China Views US Human Rights Record in 2002
Xinhua Domestic Service in Chinese
03 April 2003
[FBIS Translated Text] Beijing, 3 Apr (Xinhua) -- The State Council
Information Office on 3 April issued "The US Human Rights Record in
2002." The full text is as follows:
The US Human Rights Record in 2002
The State Council Information Office
The US State Department released the Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices for 2002 (hereinafter referred to as the reports for short) on
1 April Beijing time at a time when the United States is facing condemnation
from people of various countries in the world for unilaterally launching war
against Iraq. With the United States pretending to be "the world's judge
of human rights," the reports once again assess the human rights situations in
over 190 countries and regions in the world. The reports carry
distorted pictures and accusations of human rights conditions in China
and other countries without mentioning even a word of the serious human
rights problems in the United States itself. Therefore, it is necessary
to announce to the world the human rights violations in the United States
in 2002.
I. Ineffective Protection of Human Life and Personal Safety
In American society, excessive violence has resulted in ineffective
protection of human life and personal safety.
According to a report released by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation [FBI] on 28 October 2002, the United States recorded 11.8
million crime offenses in 2001, a 2.1 percent increase over 2000. The
offenses included murder, rape, robbery, and theft. [Xinhua English
version reads: "The offenses included four violent crimes (murder and
non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated
assault), and three property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, and motor
vehicle theft). [Xinhua English version adds: "Firearms were involved
in 26.2 percent of violent crime cases."] Murder cases increased by 2.5
percent. There was an offense in every 2.7 seconds, and there were 44
murders, 248 rapes and 26 hate crimes each day. Among the crime offenses
were 15,980 murders and 90,491 rapes. Crime in many major American
cities went up in 2002. In Washington DC, drug abuse, gang violence, and
prostitution ran rampant, and crime went up by 36 percent from 2001; in
Boston the crime rates increased by 67 percent, and in Los Angeles, by 27
percent. The murder rate in the United States was five to seven times
higher than in most industrial nations. During January-November 2002,
New York City reported 489 murder case; Chicago registered 485 homicide
cases, in which 515 people were killed; and Detroit reported 346 murders.
During the same period Los Angeles reported 595 murder cases with 614
people killed, up 11.3 percent and 20.5 percent compared to the same
period in 2001 and 2000, respectively. (Footnote 1)
The Constitution of the United States provides that the right of the
people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and the
constitutions of 44 states in the nation include provisions safeguarding
citizens' right to possess guns. In the United States, guns owned by
private individuals exceed 200 million, averaging nearly one for every
citizen. In 2002, the numbers of gun buyers across the United States
went up by 13 percent to twice over previous years, and the number of
rifle owners increased even faster. The National Rifle Association of
the United States has over 2. 8 million members. Excessive gun ownership
has led to frequent shootings, and victims of firearms-related crime
number more than 30,000 a year. On 26 March, a retired sheriff's deputy
in Merced County, California, shot and killed his 5-year-old daughter and
his three stepchildren while his estranged wife was out for a walk, then
committed suicide with the body of one of the youngsters in his arms.
On 30 May, a gunman opened fire inside a grocery store at a Top Valu
Market near the downtown marina in Long Beach, California, killing a
woman and a 7-year-old girl and wounding four others before he was
fatally shot by police. (Footnote 2) From 2 to 22 October, serial gun
shooting cases occurred in Washington DC and neighboring Maryland and
Virginia states, in which ten people were killed and three others were
seriously wounded. The number of gun shootings went up by 40 percent in
Los Angeles in 2002 over 2001. Between the evening of November 19 and
the early morning of November 20, five separate cases of gun shooting
took place in downtown Los Angeles, leaving two people dead and seven
others wounded.
Crime rates among juveniles in the United States have remained high,
with youngsters accounting for 20 percent of violent crime. Drug abuse
among youngsters has kept increasing. Drug abuse among tenth-grade high
school students in the United States went up from 11.6 percent in 1991 to
22.7 percent in 2001, and 34.4 percent of senior high school students in
New York City have at least taken marijuana once. In 2001, there were
638,000 narcotics-related cases, and drug abuse accounted for 25 percent
of violent crime in the United States. After the 11 September
terrorist attacks, crime in schools decreased as most schools have
installed metal detectors and video cameras, but it was reported that 6
percent of the students still carried guns to school. Violence in
schools such as bullying rose by 12 percent, and at least 10,000 students
in the United States choose to stay at home once in a month for fear of
being bullied. (Footnote 3)
Violence in nursing homes for the aged in the United States is
worrisome. In March 2002, a report submitted to the US Congress said that
inmates in some of such homes had suffered splash of cold water, battery
and sexual assault. However, such acts had never been regarded as
crime, and most of them had not been prosecuted. Statistics show that
there are 17,000 homes for the aged and similar institutions in the
United States, housing 1.6 million aged Americans. Violations of law have
been found in about 26 percent of them, and two percent of which have
caused physical injuries.
