Human Righst report on the USSA
Anonym - 12.03.2002 09:37
China Issues "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001"
 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2002-03/11/content_310843.htm
Xinhuanet 2002-03-11 14:22:36
BEIJING, March 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Following is the full text of the
"Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001," published by
the Information Office of the State Council of the People´s
Republic of China Monday:
Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001
By Information Office of the State Council of the People´s
Republic of China
I. Lack of Safeguard for Life, Freedom and Personal Safety
II. Serious Rights Violations by Law Enforcement Departments
III. Plight of the Poor, Hungry and Homeless
IV. Worrying Conditions for Women and Children
V. Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination
VI. Wantonly Infringing upon Human Rights of Other Countries
On March 4, 2002, the U.S. State Department published "Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices -- 2001." Once again the United
States, assuming the role of "world judge of human rights," has
distorted human rights conditions in many countries and regions in
the world, including China, and accused them of human rights
violations, all the while turning a blind eye to its own human
rights-related problems. In fact, it is right in the United States
where serious human rights violations exist.
I. Lack of Safeguard for Life, Freedom and Personal Safety
Violence and crimes are a daily occurrence in the U.S. society,
where people´s life, freedom and personal safety are under serious
threat. According to the 2001 fourth issue of Dialogue published
by the U.S. Embassy in China, in 1998, the number of criminal
cases in the United States reached 12.476 million, including 1.531
million violent crime cases and 17,000 murder cases; and for every
100,000 people, there were 4,616 criminal cases, including 566
involving violent crimes. From 1977 to 1996, more than 400,000
Americans were murdered, almost seven times the number of
Americans killed in the Vietnam War. During the years since 1997,
another 480,000 people have been murdered in the country.
According to a report carried by the Christian Science Monitor in
its January 22, 2002 issue, the murder rate in the United States
at present stands at 5.5 persons per 100,000 people. According to
data provided by police stations in 18 major U.S. cities, the
number of murder cases in many big cities in 2001 increased
drastically, with those in Boston and Phoenix City increasing the
fastest. In the year to December 18, 2001, the number of murder
cases in the two cities increased by more than 60 percent over the
same period of the previous year. The number of murder cases
increased by 22 percent in St. Louis, 17.5 percent in Houston, 15
percent in St. Antonio, 11.6 percent in Atlanta, 9.2 percent in
Los Angeles and 5.2 percent in Chicago. According to the same
report of the Christian Science Monitor, on campuses of colleges
and universities in the United States in 2001, the number of
murder cases increased by almost 100 percent over 2000, that of
arson cases by about 9 percent, that of break-ins by 3 percent.
The United States is the country with the biggest number of
private guns. On the one hand, worries about the threat of
violence have led to rush buying of guns for self-protection; on
the other hand, the flooding of guns is an important factor
contributing to high violence and crime rates. Statistics of the
FBI show that sales of weapons and ammunition in the United States
in the three months of September through November of 2001 grew
anywhere from 9 percent to 22 percent. October witnessed a record
1,029,691 guns registered. Statistics also show that shooting is
the second major cause of non-normal deaths after traffic
accidents in the United States, averaging 15,000 deaths annually.
Over the history of more than 200 years, three U.S. presidents
were shot, with two dead and one wounded seriously. There is much
less personal safety for common people in the United States. Since
1972, more than 80 people have been shot dead every day on average
in the United States, including about 12 children.
On March 5, 2001, a 15-year-old student killed two and wounded
13 fellow students at Santana High School in California. This is
the deadliest school shooting following one in a high school in
the state of Colorado in April 1999, in which 13 were killed. Two
days later, that is, on March 7, a 14-year-old girl student shot
dead a schoolmate of hers in the cafeteria of a Roman Catholic
school in Pennsylvania. On the same day, police overpowered a
gunman who was about to shoot on the campus of the University of
Albertus. On April 14, a 43-year-old man with two rifles and two
short guns fired madly at a bar and its car park, killing two and
wounding 20. On September 7, a gunman burst into a family on the
outskirts of Simi Valley of Los Angeles and shot three people dead
and wounded two. Earlier on August 31, a demobilized policeman
shot dead another and set fire on himself. FBI called Los Angeles
"the freest city for crimes." On December 7, a worker at a
woodworking factory shot one fellow worker dead and wounded six
others in Indiana.
On January 15, 2002, a teenage student fired at fellow students
at Martin Luther King High School, seriously wounding two. This
coincided with the 73rd anniversary of Martin Luther King, leader
of the human rights movement in the United States and an advocator
of non-violence. More ironically, on March 4, 2002, the very day
when the U.S. State Department published its annual report,
accusing other countries of "human rights violations," another
shooting took place: in New Mexico, a four-year-old boy, while
watching TV in his bedroom, shot dead an 18-month-old baby girl
with his father´s gun.
