikes by the U.S. in countries, including Pakistan and Yemen, which have caused heavy civilian casualties. In Pakistan alone, since 2004, the U.S. has carried out 376 drone strikes killing 926 civilians.

The U.S. has not ratified, or participated in, a series of core UN conventions on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

Solitary confinement is prevalent in the U.S., the report says.

In U.S. prisons, inmates in solitary confinement are enclosed in cramped cells with poor ventilation and little or no natural light, isolated from other prisoners; a situation that takes it toll on inmates' physical and mental health.

About 80,000 U.S. prisoners are in solitary confinement. Some have been held in solitary confinement for over 40 years.

RAMPANT GUN VIOLENCE

The rampant U.S. gun culture breeds violence that results in the death of 11,000 Americans every year.

The report cites figures from the FBI that state firearms were used in 69.3 percent of the nation's murders, 41 percent of robberies, and 21.8 percent of aggravated assaults.

In 2013, 137 people were killed in 30 mass murder events (four or more deaths each).

A rampage in the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington D.C. left 12 people dead, according to the report.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND HOMELESSNESS

"The U.S. still faces a grave employment situation with its unemployment rate still high," the report says.

Unemployment for low-income families has topped 21 percent. The homeless population in the U.S. has climbed 16 percent from 2011 to 2013.

There are also many child laborers in the agricultural sector in the U.S. and their physical and mental health is seriously compromised, the report says.

Friday's report was the 15th such annual report published by China in response to U.S. attacks

Commentary: U.S. should "sweep its own doorstep" on human rights

BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese idiom says that all will follow one who is personally upright, even though he does not give orders; but if he is not personally upright, they will not follow, even though he gives orders.

Attributed to Confucius (551 BC-479 BC), one of the greatest Chinese philosophers in history, the idiom is an important tenet for the Chinese. Full story

 

 

 The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, April 19, 2013

 

China criticized the US

China's report on "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012", April 20, 2013

 

 

The U.S. State Department has released its "Country Reports On Human Rights Practices" for 2012, highlighting crackdowns on civil society, struggles for democratic change, and threats to freedom of expression.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented the reports to the media in Washington on April 19.

The document states that “governments continued to repress or attack the means by which individuals can organize, assemble, or demand better performance from their rulers.”

It criticizes countries such as Iran and China for repressing civil liberties and cites Russia for adopting "a series of measures that curtailed the activities of [nongovernmental organizations]," particularly those receiving international funding.

full text pls read:

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/ 

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/ -

/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

( Xinhua)

BEIJING -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China published a report titled "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012" on Sunday.

Following is the full text:

Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012

State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China

Foreword

The State Department of the United States recently released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, posing as "the world judge of human rights" again. As in previous years, the reports are full of carping and irresponsible remarks on the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China. However, the US turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and never said a word about it. Facts show that there are serious human rights problems in the US which incur extensive criticism in the world. The Human Rights Record of the US in 2012 is hereby prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the US to people across the world by simply laying down some facts.

The human rights situation in the US in 2012 has deeply impressed people in the following aspects:

-- Firearms-related crimes posed serious threat to the lives and personal security of citizens in the US Some shootings left astonishing casualties, such as the school shooting in Oakland, the Century 16 theater shooting in Colorado and the school shooting in Connecticut.

-- In the US, elections could not fully embody the real will of its citizens. Political contributions had, to a great extent, influenced the electoral procedures and policy direction. During the 2012 presidential election, the voter turnout was only 57.5 percent.

-- In the US, citizens' civil and political rights were further restricted by the government. The government expanded the scope of eavesdropping and censoring on personal telecommunications. The police often abused their power, resulting in increasing complaints and charges for infringement upon civil rights. The proportion of women in the US who fell victims of domestic violence and sexual assault kept increasing.

-- The US has become one of the developed countries with the greatest income gap. In 2011, the Gini index was 0.477 in the US and about 9 million people were registered as unemployed; About 16.4 million children lived in poverty and, for the first time in history, public schools reported more than one million homeless children and youth.

-- There was serious sex, racial and religious discrimination in the US Indigenous people suffered serious racial discrimination and their poverty rate doubled the national average. A movie produced by a US director and aired online was deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed, sparking protests by the Muslims worldwide.