II. Serious Infringements on Judicial Rights
The rights of ordinary Americans have met with challenge after the 11
September terrorist attacks. The Anti-terrorism Law, which took effect
on 26 October 2001, provides law enforcement agencies with greater powers
for investigation, including wiretapping of phone calls and Internet
e-mail communications by suspect terrorists. A Federal Court of Appeals
on November 18 ruled that the Department of Justice asking for expanding
its investigative powers is constitutional, and therefore should not be
restricted. It aroused great concern among the American public that the
DOJ would encroach upon their right of privacy in its work. On 19
November, Wall Street Journal quoted US House Judiciary Committee
Representative John Conyers as saying in a statement on the same day,
"Piece by piece, this Administration is dismantling the basic rights
afforded to every American under the Constitution." Some civil rights
and electronic information organizations worried that there would have no
effective protection of civil rights after the ruling.
Police brutality is a chronic malady in American society. On 6 July
2002, a bystander videotaped a scene in which several white police
officers at Inglewood, Los Angeles, slammed the head of a handcuffed
16-year-old black, named Donovan Jackson, on a squad car and punched him
in his eyes, neck and hands. Afterwards, one police officer involved
was ordered a paid leave. In contrast, the man who filmed the videotape
was detained on 10 July. In another incident, on 8 July, Oklahoma City
police officers repeatedly beat a black suspect on the ground with their
batons. The suspect was pepper-sprayed twice. On 16 September, police
in Boston shot at a suspect car hijacker in the downtown area and wounded
him seriously. The incident led to a mass demonstration against police
brutality.
Indiscriminate arrests are another serious problem in the United
States. According to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU), prosecutors declined to bring charges in 15,798 arrests in
2001, or 26 percent of the 60,412 cases they reviewed that year, the vast
majority brought by Baltimore police. In 2002 the number of monthly
arrests increased by 15 percent over the previous year to 7,832.
Prosecutors declined to charge in 24 percent of the cases. Two-thirds of
the cases they dropped were dropped on the day of arrest because they
could not be proved in court. (Footnote 4). Within half a year after
the 11 September terrorist attacks, the FBI detained for security reasons
more than 1,200 non-US nationals, mainly men from Muslim or Middle
Eastern countries. (Footnote 5) Most of them were detained for
overstaying their visas, and according to rules the detention should last
for no more than 48 hours. However, many were actually held in custody
for a month or more, or even up to 50 days. While in custody, they were
deprived of their basic rights -- making phone calls, access to a lawyer,
family visits, being informed of the reasons for the detention, or
challenging the lawfulness of the detention. They were let out for
exercise and air less than an hour a day. Many were handcuffed, and some
were even bundled. Those falling ill could not get timely medical
treatment.
In many cases torture was used to extract confessions, and unjust
charges were often reported in the United States. According to a
Reuters report on 11 February 2002, the US authorities confirmed that
over 200 inmates had been wrongly convicted since 1973; among them 99
inmates on death row had been proved innocent, but most of them had not
got compensations. (Footnote 6) Ray Krone walked out an Arizona
courtroom a free man in April 2002 after spending 10 years and three
months in prison, with more than two years in the death cell. Yet, he
could hardly obtain any compensation from the state government in
accordance with state laws. (Footnote 7) A black man in Detroit, named
Eddie Joe Lloyd, served a term of 17 years, three months and five days in
jail on a charge of raping and murdering a teenage girl before he was
freed in August 2002. (Footnote 8) The wrong verdicts are closely related
to confessions from innocent people extracted by police. According to
an American Broadcasting Company [ABC] news report on 15 March, 2002,
every year thousands of criminals are convicted on the basis of
confessions obtained from police interrogations. Also according to the
ABC news report, in 1993, Gary Gauger, a man in Illinois, was forced to
confess he had killed his parents, a crime he did not commit, when he
broke down after 21 hours of police interrogation. He was then
sentenced to death for double murder. Two years later, the real killers
confessed to the crime in an unrelated federal investigation. Gauger
was freed in 1996, after spending three years behind bars.
The United States is one of the few countries to impose capital
punishment on child offenders and mentally ill people in the world.