The U.S. media are inundated with violent contents,
contributing to a high crime rate in the United States, especially
among young people. Young people in the country get used to
violence and crimes from an early age. With the extensive use of
cable TV, video tapes and computers, children have more
opportunities to see bloody violent scenes. A culture beautifying
violence has made young people believe that the gun can "solve"
all problems. An investigative report issued on August 1, 2001 by
a U.S. non-governmental watchdog group -- Parents Television
Council (PTC) -- says that violence in television programs from 8
to 9 p.m. in the recent one-year period was up by 78 percent and
abusive language up by 71 percent. Even CBS, regarded as the "
cleanest" TV network, had 3.2 scenes of violence and abusive
language per hour. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, TV
stations and movie houses in the United States exercised some
restraint on the broadcasting and screening of programs and films
of violence. But it was hardly two months before violence films,
which have top box-office value, staged a comeback. International
Herald Tribune reported that one American youth could see 40,000
murder cases and 200,000 other violent acts from the media before
the age of 18. A survey by California-based Ethical Code Institute
shows that over the past year, most American youth had the
experience of using violence, including 21 percent of the boys in
high schools and 15 percent of the boys in junior middle schools
who had the experience of taking arms to school for at least once.
The U.S. National Association of Education estimates that about
100,000 students in the United States take arms to school every
day.
In recent years, voices for controlling guns and eliminating
the culture of violence have been running high. On Mother´s Day on
May 14, 2000, women from nearly 70 cities in the United States
staged a "Million Moms Mother´s Day March," demanding that the U.S.
Congress enact a strict gun control law. However, voices of the
common people can hardly produce any results.
II. Serious Rights Violations by Law Enforcement Departments
Police brutality and unfair adjudication are intrinsic stubborn
diseases of the United States. In March 2001, the family of a
French victim brought a lawsuit against the police and prison
guards of the state of Nevada. Nine prison guards were accused of
beating the victim, Phillippe Leman, to death. Forensic
examinations identified the cause of death as suffocation due to
fracture of the throat bone. Yet, a local court pardoned the nine
prison guards and acquitted them of responsibilities for the death
of the French man.
Torture and forced confession are common in the United States,
with the number of convicts on the death row that are misjudged or
wronged remaining high. In December 2001, a man on the death row,
Alon Patterson, claimed that his confession was forced due to
torture by Chicago police, who used a plastic typewriter cover to
suffocate him. The case aroused extensive attention. As Chicago is
under the jurisdiction of Cook County, Chicago Herald Tribune sent
reporters to investigate the archives of several thousand murder
cases in Cook since 1991. They found that verdicts were determined
in at least 247 cases without witness or evidence and that
judgment was based on confessions of the accused only. The
credibility of such "confessions" is subject to doubt.
U.S. federal laws and 38 states allow the death penalty. Since
the 1990s, crimes punishable by death and the annual number of
executions in the United States have been on the increase. Annual
executions increased from 23 in 1990 to 98 in 1999. In the last 20
years, the United States has extended the death penalty to more
than 60 crimes and speeded up executions by restricting the right
of the convicted to appeal. Since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court
restored the death penalty, about 600 persons have been executed
in the United States. According to a February 11, 2002 Reuters
report, from 1973 to 1995, the verdicts of 68 percent of convicts
on the death row were overturned owing to misjudgment by the court.
In the cases with overturned verdicts, 82 percent of the convicts
were sentenced to lesser penalties and 9 percent were set free.
Since 1973, a total of 99 convicts on the death row have been
proven innocent. These people spent an average of eight years of
terror in death confines, sustaining tremendous mental trauma.
According to an analysis, main reasons for misjudgment were
failure to get legal counsel on the part of the accused,
confession forcing by the police and prosecutors, and misdirection
of the jury by judges.
The United States has the biggest prison population in the
world. Prisons there are overcrowded, and inmates ill-treated. A
study by the Judicial Policy Institute under the Juvenile and
Criminal Hearing Center shows that during the 1992-2000 period,
673,000 people were sent to state or federal prisons and detention
centers, and 476 out of every 100,000 people were detained. With
prisons burdened with too many inmates, violent conflicts keep
occurring. In December 2001, about 300 inmates in a California
prison staged a riot, which was put down by prison guards, using
tear gas and wooden bullets. Seven prisoners were seriously
wounded. The prison in question incarcerated more than 4,000
inmates though it was designed to keep no more than 2,200.