-- The US seriously infringed upon human rights of other nations. In 2012, US military operations in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan caused massive civilian casualties. US soldiers had also severely blasphemed against local residents' religion by burning copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and insulting bodies of the dead. There was a huge rise in birth defects in Iraq since the war against Iraq with military actions in which American forces used metal contaminant-releasing white phosphorus shells and depleted uranium bombs.

-- The US was not able to effectively participate in international cooperation on human rights. To date, the US remains a country which has not participated in or ratified a series of core UN conventions on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

I. On Life and Personal Security

The US was haunted by serious violent crimes in 2012 with frequent occurrence of firearms-related criminal cases. Its people's lives and personal security were not duly protected.

According to statistics released by the FBI in September 2012, an estimated 1,203,564 violent crimes occurred in the US in 2011, about 386.3 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants. Aggravated assaults accounted for 62.4 percent of violent crimes reported to law enforcement. Robbery reached 29.4 percent of violent crimes, forcible rape accounted for 6.9 percent, and murder amounted to 1.2 percent of estimated violent crimes in 2011. And firearms were used in 67.7 percent of the nation' s murders, 41.3 percent of robberies, and 21.2 percent in all crimes in the US

Americans are the most heavily armed people in the world per capita. According to a CNN report on July 23, 2012, there were an estimated 270 million guns in the hands of civilians in the US and more than 100,000 people were shot by guns each year. In 2010, there were more than 30,000 deaths caused by firearms. However, the US government has done little in gun control. In 2008 and 2010 landmark Supreme Court rulings on two firearms-related cases dramatically diminished the authority of state and local governments to limit gun ownership. Roughly half of the 50 US states have adopted laws allowing gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places. And many states have 'stand your ground' laws that allow people to kill if they come under threat, even, in some cases, if they can escape the threat without violence. According to an article on the website of the Hindu on August 7, 2012, in population-adjusted terms, civilians in some parts of the US are more likely to become the victim of a firearms-related murder than their counterparts in war-torn regions like Iraq or Afghanistan. On January 16, 2013, the US president announced 23 steps on gun control to take immediately without congressional approval. And the president signed three of the measures. But the public opinion generally believes that the gun-control measures will encounter great resistance.

According to a report on the USA Today's website on October 17, 2012, the violent crime rate went up 17 percent in 2011. Firearms-related violent crimes posed as one of the most serious threats to the lives and personal security of the US citizens. Statistics showed that an estimated 14,612 people fell victims of murder in 2011 and 9,903 of them were firearms-related murder victims (Website of the Congressional Research service, www.fas.org, November 14, 2012). The US witnessed more firearms-related violent crimes in 2012. According to NYPD statistics published on September 2, 2012, there had been 1,001 shootings so far that year in New York, about 3.4 percent more than the 968 reported at the same time the previous year (NY Daily News, September 9, 2012). According to statistics from the website of Chicago Police Department, there were 2,460 shooting incidents in Chicago in 2012, up 10 percent year on year. Some of the shootings were quite bloody and terrifying, such as the movie theater shooting in Colorado and the school shooting in Connecticut.

On July 20, 2012, James E. Holmes, 24, entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, carrying an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one handgun. He sprayed people at the theater who were watching a movie, leaving at least 12 dead and 59 wounded. A witness said: "He was just literally shooting everyone, like hunting season." According to a CNN report on July 21, law enforcement documents showed that the weapons were purchased legally by Holmes at sporting goods stores in the Denver area over a six-month period before the shooting happened. According to a CNN report on July 23, in wake of the shooting rampage in Colorado, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: "I don't think there's any other developed country in the world that has remotely the problem we have."

On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He committed suicide after that. But before he came to the school, he had shot and killed his mother. The incident was the second deadliest school shooting in the US history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre which left 32 killed.

 

USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices" 2013
full text pls click:

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper

 The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, April 8 2011

 China criticized the US

"China's annual report on Washington's human rights record", April 10, 2011

 

Washington Post, by Associated Press, Monday, April 11, 2:03 AM

China stepped up restrictions on critics and tightened control of civil society last year by limiting freedom of speech and Internet access.