Twenty-three US states permit the execution of child offenders (under 18
at the time of the crime). Two thirds of the executions of child
offenders over the past decade worldwide were carried out in the United
States. Since 1985, 18 child offenders had been executed, half of them
in Texas State. (Footnote 9) The executions in 2002 also included three
child offenders and one mentally ill man. There were 80 child offenders
on death row, and the figure in the case of the mentally retarded was
estimated to be around 200 to 300. (Footnote 10)
Prisons in the United States are jam-packed with inmates.
According to a report of the Bureau of Justice Statistics under the
Department of Justice released on 25 August 2002, the adult U. S.
correctional population reached a record of almost 6.6 million at the end
of 2001, or fourfold of the 1980 figure. About 3.1 percent of the
nation's adult population, or 1 in every 32 adult residents, were on
probation or parole or were held in a prison or jail. Roughly two million
Americans are currently behind bars. In a report titled "A stigma that
never fades," the British business magazine Economist said that America
is "the world's most aggressive jailer," and "when local jails are
included in the American tally, the United States locks up nearly 700
people per 100,000."
Poor management of prisons leads to lack of protection of inmates'
legitimate rights. Extortion, abuse, violence and sexual assault are
serious in prisons of the United States. An Amnesty International
report released on 14 May 2002 said inmate Frank Valdes at the Florida
State Prison was beaten to death by guards in July 1999. Autopsy
reports proved massive injuries, including 22 broken ribs and a fractured
sternum, nose and jaw, and there were boot marks on his face, neck,
abdomen and back. The three guards involved were charged of
second-degree murder in 1999. But the Florida State prosecutors decided
in February 2002 to drop the charges. According to reports of US human
rights organizations, brutalities targeted at inmates number about
100,000 a year in American prisons. A former chief law officer of
Virginia State estimated the number of such brutalities to be at least
250,000 or as many as 600,000 a year. Sexual assaults between male
inmates are prominent in the prisons. Most of such assaults are coupled
with the use of force, causing spread of HIV virus and physical and
mental injuries on victims. The prison and judicial departments remain
indifferent towards such complaints and take no punishment measures.
The Sun newspaper reported on 31 August 2002, the Baltimore City
Detention Center has a poorly run system of health care and suicide
prevention. In some cases, the problems resulted in jail suicides,
heart attack deaths and fatal asthma spasms that federal authorities
deemed preventable if the inmates had been properly treated. In another
case, a fire killed eight inmates locked in cells in Mitchell County jail
in North Carolina and injured 13 others. The prison authority blamed lack
of water sprinklers for the tragedy. (Footnote 11)
III. Money-driven Democracy
Boasting itself to be the "model of democracy," the United States
has been trying hard to sell to the world its mode of democracy. In fact,
American "democracy" has always been democracy of the rich, a small
number of the population. Just as an article in the International
Herald Tribute of the January 24, 2002 issue says, "The American problem
is domination of politics by money."
The dominant role of money in American politics has been very
obvious, and elections have in fact been turned into races of money.
During the midterm elections in 2002, spending on campaigning TV
advertising amounted to 900 million US dollars, surpassing that for the
presidential election in 2000.
According to an analysis made by the Associated Press based of data
from the Federal Election Commission, in the 2002 midterm elections 95
percent of the seats in the House of Representatives and 75 percent of
the seats in the Senate went to candidates who had spent the most in
campaigning. In a report filed on 30 August 2002, AP said President
George W. Bush, in order to win control of the House and the Senate,
cashed in on his cachet to raise donations for midterm elections of his
Republicans, and collected 110 million US dollars for three GOP
candidates in Oklahoma and Arkansas, setting records in campaign cash
raising. (Footnote 12) Election of judges in the United States is also
like a race of money. In the year of 2000, judge candidates in only two
states bought TV advertising, whereas during the midterm elections in
2002, chief justice candidates in nine states bought TV commercials.
"Money politics" has made more and more American people lose interest
in political participation. Statistics show the United States has
experienced declining voter turnout in presidential election years for
about four decades. Measured against the voting age population, turnout
in presidential election years fell from its high of 62.8 percent in 1960
to an estimated 51.2 percent in 2000. In contrast, 60 percent of
eligible voters shunned the midterm elections in 2002, leaving the voter
turnout at 40 percent. A survey of minority voters in three cities of
California showed almost all the surveyed were fed up with the fact that
money can buy over politics and were not interested in political
participation. Asian American voters reckon money had too much
influence over politics, which is unfair; African Americans and Hispanics
felt being shut out of the door of politics and had become its victims.