Overcrowding often leads to violent clashes among prisoners. In
2000 alone, more than 120 prisoners staged riots, in which ten
people were wounded. Drug taking is prevalent in U.S. prisons. In
the last ten years, at least 188 inmates died of drug abuse.
Punishment for sex offenders in the United States has become
more and more severe. Many phased-out cruel punishments have been
reinstated. Some criminals would select the extreme penalty of
castration in exchange for a penalty reduction. Castration had
been removed as a penalty scores of years before. According to the
Los Angeles Times, in California in the last three years, two sex
offenders received castration in return for release.
In February 2002, the world was shocked to learn of a scandal
involving a crematorium in the United States. Tri-State Crematory
in the state of Georgia, instead of cremating human bodies after
receiving money for the service, threw the corpses in the woods or
stacked them in wooden sheds like cordwood, leaving them to rot
there. The shocking practice is said to have lasted 15 years. More
than 300 bodies have been found on the grounds of the crematorium
so far. The crime is shocking enough, but the state of Georgia
does not have a law that is applicable for the crime. What verdict
to pass on the suspect remains a legal difficulty.
III. Plight of the Poor, Hungry and Homeless
While the best-developed country in the world, the United
States confronts a serious problem of polarization between the
rich and the poor. Never has a fundamental change been possible in
conditions of the poor, who constitute the forgotten "third world"
within this superpower.
The gap between high-income and low-income families in terms of
the wealth owned by either group has further widened over the past
two decades. In 1979, the average income of the families with the
highest incomes, who account for 5 percent of the total in the
United States, was about ten times as great as that of the
families with the lowest incomes, who account for 20 percent of
the total. By 1999, the figure had grown to 19 times. According to
a New York Times analysis of a U.S. Census Bureau survey in August
2001, the economic boom the United States experienced in the 1990s
failed to make the American middle class richer than in the
previous decade. The true fact is that the poor became even poorer
and the rich, even wealthier. For most of those in between the two
opposite groups, life was worse at the end of the 1990s than at
the beginning of the decade. Right now, the richest 1 percent of
the Americans own 40 percent of the national wealth. In contrast,
the share is a mere 16 percent for 80 percent of the American
population. The richest 20 percent of the families in Washington D.
C. are 24 times as rich as the poorest 20 percent, up from 18
times a decade ago.
Problems facing the poor, hungry and homeless have become
increasingly conspicuous. According to a 2002 report of the
American Food Research and Action Center on its website, 10
percent of the American families, in other words 19 million adults
and 12 million children, suffered from food insecurity in 1999. In
a national survey of emergency feeding program (Hunger in America
2001), America´s Second Harvest emergency food providers served 23
million people in the year, 9 percent more than in 1997. The
figure included nine million children. Nearly two-thirds of the
adult emergency food recipients were women, and more than one in
five were elderly.
In its annual report published in December 2001, the United
States Conference of Mayors reported a sharp increase in the
number of the hungry and homeless in major cities. In the 27
cities covered by a USCM survey, the number of people asking for
emergency food increased by an average of 23 percent, and the
increase averaged 13 percent for those asking for emergency
housing relief. Demand for emergency food supplies grew in 93
percent of the cities covered by the survey. Of those who asked
for emergency food, many -- 19 percent more than in the previous
year -- had children to support. Of the adults who asked for
emergency relief, 37 percent were employed. Hunger in these cities
was attributed to low incomes, unemployment, high housing rent,
economic recession, welfare reforms, high medical bills and mental
disorders. According to a report issued by the U.S. Department of
Labor on November 29, 2001, 4.02 million Americans -- the highest
number in 19 years -- were living on relief. The National Alliance
to End Homelessness has reported that 750,000 Americans are in a
permanent state of homelessness, and that up to two million have
had experiences of having no shelter for themselves. People
without a roof over themselves have to spend the night in places
like street corners, abandoned cars, refuges and parks, where
their personal safety cannot be guaranteed.
Lives of the rich seem more valued than lives of the poor.
According to la Liberation on January 9, 2002, the federal fund
set up by the American government would compensate victims of the
September 11, 2001 attacks according to their ages, salaries and
the number of people in their families, plus a sum in compensation
for the mental trauma the family members suffered. This way of
fixing the compensations produced shocking results. If a housewife
was killed, her husband and two children would be entitled to 500,
000 U.S. dollars in compensation from the fund. If the victim
happened to be a Wall Street broker, the compensation would be as
much as 4.3 million U.S. dollars for his widow and two children.
Families of many victims protested against this inequality,
compelling the American government to commit itself to revising
the method.