The US has also protested the detention of government critics, including artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) as part of a recent Chinese crackdown on dissent.

 

Reuters, Apr 10, 2011 11:57am EDT

China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judge

U.S. Secretary of State ... was "deeply concerned" about it, and cited "negative trends" including Ai's detention.

... U.S. State Department report ... said Beijing had stepped up restrictions on lawyers, activists, bloggers and journalists, and tightened controls on civil society.

It has also increased its efforts to control the press, Internet and Internet access,...

 

 

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, issued April 8, 2011

full text please refer to
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/       http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2010/index.htm

A negative trend in key areas of the country's human rights record continued, as the government took additional steps to rein in civil society, particularly organizations and individuals involved in rights advocacy and public interest issues, and increased attempts to limit freedom of speech and to control the press, the Internet, and Internet access. Efforts to silence political activists and public interest lawyers were stepped up, and increasingly the government resorted to extralegal measures including enforced disappearance, "soft detention," and strict house arrest, including house arrest of family members, to prevent the public voicing of independent opinions. Public interest law firms that took on sensitive cases also continued to face harassment, disbarment of legal staff, and closure.

Individuals and groups, especially those seen as politically sensitive by the government, continued to face tight restrictions on their freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel. The government continued its severe cultural and religious repression of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and Tibetan areas. Abuses peaked around high-profile events, such as the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to democracy activist Liu Xiaobo and sensitive anniversaries.

As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to change their government. Principal human rights problems during the year included: extrajudicial killings, including executions without due process; enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention, including prolonged illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as "black jails"; torture and coerced confessions of prisoners; detention and harassment of journalists, writers, dissidents, petitioners, and others who sought to peacefully exercise their rights under the law; a lack of due process in judicial proceedings, political control of courts and judges; closed trials; the use of administrative detention; restrictions on freedoms to assemble, practice religion, and travel; failure to protect refugees and asylum-seekers; pressure on other countries to forcibly return citizens to China; intense scrutiny of, and restrictions on, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities; a coercive birth limitation policy, which in some cases resulted in forced abortion or forced sterilization; trafficking in persons; prohibitions on independent unions and a lack of protection for workers' right to strike; and the use of forced labor, including prison labor. Corruption remained endemic.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:

a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life...

b. Disappearance...

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment...

d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention...

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial...

f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence...

Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including: ... omitted

 

 

Taipei Times, Taiwan:  April 11, 2011

In its encyclopedic 35th annual report on human rights practices in 190 countries, the department had particularly harsh words for China.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, presenting the report, said: “In China, we’ve seen negative trends that are appearing to worsen in the first part of 2011.”

“We remain deeply concerned about reports that since February, dozens of people, including public-interest lawyers, writers, artists, intellectuals and activists, have been arbitrarily detained and arrested,” Clinton said. “Among them most recently was the prominent artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), who was taken into custody just this past Sunday. We urge China to release all of those who have been detained for exercising their internationally recognized right to free expression and to respect the fundamental freedoms and human rights of all the citizens of China.”

 

the Liberty Times, Taiwan, 2011/04/11 14:47:26

 "Show more concern for China's human rights"
 

The Beijing government's arrest of well-known Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has drawn worldwide concern. The U.S. State Department has called for Ai's immediate release and outgoing U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman has also criticized China's human rights suppression in his recent farewell speeches.

The State Department's newly published report on human rights conditions around the world points out that the human rights situation has continued to deteriorate in China as the Chinese authorities have taken more measures to restrict civil liberties and suppress human rights campaigners.

...In fact, democracy and human rights are imaginary issues in China,...

Although the Chinese Constitution contains human rights provisions, none of them have ever been substantiated. A peaceful political reform advocate, Liu Xiabo, is serving a jail term for subversion simply because he wrote articles criticizing the communist government. Liu, who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has even been denied the chance to receive the award in person, and remains incarcerated.

The arrest of Ai Weiwei has exposed yet another downside to the Chinese communist regime. A world-renowned artist, Ai has been active in investigating corrupt political forces and advocating civil rights in Chinese society, such as probing toxic milk and shoddy school construction projects and supporting suppressed human rights campaigners.