The United States has been flaunting its "freedom of the press," but it
met with criticism from many sides in 2002 in this respect. In an annual
report published on 21 February 2002, the International Press Institute
accused the United States of violating freedom of the press and said "it
is the most astonishing event of 2001 that the way the Bush
administration treated the work of the media during the Afghan war and
the practices of the Bush administration attempting to suppress freedom
of speech by independent media." (Footnote 13) Two senior journalists
with the Washington Post wrote in their book entitled "The News About The
News: American Journalism In Peril" that practices of pursuing profits
have destroyed the sense of mission of the journalistic community of the
United States, and believed an overwhelming majority of media owners and
publishing businessmen forced newspaper editors and TV news executives to
concentrate on profits as opposed to quality of coverage. (Footnote 14)
In its annual report published on 2 May 2002, Reporters Without
Borders exposed since the 11 September attacks, the United States has
exerted pressure on the journalistic community in the war against
terrorism, which has restricted freedom of the press. (Footnote 15) On 6
August 2002, a major news organ in the United States published a survey
showing the public wanting the media to "shut up." The survey found
among the respondents, 69 percent believe the media is biased, and over
two thirds of them read news reports with disbelief.
IV. Poverty, Hunger, and Homelessness
The United States is the only superpower in the world, however, the
poor, hungry and homeless have formed a "Third World" in this most
developed nation, owing to the widening gap in wealth between the rich
and the poor and social injustice.
In the last two years, a series of scandals of major corporate fraud
were exposed in the United States, resulting in a credibility crisis and
financial losses, which has deprived ordinary Americans of a sense of
economic security due to the serious losses they suffered. The Labor
Department of the United States reported on January 10, 2003 that between
2001 and 2002, the United States lost 1.6 million jobs. In December 2002,
the country's unemployment rate was six percent; the number of jobless
people stood at 8.6 million; and employers slashed payrolls by 101,000
workers. (Footnote 16) In the United States, 60 percent of households
own stock shares. As corporate fraud scandals brought down the stock
market, its capitalization was slashed by 2.5 trillion US dollars, with
the employees of the affected big firms and their shareholders suffering
great losses. Since energy giant Enron filed for bankruptcy protection,
its stock price plunged from 85 US dollars a share to less than one US
dollar a share. Millions of Enron stockholders have suffered enormous
losses. A large number of Enron employees lost all their pension funds,
while teachers, fire fighters and some government workers lost one
billion US dollars in pensions. WorldCom's filing for bankruptcy also
plunged its stock share price to a few cents from 62 US dollars; 17,000
of its employees became jobless, while investors had their interests
severely damaged. (Footnote 17)
The gap in wealth between rich and poor has become even wider. The
US Federal Reserve reported on January 22, 2003 that between 1992 and
1998, the gap in wealth between the 10 percent of families with the
highest incomes and the 20 percent of families with the lowest incomes
increased by 9 percent, but between 1998 and 2001, the gap jumped by 70
percent.
The Washington Post reported on 24 September 2002, that the top 20
percent residents with highest income in the United States accounted for
50 percent of the total income of the country, while the share of the
richest 5 percent (with an annual income of 150,000 US dollars and above)
in the national total went up from 22.1 percent in 2000 to 22.4 percent
in 2001.
Poverty and hunger have kept increasing. According to the Census
Bureau of the United States, in 2001, another 1.3 million people fell
below the poverty line; in 2002, the poor population continued growing.
According to the American organization Bread for the World,, 33 million
Americans lived in households that experience hunger or the risk of
hunger in 2002. The newspaper USA Today reported that the nation's
estimated 3 million homeless had harder times in 2002, as authorities
reduced assistance to them and tough laws were passed against them.
(Footnote 18)
A survey report published by the US Conference of Mayors indicates
that the year 2002 witnessed an average of 19 percent increase in
requests for emergency food assistance in 25 large cities in the country,
and also an average of 19 percent increase in requests for emergency
shelter assistance in 18 major cities, the steepest rise in a decade. And
all the cities in the survey expect that requests for both emergency food
assistance and shelter assistance would increase again in 2003. Boston
Mayor and President of the US Conference of Mayors Thomas M. Menino
commented, "The world's richest and most powerful nation must find a way
to meet the basic needs of all its residents." The Associate Press
reported on November 3, 2002 that 777,000 people in Los Angeles, or 33
percent of its population, were food insecure and could not always afford
to put food on the table. By July 2002, homelessness in New York grew
by 66 percent compared with four years ago. (Footnote 19) In 2002, Los
Angeles County alone had 84,000 homeless people, and every night, 43
percent of 9,000-15,000 vagrants could not find shelters and had to sleep
on downtown sidewalks. According to statistics by relevant American
organizations, the current homelessness situation in the United States
has become nearly as severe as at the end of World War II. Most
vulnerable to poverty and hunger are pregnant women, the aged, people
without ID, and single-parent families. The report by the US Conference
of Mayors indicates that among those requesting for emergency food
assistance, 48 percent were members of families with children; 38 percent
of the adults requesting such assistance were employed; of the homeless,
39 percent were from families with children, 22 percent were employed,
and 73 percent were from single-parent families.