IV. Worrying Conditions for Women and Children
Gender discrimination is an important aspect of social
inequality in the United States. Until this day, there has been no
constitutional provision on equality between men and women. On
September 18, 2000, with support of some NGOs, a dozen surviving "
comfort women" brought a class action with a federal court in
Washington D.C., demanding public apology and compensation from
the Japanese government. The U.S. government, however, issued a
statement of interest in July 2001, calling for dismissal of the
lawsuit on the ground that recruiting of "comfort women" by the
Japanese army during the Second World War was a "sovereign act."
The statement aroused protects from the U.S. National Organization
for Women, the Truth Council for World War II in Asia and other
NGOs. This incident, in its own way, reflects current conditions
in protection of women´s human rights in the United States and
America´s official attitude towards women´s rights demand.
Violence against women is a serious social problem in the
United States. According to U.S. official statistics, one American
woman is beaten in every 15 seconds on average and some 700,000
cases of rape occur every year. According to the 121st edition of
the American Census published on January 24, 2002, in 1998 about
one million people were suspected of involvement in violence
between spouses and between men and women as friends. In March
2001, Amnesty International USA issued a report after two years´
investigation, saying that the human rights of female prison
inmates in the United States are often fringed upon and that they
often fall victim to sexual harassment or rape by prison guards.
Seven states even do not have laws or legal provisions banning
sexual relations between prison officials and female inmates.
Protection of American children´s rights is far from being
adequate. The United States is one of the only two countries that
have not acceded to Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is
one of the only five countries that execute juvenile offenders in
violation of relevant international conventions. More juvenile
offenders are executed in the United States than in any of the
other four. In 25 states, the youngest age eligible for death
sentence is set at 17; and 21 states set that age at 16 or do not
impose an age limit at all. Besides, the United States is among
the few countries where psychiatric and mentally retarded
offenders could be executed. According to the Human Rights Watch,
in the 1990s, nine juveniles were sentenced to death in the United
States, and the number was greater than that reported by any of
the other countries.
American children are susceptible to violence and poverty.
According to a report published on November 28, 2001 by the U.S.
Violent Policy Center, analysis of the murder data released by FBI
shows that from 1995 to 1999, 3,971 infants and juveniles aged one
to 17 years were murdered in handgun homicides. The firearm
homicide rate for American children was 16 times the figure for
children in 25 other industrialized countries. Black children have
the highest rate of handgun homicide victimization, seven times
higher than that for white children. In April 2000, the U.S. Fund
for the Protection of the Child published a green paper on
conditions of American children. It quotes the poverty statistics
of the American government for 1999 as saying that more than 12
million children were living below the poverty line set by the
federal government, accounting for one-sixth of the total number
of children in the country. A report by the U.S. Health and Public
Service Department released at the beginning of 2001 says that 10
percent of the American children have mental health problems and
that one out of every ten children and children in adolescence
suffered from mental illnesses that are serious enough to hurt.
Nevertheless, those able to receive treatment could not exceed one-
fifth.
The problem of missing children is serious. Figures published
by FBI in 2001 showed that in 1999, 750,000 children went missing,
accounting for 90 percent of the total number of people who went
missing in the year. To put it another way, an average of 2,100
children at 17 or younger went missing every day. Since the
Missing Children Act was enacted in 1982, the number of children
registered by police as missing has increased by 468 percent.
American children often fall prey to sexual abuse. According to
a report published in September 2001 by a group of researchers at
the University of Pennsylvania after three years´ investigation,
about 400,000 American children are streetwalkers or engage in
various obscene activities for money near their schools. Children
who have fled their homes or are homeless suffer most severely
from sexual abuse. Sexual harassment against children by clergymen
in the United States is serious. According to Newsweek published
on February 26, 2002, the Boston archdiocese of the U.S. Roman
Catholic Church has over the past decade paid 1 billion U.S.
dollars in compensation in lawsuits of sexual harassment by its
clergymen against children. About 80 Boston clergymen are
suspected of having molested children sexually. One has been
accused of sexually molested more than 100 children. This, the
greatest scandal in the United States following the Enron case,
has aroused nationwide attention to the problem that is also
common among clergymen elsewhere and, as a result, a string of
similar cases have been brought to light.
V. Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination is the most serious human rights problem
in the United States, a problem that the United States has never
resolved since its founding. The United States, as a matter of
fact, was notorious for genocide against aboriginal Indians, trade
of African blacks and black slavery. In recent years, scandals of
racial discrimination have occurred, one after another.