He was taken into custody at Beijing airport early this month when he was getting ready to board a flight to Hong Kong, on charges of committing economic crimes.

 

★  New York Times , April 6, 2011

Departing U.S. Envoy Criticizes China on Human Rights

... ambassador, Mr. Huntsman said bluntly that prominent Chinese activists had been unfairly detained or jailed, naming Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for “subversion,” and Ai Weiwei, the Beijing artist who was taken into custody on Sunday.

Mr. Huntsman also accused China of wrongly imprisoning Xue Feng, an American geologist who was gathering information on the oil industry and accused of stealing state secrets.

“The United States will never stop supporting human rights because we believe in the fundamental struggle for human dignity and justice wherever it may occur,”...

In Berlin, Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, summoned the Chinese ambassador to protest Mr. Ai’s detention. American and European Union officials have expressed concern about his safety. ...

Mr. Ai’s arrest appears to be part of the government’s attempt to stifle dissent among activists who may be trying to emulate the protests and demonstrations in recent months in North Africa and the Middle East. Chinese security officers have detained activists, tightened controls over the Internet and the Chinese news media, and harassed and threatened foreign journalists.

 

★  New York Times , Jan. 19, 2011 

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday gently but pointedly prodded China to make progress on human rights, but he sought to focus most of the attention during a closely watched state visit with President Hu Jintao on the expanding economic relationship between the United States and its biggest economic rival.

 

Mr. Obama said that differences on human rights were an “occasional source of tension between our two governments.” ... he called on China to live up to human rights values that he said were enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, adding that Americans “have some core views as Americans about the universality of certain rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly.”

Mr. Hu, ..., seemed to hearten White House officials by acknowledging that China had a ways to go on human rights issues. ...“And a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Washington Post,

China accused the US ... of pushing for Internet freedom around the world as a way to undermine other nations, while noting that Washington’s campaign against secret-spilling Web site WikiLeaks showed its own sensitivity to the free flow of information.

... lambasted the US over issues ranging from homelessness and violent crime to the influence of money on politics and the negative effects of its foreign policy on civilians...

China also advise the US government to take concrete actions to improve its human rights conditions, check and rectify its acts in the human rights field, and stop the hegemonistic deeds of using human rights issues to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs,” ...

... Washington “wants to practice diplomacy by other means, including the Internet, particularly the social networks.”

... cited figures showing high crime, child poverty and racial discrimination in the US, and accused Washington of causing “huge civilian casualties” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

... the huge amount of money poured into last year’s mid-term congressional elections as a perversion of democracy, blasted Arizona’s legislation on illegal immigration and pointed to a women’s bias lawsuit against Wal-Mart as evidence of continuing gender discrimination.

 

Reuters, Apr. 10, 2011 11:57am EDT

China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judge

The United States is beset by violence, racism and torture and has no authority to condemn other governments' human rights problems, China said on Sunday, countering U.S. criticism of Beijing's crackdown....

Stop the domineering behavior of exploiting human rights to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries,"...

"The United States ignores its own severe human rights problems, ardently promoting its so-called 'human rights diplomacy', treating human rights as a political tool to vilify other countries and to advance its own strategic interests," ...

... the United States' refusal to ratify a number of international human rights pacts, and listed poverty, hunger and homelessness as stains on the country's rights record.

"The United States is the world's worst country for violent crimes," said the report. "Citizens' lives, property and personal safety do not receive the protection they should."

"Racial discrimination is deeply rooted in the United States, permeating every aspect of social life,"

 

  www.USA.ChinaDaily.com.cn ,   April  11,  2011

ps : excerpts of  "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010",  China's Information Office of the State Council, or cabinet

 the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2010 on April 8, 2011. As in previous years, the reports are full of distortions and accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China. However, the United States turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation and seldom mentioned it....

I. On Life, Property and Personal Security

The United States reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes, and its people's lives, properties and personal security are not duly protected.

Every year, one out of every five people is a victim of a crime in the United States. No other nation on earth has a rate that is higher (10 Facts About Crime in the United States that Will Blow Your Mind, Beforitsnews.com).