V. Women and Children Are in Worrisome Situation
Discrimination against women is common in the United States. USA
Today reported on January 6, 2003 that women hold merely 14 percent of
seats in Congress. According to a survey report released by researchers
at Rutgers university, discrimination against ethnic minorities was found
in one third of business firms in the United States, and discrimination
against women was reported in one fourth of 200,000 firms. In hospitals,
shops, restaurants and bars, women of African, Latin American and Asian
descent made up 70 percent of those who have been hurt.
American women are likely to become victims of crimes and violence.
A study report published by the Harvard School of Public Health on 17
April 2002 said that American females are at the highest risk of murder,
and the US female homicide victimization rate is 5 times that of all the
other high income countries combined. The United States accounts for 70
percent of all female homicides in the 25 high income countries, and
4,400 American females are murdered each year, with about half by
firearms.
American women are also likely to become victims of sexual assaults.
In 2002, several scandals of sexual assaults on women by clergies were
exposed. According to reports, over the past five years, in Arizona,
Colorado, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, and Wisconsin, a
number of faith healing-related sexual assaults were exposed, with some
faith healers found to have raped women during the therapy. Police and
public prosecutors believe that hundreds of women in Los Angeles and
other places were sexually abused when they sought help from faith
healers. (Footnote 20) Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that a survey
conducted by researchers at St. Louis University in 1996 but kept under
wraps after completion shows that about 40 percent of American Catholic
nuns (about 35,000) have been sexually abused, often at the hands of a
priest or another nun. (Footnote 21)
American children often fall victim to domestic violence, social
crimes, their parents' divorces, and abandonment. According to a study
published by researchers at Harvard University in 2002, in American
states and regions with high gun ownership, children have more chances to
be murdered, to commit suicide or to meet accidental death. Between 1988
and 1997, a total of 6,817 children, aged 5-14, were shot to death in the
50 states of the United States. (Footnote 22) Young girls missing and
the kidnapping of children are frequent. Statistics show that in the
United States, 58,000 children were kidnapped by people other than their
families each year, and 40 percent of them were slain in the end.
Another 200,000 children were kidnapped by their family members, mostly
for the right of custody. (Footnote 23)
In 2002, a series of scandals of sexual assaults on children by
Catholic clergies were exposed. An article titled "Sins of the Fathers"
published by the Newsweek magazine on 4 March 2002 reported that the
child-sexual-abuse settlements may have cost the American church one
billion US dollars during the 1986-1996 period. Some 80 priests have been
accused of sexually abusing children, with one said to have assaulted
more than 100 children over the past 40 years. (Footnote 24) The Sun
newspaper reported on 29 April 2002 that there were 46, 000 priests in
the United States, and in the past 18 years at least 1,500 had been
charged. (Footnote 25) According to the newspaper Christian Science
Monitor, the targets of sex-related crimes committed by American clergies
were mostly children, and since 1985 over 70 clergies and priests were
imprisoned for molestation of children. (Footnote 26)
Many children have encountered serious difficulties in their life,
medical treatment and education, and many of them have not received
parental love and care. According to a report published by the Public
Policy Institute of California in November 2002, 20 percent of
Californian children aged under 5 years live in poverty, compared with
the national average of 15 percent. The New York Times reported last
July that the proportion of American children who grow up in parentless
families is increasing, from the previous 7.5 percent to the present 16.1
percent.
The nongovernmental Women's Commission for Refugee Women and
Children says in its 2002 report that nearly 5,000 children were detained
every year by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service for entering
the United States illegally. Their average age is 15 years, with the
youngest only one and a half years. Most of these children did not have
other criminal records except illegal entry. However, over 30 percent
of these children were commingled with young offenders, handcuffed and
shackled, sent to prisons or detained in warehouses with very poor safety
conditions.
VI. Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination is deep-rooted in the United States. Senate
Republican leader Trent Lott had repeatedly made remarks supporting
racial segregation during his political life. He had tried by every
means to prevent the Congress from passing a bill on establishing the
birthday of Martin Luther King, a murdered civil rights leader of the
blacks, as a national holiday. On 5 December 2002, when attending a 100th
birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond from South Carolina, who ran for
the presidency in 1948 as a segregationist candidate, Lott said that the
United States would be better off if Strom Thurmond had won the
presidency that year. Lott's remarks triggered strong reaction of the
Congressional Black Caucus. In the end, Lott quitted his post as Senate
Republican leader under the pressure of public opinion. (Footnote 27)
For more than 100 years between 1862 and 1965, the United States had
enforced a law restricting immigrants from Asia and forbidding marriage
between immigrants of Asian descent and white people. Many states
nullified the law in the 1940s-1960s, but it is still in effect in the
states of New Mexico and Florida.
