3-10-06, 9:33 am
'The U.S. government frequently commits wanton slaughters of innocents in its war efforts and military operations in other countries,' said a report titled 'The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2005. Issued by the Information Office of the State Council of China, the equivalent of the Presidential Cabinet, the reported noted continuing racist discrimination, alarmingly high poverty rates, and human rights abuses committed under the authority of the Bush administration.
Sections of the report catalogued U.S. military strikes on civilians in Iraq and prisoner abuse reports at U.S.-controlled prisons in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The report cited accounts provided by Human Rights Watch stating that U.S. soldiers regarded abuse of prisoners as 'amusement' and a way to 'relieve stress.'
Taking note of repression of civil liberties in the U.S., the report described mass roundups of people of Arab descent and Muslim religious affiliation, as well as others who appeared to fit the profile, and immigrants. 'The United States,' stated the report, 'wantonly apprehended terrorism suspects worldwide under the banner of 'anti-terrorism.''
Over the past four years, the U.S. has not brought a single indictment against any one of them. Up until March 2005, 108 people had died in custody, and at this point the report estimates that there are still 14,500 foreign nationals in custody.
Turning to U.S. domestic issues, the report also takes aim at growing poverty, homelessness, and a widening gap between rich and poor in the U.S.
In 2005 almost three-quarters of a million were homeless, or 1 in 400 people in the U.S. In Los Angeles alone, that number soars close to 90,000 a day.
Referring to a study produced by the London School of Economics in 2005, the report remarks that 'The United States is dubbed the world's richest country; however, it maintains the highest poverty rate among developed countries.'
The U.S. government's own data shows an alarmingly high rate of poverty that continues to grow each year under the Bush administration. The data issued by the U.S. Census Bureau said that the nation's official poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2003 to 12.7 percent in 2004, with the number of people in poverty rising by 1.1 million from 35.9 million to 37 million, which means that one in every eight Americans lives in poverty. Poverty rates in cities such as Detroit, Miami and Newark exceeded 28 percent.
U.S. government data also reveals enormous racially and ethnically based income gaps and disproportionate poverty rates. The median net worth of African American families is only one-tenth of that of white families, and the general welfare, based on factors ranging from health care to criminal justice, discrimination, housing, and more, enjoyed by Black Americans is only three-fourths of their white counterparts. In 2004, the poverty rate was 24.7 percent for African Americans, 21.9 percent for Latino, and 8.6 percent for non-Latino whites.
Meanwhile, millionaire households in the United States controlled more than $11 trillion in assets in 2004, up more than 8 percent from 2003.
The Chinese report concludes that the seriousness of growing economic problems is fueled by the fact that 'workers’ economic, social and cultural rights are not guaranteed.'
The report also cited high rates of gun crimes, violence, gender-based discrimination, growing incarceration rates that exceed all other countries in the world, and a corrupt electoral and political process.
Racially-motivated violence remains a serious issue, as more than half of over 9,000 hate crimes were described as race-based by the FBI in its annual report. African Americans are more than 20 times as likely to be a victim of a racially motivated crime than whites are.
Racial disparities in health care predominate as well. Almost 20 percent of Blacks lack health insurance and almost 33 percent of Latinos lack coverage.
Joblessness and the racial income gap also reflect racist discrimination. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, unemployment for African Americans stood at 10.6 percent at the end of 2005, while whites were unemployed at a 4.3 percent rate. Black men earned only 70 percent of their white male counterparts, and Black women earned only 83 percent of white women earned.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that the employment discrimination rate was 31 percent for Asians and 26 percent for African Americans, and instances of discrimination against Muslims doubled after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Chinese government’s human rights report concluded, 'the U.S. government ought to first clean up its own record of human rights before qualifying itself to comment on human rights situations in other countries, let alone arrogantly telling them what to do.'
'We urge the U.S. government to look squarely at its own human rights problems, reflect what it has done in the human rights field and take concrete measures to improve its own human rights record,' said the report.
'The U.S. government should stop provoking international confrontation on the issue of human rights, and make a fresh start to contribute more to international human rights cooperation and to the healthy development of the international human rights cause,' the report added.
--Reach Joel Wendland at