...

II. On Civil and Political Rights

In the United States, the violation of citizens' civil and political rights by the government is severe.

Citizen' s privacy has been undermined. According to figures released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in September 2010, more than 6,600 travelers had been subject to electronic device searches between Oct 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, nearly half of them American citizens. A report on The Wall Street Journal on Sept 7, 2010, said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was sued over its policies that allegedly authorize the search and seizure of laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. ..

Abuse of violence and torturing suspects to get confession is serious in the US law enforcement. According to a report of Associated Press on Oct 14, 2010, the New York Police Department (NYPD) paid about $964 million to resolve claims against its officers over the past decade. Among them was a case that an unarmed man was killed in a 50-bullet police shooting on his wedding day. ...

The United States has always called itself "land of freedom," but the number of inmates in the country is the world' s largest. According to a report released by the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project in 2008, one in every 100 adults in the US are in jail and the figure was one in every 400 in 1970....

Wrongful conviction occurred quite often in the United States. In the past two decades, a total of 266 people were exonerated through DNA tests, among them 17 were on death row (Chicago Tribune, July 11, 2010). A report from The Washington Post on April 23, 2010, said Washington DC Police admitted 41 charges they raised against a 14-year-old boy, including four first-degree murders, were false and the teen never confessed to any charge. ...

The US regards itself as "the beacon of democracy." However, its democracy is largely based on money. According to a report from The Washington Post on Oct 26, 2010, US House and Senate candidates shattered fundraising records for a midterm election, taking in more than $1.5 billion as of Oct 24. The midterm election, held in November 2010, finally cost $3.98 billion, the most expensive in the US history....

While advocating Internet freedom, the US in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website (Prison Planet.com, June 25, 2010). The United States applies double standards on Internet freedom by requesting unrestricted "Internet freedom" in other countries, ...

III. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

IV. On Racial Discrimination

Racial discrimination, deep-seated in the United States, has permeated every aspect of social life.

An Associated Press-Univision Poll, reported by the Associated Press on May 20, 2010, found that 61 percent of people overall said Hispanics face significant discrimination, compared with 52 percent who said blacks do. The New York Times reported on Oct 28, 2010 that more than 6 in 10 Latinos in the United States say discrimination is a "major problem" for them, a significant increase in the last three years.

Minorities do not enjoy the same political status as white people. The New York city's non-Hispanic white population is 35 percent, while more than 70 percent of the senior jobs are held by whites. ...

Minority groups have high unemployment rate. ...

Poverty proportion for minorities is also high in the United States....

The US minority groups face obvious inequality in education....

The health care for African-American people is worrisome. ...

Racial discrimination is evident in the law enforcement and judicial systems. The New York Times reported on May 13, 2010, that in 2009, African-Americans and Latinos were 9 times more likely to be stopped by the police to receive stop-and-frisk searches than white people....

Racial hate crimes are frequent. The FBI said in an annual report that out of 6,604 hate crimes committed in the United States in 2009,...

V. On the rights of women and children

The situation regarding the rights of women and children in the United States is bothering. ...

VI. On US Violations of Human Rights against Other Nations

The United States has a notorious record of international human rights violations.

The US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused huge civilian casualties....

The US counter-terrorism missions have been haunted by prisoner abuse scandals. The United States held individuals captured during its "war on terror" indefinitely without charge or trial,...

The United States refuses to join several key international human rights conventions, failing to fulfill its international obligations...The above-mentioned facts illustrate that the United States has a dismal record on its own human rights and could not be justified to pose as the world's "human rights justice". However, it released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to accuse and blame other countries for their human rights practices. The United States ignores its own serious human rights problems, but has been keen on advocating the so-called "human rights diplomacy", to take human rights as a political instrument to defame other nations' image and seek its own strategic interests. These facts fully expose its hypocrisy by exercising double standards on human rights and its malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights.

full text pls refer to www.usa.ChinaDaily.com.cn

 

 Xinhua -- BEIJING, April 10, 2011

Many children in the U.S. live in poverty and their physical and mental health is not ensured as nearly one in four children struggles with hunger,...