Racial discrimination is serious in law enforcement. According to
a study by the Justice Policy Institute of the United States, blacks
constitute only 12.9 percent of America's total population, but black
prisoners account for 46 percent of the total in jail in the nation;
approximately one in every five blacks is jailed for some time during his
or her life. The number of blacks in jail is greater than that of blacks
at college. In 2000, about 800,000 blacks were in jail, compared with
only 600,000 blacks registered in institutions of higher learning. Among
the new inmates put in prison since 1980, people of African and Latin
American descent have accounted for 70 percent. The Sun newspaper
reported on 8 January 2003 that defendants who kill white people are
significantly more likely to be charged with capital murder and sentenced
to death than are killers of non-whites, and a black offender accused of
killing a white victim is most likely to be put on death row.
The paper quoted a study as saying that the probability that someone
accused of killing a white person will be charged with capital murder is
1.6 times higher than the probability for a black-victim homicide.
Blacks who kill whites are two and one-half times more likely to be
sentenced to death than are whites who kill whites, and three and
one-half times more likely than are blacks who kill blacks. Though a
majority of Maryland's homicide victims were black, of the 12 inmates on
Maryland's death row awaiting execution, eight were black, and all were
convicted of killing white people.
Minorities are among the poorest groups in the United States. A
Federal Reserve report issued on January 22, 2003 said that the gap in
wealth between American whites and ethnic minorities widened by 21
percent between 1998 and 2001. The US Census Bureau reported in its
2002 annual report on income and poverty that in 2001, the poverty rate
in the United States rose to 11.7 percent; the poverty rate was 22.7
percent among African Americans, and 21. 4 percent among Hispanics, both
nearly double the rate for other ethnic groups.
African American and Hispanic homeowners paid higher interest rates
for housing loans than white people did. In the metropolitan area of
Washington D.C., among households that made at least 120 percent of the
typical income in the area, 32 percent of blacks held high-interest loans
while only 11 percent of whites did; among households that made 80
percent or less of the typical income, 56 percent of blacks had
high-interest loans and 25 percent of whites did.
Minorities also suffer from unfair treatment in schooling. Racial
segregation in public schools has got even worse than decades ago.
Only four of all 185 school districts across the United States witnessed
increase in black-white exposure (exposure of black students to white
students) between 1986 and 2000. The 24 school districts with the
worst racial segregation were found in Texas and Georgia states. The
newspaper Christian Science Monitor reported on Jan. 21, 2003 that in the
state of Georgia 32 percent of white elementary school teachers left
their posts at predominantly black schools in 2001. The situation was the
same in Texas, California and North Carolina. Lots of classes had to be
taught by substitute teachers who didn't have degrees and weren't
licensed to teach, and "black students aren't getting an equal shot at
good schooling." Among the third graders in elementary schools in
California, 70 percent of white children met the required educational
attainment standard, compared with 37 percent of black children and 27
percent of Hispanic children. The enrollment rate of minority students in
schools of higher learning was declining.
A 2002 report by researchers of Harvard University pointed out that
America's pervasive legacy of slavery, racism, and substandard,
segregated health care for many of the nation's minorities has left a
deep chasm between the health status of most minorities and whites.
Blacks have enjoyed much poorer medical treatment than whites ever since
they came to America from Africa. African Americans have much higher
rates of heart diseases, diabetes, AIDS and some cancers. Blacks have a
cancer death rate about 35 percent higher than that of whites, the AIDS
cases among black women and children are 75 percent higher than among
white people, and African-American children also have much higher rates
of asthma and juvenile diabetes than white children. There is a life
expectancy gap of about seven years between whites and African Americans.
(Footnote 28)
Racial discrimination has been on the rise in the United States since
the 11 September terrorist attacks. The US authorities have intensified
restrictions on new immigrants and slowed down its procedure for
approving entry of immigrants. Tougher regulations have been adopted,
requiring new immigrants to register their residences at Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) offices, or otherwise face imprisonment,
fines or even deportation. In August 2002, in airport safety inspections
the FBI arrested a large number of immigrant airport workers, mostly
Latinos.
Discrimination against Muslims and Arabs is the most serious.