On April 7, 2001, a white police officer shot to death an
unarmed black youth in Cincinnati, Ohio, as he was trying to run
away after breaking traffic rules. Black people in the city staged
mass protests following the death of Timothy Thomas, which
culminated in a racial conflict. The incident once again aroused
worldwide attention to the problem of racial discrimination in the
United States. According to the Observer of Britain published on
April 15, 2001, Cincinnati is one of the eight large cities in the
United States where the problem of racial discrimination is most
serious. Even though the world is already in the 21st century,
racial segregation is still practiced by virtually all schools in
the city. Timothy Thomas was the fourth black person killed by
white police in succession from November 2000 to April 2001, and
the 15th black suspect killed by white police in the same city
since 1995. It is beyond people´s comprehension that during the
same period, killing of white suspects by the police never
occurred. According to the Associated Press, the mass protests in
Cincinnati matched those that broke out after the killing of
Martin Luther King.
Racial discrimination is discernible everywhere in the United
States. The proportion of federal government posts taken by ethnic
minority Americans is much smaller than the proportion of their
population in the national total. According to an article in the
July-August issue of the bimonthly World Economic Review, of the
535 senators and Congress men and women, those of Latin-American
origin with voting rights number only 19, or 3.5 percent of the
total, even though ethnic Latin-Americans account for 12.5 percent
of the country´s total population. Blacks account for 13 percent
of the American population, but are able to win only 5 percent of
the public posts through election. There are legal provisions to
the effect that colored people must account for a certain
percentage in the police force. The true fact, however, is that
few black people are able to join the police force and even fewer
serve as senior police officers. Take for example Cincinnati.
Black people account for 43 percent of the local population but,
of the 1,000 members of the local police force, only 250 are
blacks. None of the CEOs and presidents of the top 500 companies
in the Unites States are blacks. Blacks holding senior posts at
Wall Street investment companies are rare, if any.
Social conditions are bad for ethnic minority Americans.
According to the 2000 population census, blacks unable to enjoy
medical insurance are twice as many as whites. Only 17 percent of
the black population are able to finish higher education, in
contrast to 28 percent for whites. The unemployment rate was twice
as high for blacks as for whites. Meanwhile, blacks employed for
menial service jobs are more than twice as many. Incomes for the
average white family averaged 44,366 U.S. dollars in 1999. For an
average black family, however, the figure was 25,000 U.S. dollars.
According to statistics provided by the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Committee, the number of employed ethnic minority
Americans has increased by 36 percent since 1990, but the number
of charges against racial or ethnical harassment at work-sites has
doubled, averaging 9,000 a year. Of the five largest dumps of
harmful wastes, three are in residential areas inhabited mainly by
blacks and other ethnic minority Americans. Up to 60 percent of
the blacks and ethnic Latin-Americans are living in places where
harmful wastes are dumped.
Racial discrimination is frequently seen in America´s
judicature. Half of the 2 million prison inmates are blacks, and
ethnic Latin-Americans account for 16 percent of the total.
According to an investigative report published by the United
Nations, for the same crime the penalty meted out against the
colored can be twice or even thrice as severe as against the white.
Blacks sentenced to death for killing whites are four times as
many as whites given death penalty for killing blacks. The U.S.
Department of Justice reported on March 12, 2001 that threats by
the police with force against blacks and ethnic Latin-Americans
are twice as possible as against whites.
VI. Wantonly Infringing upon Human Rights of Other Countries
The United States ranks first in the world in terms of military
spending and arms export. Its military expenditure accounts for
nearly 40 percent of the world total, more than the combined
military expenditure of the nine countries ranking next to it. Its
arms exports account for 36 percent of the world total. U.S.
defense budget for the 2003 fiscal year announced by the U.S.
Defense Department on February 4, 2002 totaled 379 billion U.S.
dollars, up 48 billion U.S. dollars, or 15 percent, over the
previous year and representing the highest growth rate in the past
two decades.
The United States ranks first in the world in wantonly
infringing upon the sovereignty of, and human rights in, other
countries. Since the 1990s, the United States has used force
overseas on more than 40 occasions. On April 1, 2001, a U.S.
military reconnaissance plane flew above waters off China´s coast
in violation of flight rules, causing the crash of a Chinese
aircraft and the death of its pilot. It presumptuously entered
China´s territorial airspace without permission from the Chinese
side and landed on a Chinese military airfield, seriously
encroaching upon China´s sovereignty and human rights. After the
incident, the United States made all sorts of excuses to defend
itself, refusing to make a public apology for the serious
consequences of its intruding aircraft and trying to shirk its
responsibilities. This aroused great indignation and strong
protests from the Chinese people.
The United States has built many military bases all over the
world, where it has stationed hundreds of thousands of troops,
violating human rights everywhere in the world. Before the
September 11 incident, the United States had stationed its troops
in more than 140 countries. Today, t
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