The poverty rate increased for children younger than 18 to 20.7 percent in 2009, up 1.7 percentage points from that in 2008, the report quoted figures from the U.S. Census Bureau as saying.

... violence against children is very severe in the country, citing figures from the official website of Love Our Children USA that every year over three million children are victims of violence reportedly and the actual number is three times greater.

More than 93,000 children are currently incarcerated in the United States, and between 75 and 93 percent of children have experienced at least one traumatic experience, including sexual abuse and neglect, ...

... pornographic content is rampant on the Internet and severely harms American children as seven in 10 children have accidentally accessed pornography on the Internet and one in three has done so intentionally.

 

People's Daily Online  , 08:53, April 11, 2011  

US has serious human rights abuses: China
 
The United States, the world's richest state, is beset by rampant gun violence, serious racism, and an increasing portion of its population have become poorer,...

The U.S., under siege with all its human rights problems, is in no position to criticize other countries' human rights, ...

Washington has taken human rights as a "political instrument to defame other governments' image and seek its own strategic interests", Beijing said.

In breakdown, the report lists high incidence of gun-related bloodshed crimes in the U.S. resulting from its outrageous gun ownership policy. It has 12,000 registered gun murder cases a year, and tens of hundreds people are shot to death or get injured in gunfights, the highest in the world.

In the U.S. the violation of citizens' civil and political rights by the government is severe, the report said. Between October 2008 to June 2010, more than 6,600 travelers were subject to electronic device searches, half of them are American citizens.

And, abuse of force and violence, and torturing suspects in order to get their confession is serious in the U.S. law enforcement, ...

The US... democracy is largely based on money, ... ...The Washington Post on October 26, 2010, U.S. House and Senate candidates shattered fundraising records for a midterm election, taking in more than $1.5 billion. The midterm election, held in November, cost $3.98 billion, the most expensive political rally in the US history. Various interest groups have actively spent on the event, ...

..., the US in fact imposes strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the American federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency rule.

Economically, unemployment rate in the United States has been stubbornly high. Proportion of Americans living in poverty has risen to a new high. The US Census Bureau reported in September that a total of 44 million Americans found themselves in poverty. The share of residents in poverty climbed to 14.3 percent in 2009, the report said.

Also, Americans living in hunger and starvation increased sharply. A report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in November showed that 14.7 percent of US households were food insecure in 2009. And, the number of families in homeless shelters increased 7 percent to more than 170, 000, it said.

On the global stage, the U.S. has a "notorious record of international human rights violations", said the report. The U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already caused huge civilian casualties.

Prior to Beijing's releasing the human rights report, a U.S. State Department report on global human rights released on Friday said that Beijing had stepped up restrictions on activists, lawyers and online bloggers, and tightened controls on civil society to maintain stability....

 

USA Today ,  April 11, 2011 

"China issues report criticizing U.S. human rights"

China accused the U.S. on Monday of pushing for Internet freedom around the world as a way to undermine other nations, while noting that Washington's campaign against secret-spilling website WikiLeaks showed its own sensitivity to the free flow of information.

...  China's annual report on Washington's human rights record, which lambasted the U.S. over issues ranging from homelessness and violent crime to the influence of money on politics and the negative effects of its foreign policy on civilians.

... "We hereby advise the U.S. government to take concrete actions to improve its human rights conditions, check and rectify its acts in the human rights field, and stop the hegemonistic deeds of using human rights issues to interfere in other countries' internal affairs,"

...

Washington "wants to practice diplomacy by other means, including the Internet, particularly the social networks."

The Chinese report cited figures showing high crime, child poverty and racial discrimination in the U.S., and accused Washington of causing "huge civilian casualties" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report pointed to the huge amount of money poured into last year's midterm congressional elections as a perversion of democracy, blasted Arizona's legislation on illegal immigration, and pointed to a women's bias lawsuit against Wal-Mart as evidence of continuing gender discrimination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The US criticized China

"USA Country Reports on Human Rights practices", the US State Department, May 24, 2012

 China criticized the US

China's report on "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011", May 25, 2012


★  US Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011, May 24, 2012

 