According to statistics from the Islamic Society of North America, 48
percent of Muslims living in the Unites States said their lives have
changed for the worse since Sept. 11. By the first anniversary of the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, approximately 60 percent of Muslims had
experienced in person or witnessed acts of discrimination against Muslims
including public harassment, physical assault and property damage. There
had been nearly 2,000 vicious criminal cases against Muslims, including
11 murders and 56 death threats. In Los Angeles, assaults on Islamic
institutions rose by 16 times from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. In Toledo
City, Ohio, more than 10,000 residents of Arab descent were monitored and
wiretapped by judicial departments after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
and they were not allowed to talk to lawyers. Moreover, judicial
departments can have house search at any time.
The US Immigration and Naturalization Service announced in August
2002 that males from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan are to be
fingerprinted on entering the United States. In November the same year, a
new federal regulation added another 13 countries including Afghanistan
to the list. Males from these 18 countries, who are 16 years and older
and on temporary visas to the United States are subject to "special
registration," to report to relevant departments and be fingerprinted and
photographed before the designated deadline. On 16 December 2002, more
than 1,000 Muslims from Iran, Iraq and other Middle East nations went to
the immigration offices in California for the "special registration"
procedures. However, most of them were detained by immigration officers
right away, under accusations of holding invalid visas, overstaying their
visas or other wrongdoing. The US Department of Justice later admitted
that about 500 immigrants of Middle East descent were arrested. While
statistics from local Islamic institutions showed that at least 700
people were arrested, some even put it at about 1,000. News reports said
that as the immigration detention center was overcrowded, some of the
detainees were moved to prison. The detainees complained that they were
stripped, searched, and given prison suits after their clothes were taken
away. Many people were locked in one cell, with no bed or quilt, and had
to sleep on the icy cement floor.
VII. Brutal Violations of Human Rights in Other Countries
The United States is following unilateralism in international
affairs and has frequently committed blunt violations of human rights in
other countries.
Regardless of the strong call for no war from the international
community, the United States, together with a few other countries,
launched a war against Iraq on 20 March 2003. The war, which has openly
violated the purpose and principles of the UN Charter, has caused
casualties of innocent Iraqi civilians and serious humanitarian
disasters.
During its air attacks against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in
2002, the US troops dropped nearly a quarter-million cluster bombs and
raided a number of nonmilitary targets, causing heavy civilian
casualties. Newsweek disclosed civilians killed in the Afghan war had
exceeded 3,000.
The cluster bombs also left an estimated 12,400 explosive duds that
continue to take civilian lives to this day. (Footnote 29). In 2001
the US bombing of Mudoh village reduced the local population to 100
from 250 and leveled all buildings in the village to the ground. A
similar attack on Kakrakai village in central Afghanistan on 1 July 2002
left at least 54 civilians dead and more than 100 others injured.
(Footnote 30)
The rights and interests of prisoners of war (POWs) were also
violated. According to Cable News Network [CNN], a total of 12,000
Taliban fighters were reported to have been captured since the US
launched its military action in Afghanistan, but only 3,500 to 4,000 of
them survived. It was found that these POWs were locked into
unventilated steel shipping containers after their capture, and many of
them died of sweltering heat, suffocation or extreme thirst en route to
the prison. Numerous mass graves in which the bodies of the dead POWs
were dumped have been found in Afghanistan. There are also evidence of US
troops' involvement in the shipping of the POWs. In November 2001, some
1,000 Taliban and Al-Qa'ida fighters who had surrendered in the northern
Afghan city of Konduz died on their way to the prison after they were
packed tightly into unventilated container trucks. (Footnote 31)
According to media reports, in 2002 the United States was holding more
than 600 detainees from 42 countries, mostly captured during the Afghan
war, in its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, the
detainees were denied "prisoner of war" status by the US government and
therefore faced uncertainty of their futures. It was unclear for how long
they would remain in custody or what kind of treatment they would
receive. These detainees were allegedly confined for 24 hours a day to
small cells and were not allowed to meet their families or lawyers.
Former al-Qa'ida members were also subject to torture or other forms of
maltreatment.
Hundreds of thousands of US troops are stationed overseas, and such
troops have committed crimes and human rights abuses wherever they stay.
Each year US troops stationed in the Republic of Korea (ROK) are caught
responsible for more than 400 traffic accidents, but only less than 10
cases would go for trial in ROK courts. On 13 June 2002, two US
soldiers driving an armored vehicle crushed two 14-year-old South Korean
girls to death, but both offenders were acquitted by a US military
tribunal in November. On Sept. 2, three other US soldiers in
Kyonggi-do, ROK, started a tussle on a road, and they deliberately
smashed a taxi car parked on the roadside and beat up its Korean driver.