China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYShare

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constitutionally is the paramount authority. CCP members hold almost all top government, police, and military positions. Ultimate authority rests with the 25-member Political Bureau (Politburo) of the CCP and its nine-member Standing Committee. Hu Jintao holds the three most powerful positions as CCP general secretary, president, and chairman of the Central Military Commission. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

Deterioration in key aspects of the country’s human rights situation continued. Repression and coercion, particularly against organizations and individuals involved in rights advocacy and public interest issues, were routine. Individuals and groups seen as politically sensitive by the authorities continued to face tight restrictions on their freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel. Efforts to silence political activists and public interest lawyers were stepped up, and, increasingly, authorities resorted to extralegal measures including enforced disappearance, “soft detention,” and strict house arrest, including house arrest of family members, to prevent the public voicing of independent opinions. Public interest law firms that took on sensitive cases continued to face harassment, disbarment of legal staff, and closure. The authorities increased attempts to limit freedom of speech and to control the press, the Internet, and Internet access. The authorities continued severe cultural and religious repression of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and Tibetan areas. Abuses peaked around high-profile events, such as the visit of foreign officials, sensitive anniversaries, and in response to Internet-based calls for “Jasmine Revolution” protests.

As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to change their government. Other human rights problems during the year included: extrajudicial killings, including executions without due process; enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention, including prolonged illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as “black jails”; torture and coerced confessions of prisoners; detention and harassment of lawyers, journalists, writers, dissidents, petitioners, and others who sought to peacefully exercise their rights under the law; a lack of due process in judicial proceedings; political control of courts and judges; closed trials; the use of administrative detention; restrictions on freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel; failure to protect refugees and asylum seekers; pressure on other countries to forcibly return citizens to China; intense scrutiny of and restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities; a coercive birth limitation policy that in some cases resulted in forced abortion or forced sterilization; trafficking in persons; prohibitions on independent unions and a lack of protection for workers’ right to strike; and the use of forced labor, including prison labor. Corruption remained widespread.

The authorities prosecuted a number of abuses of power, particularly with regard to corruption. However, the internal disciplinary procedures of the CCP were opaque, and it was not clear whether human rights and administrative abuses were consistently punished.

 

details refer to http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper

 

★  NY Times, 5 24, 2012

.” .....Some chronic abusers of human rights remained at the bottom of the department’s list: Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Belarus and China.

The report included tough words about Chinese rights practices, saying that conditions there had deteriorated. In 2008, the report dropped China from its list of the worst abusers. But the new report cites “repression and coercion” of rights advocates, tight restrictions on political dissidents, curbs on journalists and on Internet access, and “severe cultural and religious repression” of ethnic Uighurs and Tibetans.

The recent diplomatic incident involving the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng occurred after the time frame covered in the report. Still, Michael H. Posner, an assistant secretary of state, said that it demonstrated how the United States could criticize foreign nations for human rights shortcomings even while cooperating with them on economic or security issues. .....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

XinHua, 5 25, 2012

The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China published a report titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011" on Friday. Following is the full text:

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)

 


 

 

★  World Human Rights (USA, China, Africa, Euro, etc)

 organization / institution

   web-site

 

Transparency International 

 http://www.transparency.org 

 

Transparency International - Taiwan
ps: Now it changed its name
 from "Taiwan" to "Chinese Taipei"

new site : http://www.tict.org.tw/e_index.html
old site http://www.ti-taiwan.org/ch.files/index-1.htm 

 

Amnesty International

http://www.amnesty.org

 

Amnesty International - Taiwan

http://www.aitaiwan.org.tw

http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/taiwan

 

Freedom House

http://www.freedomhouse.org 

 

Reporters without Borders, Paris, France

http://www.rsf.org

 

Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. (PERC)

http://www.asiarisk.com

 

United Nations

http://www.un.org/en/rights/ 

 

US State government

 

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/ 

 

 

ps:

★  Human rights in USA : http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/usa  , 
                                               http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25595&Valider=OK
                                               http://www.transparency-usa.org/news/calendar.html
                                               
                                               
The United States ranks world no. 88 (score 2.058) in "2012 Global Peace Index"
                                                   (GPI) by UK's <Economist Intelligence Unit>,
                                                   The US's Global Peace Index 2007~2016 : No.96, 100, 104, 85, 82, 88, 100, 101, 94, 103.
                                                  
For a sixth straight year, Western Europe remained the most peaceful overall
                                                                      region of the world.  China ranks No.89 in 2012.