Earlier reports said six American soldiers stationed in the ROK were
charged with sexual harassment, assault and scuffle after drinking.
The US troops in Okinawa, Japan has long been notorious for its
constant involvement in criminal cases such as arson and rape.
Investigation shows that after World War II US soldiers have committed
more than 300 sex crimes in Okinawa, with over 130 rape cases reported
since 1972. In the wee hours of Jan. 7, 2002, Frederick Thompson, a US
Navy marine stationed in Okinawa, was arrested by local police on charges
of trespassing on private property after he broke into the apartment of a
24-year-old woman. On Dec. 3 the same year, the police department of
Okinawa prefecture issued an arrest warrant against Major Michael Brown
of the US Marine Corps, who was accused of attempted rape and damaging of
private articles, but the US side refused to hand him over to the police
department. (Footnote 32)
According to a news report in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo of 1
April 2002, there are more than 52,000 illegitimate children in the
Philippines fathered by US marines stationed in this Southeast Asian
country before 1991. Recently tens of Filipino teenage girls, some of
them not yet 13, were sent to Mindanao in southern Philippines, to
entertain US marines stationed there.
VIII. Double Standards in International Field of Human Rights
The United States, taking a negative attitude toward the
international human rights conventions, is one of the only two countries
in the world that have not ratified the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child. To date, it hasn't ratified the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which
have got ratification from or accession of most countries in the world.
In 2002, the United States shrank remarkably from its previous
stance on international human rights affairs. It used to ask for the
removal of any text in UN draft resolutions that involved human rights
conventions which all countries were expected to observe or the US
government had not yet ratified, on the pretext of the US being not a
state party to these conventions. When its request was rejected, the
United States would ask for a separate voting on the text, or even cast
the only dissenting vote. In July 2002, the United States withdrew a
34-million-dollar contribution it had promised to the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA), forcing the UNFPA to cancel its projects of
assistance to women in countries like Burundi, Algeria, Haiti and India.
The United States has been releasing annually Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices, censuring other countries for their human rights
situations, but it has turned a blind eye to serious violations of human
rights on its own soil. This double standard on human rights issues
cannot but meet with strong rejection and opposition worldwide, leaving
the United States more and more isolated in the international community.
Footnotes:
1. AFP report, 21 Nov 2002, Los Angeles.
2. AFP report, 31 May 2002, Long Beach, California.
3. "School Crime Decreasing, US Says, But Students Still Fear
Bullying, Reports Show," Sun 10 Dec 2002.
4. "Survey on Records of Police Arrests," Sun 9 May 2002.
5. EFE report, 10 Dec 2002, Washington.
6. Reuters report, 11 February 2002, Washington.
7. "Easy to Obtain Free Trade, Hard to Obtain State Government
Compensation," USA Today, 18 June 2002.
8. "A Man Was Not Convicted of Murder and Released After a DNA Test,"
New York Times report, 27 August 2002.
9. EFE report from the United Nations 9 May 2002.
10. Report by the Amnesty International: "USA: The Human Rights Day
Needs to be Reconsidered."
11. Washington Post report: "Eight Inmates Locked in Mitchell County
Jail Died," 3 May 2002.
12. Sun report, 30 Aug 2002.
13. AFP report, 21 Feb 2002, Vienna.
14. Associated Press report, 29 March 2002, New York.
15. EFE report 2 May 2002, Paris.
16. Sun report: "US Economic Shrinkage Leads to Unemployment," 11
January 2003.
17. Sun report, 26 June 2003.
18. Report by USA Today, 27 December 2002.
19. Associated Press report, 20 August 2002.
20. Los Angeles Times report, 13 March 2002.
21. AFP report, 5 Jan 2003, Washington.
22. Reuters report, 28 Feb 2002, Boston.
23. Xinhua report, 6 Aug 2002, Washington.
24. Newsweek article, 4 Mar 2002.
25. Sun report, 29 Apr 2002.
26. Report by Christian Science Monitor, 21 March 2002.
27. USA Today: "Black Caucus Unforgiving After Lott's Apology," by
William M. Welch, 11 Dec 2002.
28. USA Today: "Blacks Suffer Most From Managed Care," by Julianne
Malveaux, 29 Nov 2002.
29. Human Rights Watch: "Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use
by the United States in Afghanistan," 18 Dec 2002.
30. Newsweek article, 22 July 2002.
31. AFP report, 18 Aug 2002, Washington.
32. Report by Asahi Shimbun, 15 Dec 2002.
[Description of Source: Beijing Xinhua Domestic Service in Chinese --
China's official news service (New China News Agency)]