                                                   No1- 10: 
Iceland, Denmark(2), NZ(2), canada, Japan, Austria(6), Ireland(6), Slovenia,
                                                                    Finland, Swiss

                                                  
The index ranks 158 nations using 23 indicators which gauge ongoing domestic
                                                             and international conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization.

                                        
    ◎ no. 19 (2011), No.17(2010) in "Democracy Index", by <Economist Intelligence Unit>, UK.
                                        
    ◎ <Reporters sans Frontieres> (RSF, Reporters without Borders, France):
                                                        "Freedom of press (information)" index 2011-2012
                                                     ―  USA ranked world no. 47, USA-extra-territorial ranked no.57, both are worse than
                                                         Asian countries Japan, Korea, Taiwan.
                                            
  Freedom House 2012 (a Washington-based human rights organization, USA)
                                            
ranked USA's press status as world no. 22.
                                             
  Germany based Transparency International's 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index,
                                                     USA ranking No. 19, behind UK and Japan.

                                                     Denmark, Finland and New Zealand tied for first place out of 176 countries.
                                             
◎  Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. (PERC) : USA's 2012 corruption
                                                        index ranking (score 2.59) in Asia & Pacific is No. 4.
                                                        (
No.1 Singapore (0.67)、No. 2 Australia(1.28)、No. 3 Japan(1.90))
                                             
Amnesty International 2012 : Amnesty International criticised the United States for
                                                      its use of lethal force, particularly for the “unlawful” killing of Osama bin Laden in a
                                                      clandestine US commando raid in Pakistan last May. (5/24/2012)

★  China's human rights :    http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/china ,
                                                 http://en.rsf.org/china.html     http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25650&Valider=OK
                                                 http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=773
                                                  Freedom House 2013 (a Washington-based human rights organization, USA) rated
                                                      China's
 a “not free” press and to be home to “the world’s most sophisticated censorship apparatus.”
                                                
China ranks world no. 89 (score 2.061) in "2012 Global Peace Index" (GPI) by UK's
                                                      <Economist Intelligence Unit>,  Taiwan ranks No. 27 (score 1.602)
                                                      China's Global Peace Index 2008~2016 : No.60, 82, 83, 80, 80, 89, 101, 108, 124, 120
                                                
 Freedom House 2012 (a Washington-based human rights organization, USA) rated
                                                         China's press status as  "not free." ,
                                                         China ranked 187th in the global rankings and tied for 38th with Myanmar among
                                                         40 Asia-Pacific countries, ahead only of North Korea.
                                                         China's media environment remained one of the world's most restrictive in 2011.

                                                
China's Democracy Index (EIU) of 2011 is world no. 141,  No. 136 in 2010, same as 2008.
                                                
China's latest "2009 Press Freedom Index" by <Reports without Borders>
                                                       for press freedom ranks 168.
                                      
<Reporters sans Frontieres> (RSF, Reporters without Borders, France):
                                                       "Freedom of press (information)" index 2011-2012  ―  China ranked world no. 174.
                                                
  Germany based Transparency International's 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index,
                                                       China's ranking
remained in 80th place with a score of 39 - which means Failure.
                                                
◎  Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. (PERC) : China's 2012 corruption
                                                        index ranking (score 7.00) in Asia & Pacific is No. 12.
                                                        (
No.1 Singapore (0.67)、No. 2 Australia(1.28)、No. 3 Japan(1.90))
                                       ◎
 Freedom House 2012 (
a Washington-based human rights organization, USA)
                                             rated China's press status as  "not free." ,
                                                         China ranked 187th in the global rankings and tied for 38th with Myanmar
                                                         among 40 Asia-Pacific countries, ahead only of North Korea.
                                                         China's media environment remained one of the world's most restrictive in 2011.
                                               
Amnesty International 2012 : China employed the full weight of its security apparatus to
                                                         suffocate protest in the worst crackdown since 1989.
                                               

 

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