FC: China condemns U.S. as a terrible example for human rights

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I'm sending this along not for the truth of the information, but to 
illustrate how some American values (capitalism, gun ownership) can be 
twisted by a propaganda machine. See also:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2001/eap/8289.htm
http://www.hrw.org/asia/index.php

-Declan

----- Original Message -----
From: mart-remote
To: Karen Lee Wald ; walterl ; Irina
Cc: Communist Party Miguel ; Vivian ; lwright () rhc cu
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 7:53 PM
Subject: (Xinhua) - "The U.S Human Rights Record"
Dear Comrades,

Could you forward this news item on to your Cuban friends and contacts.
I think they might find it very useful in defending Cuba from the
hypocritical  so called "human rights report" attack by the U.S. It is
from the Chinese "Xinhua News Agency" and is primarily a response to
the U.S. equally hypocritical report's attack on China's human rights
record. I think the article contains much information  about the U.S's
own human rights situation that our Cuban friends could also find
useful.

 - mart
===============================================================

China Issues "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2001"
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, the United States has expanded  its so-called
security interests to almost every corner of the  world. In recent
years, U.S. troops stationed in Japan have  frequently committed
crimes. In 1995, three American soldiers  raped a Japanese schoolgirl
in Okinawa, sparking massive protests  by the Japanese people and
arousing the alert of world public  opinion. In fact, scandals like
this happen almost every year. On  January 11, 2001, an American
soldier was arrested for molesting a local schoolgirl in Okinawa. On
January 19, the Okinawa parliament adopted a resolution of protest
against frequent criminal  activities by American soldiers, calling for
reduction of U.S. troops in Japan. However, in an e-mail message to his
subordinates, the U.S.commander in Okinawa insulted the Okinawa
magistrate and parliament. On June 29, another soldier of the U.S. air
force sexually assaulted a Japanese girl in Kyatan of Okinawa.

 The NATO headed by the United States dropped a large number of
depleted uranium bombs during the Kosovo war, subjecting peace-keeping
soldiers as well as the local people to serious danger.  The U.S. side
claimed that one of the reasons for the withdrawal  of U.S. troops from
Kosovo is that "it would not let radiation hurt our boys." Latest
reports say that the United States knew the dangers of depleted uranium
bombs and where they were dropped, and that, when dividing up
peacekeeping zones, it allocated the most seriously contaminated areas
to allied forces. After the U.S. army entered Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Kosovo, it gave a boost to the sex industry in the two places. Over the
past year, Bosnia-Herzegovina uncovered dozens of women trafficking
cases, many of which were  associated with the U.S. army. Most of the
U.S. soldiers were  involved in prostitution and some of them were even
involved in  selling women. In September 2000, the U.S. Army published
a report of more than 600 pages, detailing all kinds of bad behaviors
committed by the No.82 air-borne division of its First Army during
their peace-keeping mission in Kosovo, admitting that the general
atmosphere of the U.S. army in Kosovo is very inhumane.

  Available data indicate that in the Gulf War the United States
dropped more than 940,000 depleted uranium bombs with a total weight of
320 tons onto Iraqi land,causing serious destruction to the environment
of Iraq and the health of its people. The Ministry of Health of Iraq
pointed out in a report that the number of cancer patients in Iraq
increased dramatically after the Gulf War, from 6,555 in 1989 and 4,341
in 1991 to 10,931 in 1997. In the ten years since the end of the Gulf
War, the incidence rate of leukemia, malicious tumors and other
difficult and complicated  cases in areas hit by depleted uranium bombs
in southern Iraq was 3.6 times higher than the national average and the
proportion of  women with miscarriage was ten times as high as in the
past. On  February 22, 2002, Emad Sa'doon, a medical expert with Basra
 University in southern Iraq, disclosed to the media that after  many
years of research the medical group led by him found that in  the 1989-
1999 period, the number of patients with blood cancer doubled and the
number of women with breast cancer increased 102 percent.
 The United States always flaunts the banner of "freedom of the press".
Yet according to an Agence France-Presse report on February 21, 2002,
the annual report of International Journalism Institute published on
the same day pointed out that the way in which the U.S. government
dealt with the media during the Afghan War and its attempt at
suppressing freedom of speech by  independent media were "the most
amazing in 2001."

  In the United States, close to 100 companies manufacture and  export
considerable quantities of instruments of torture that are  banned in
international trade. They have set up sales networks  overseas. In its
February 26, 2001 report, Amnesty International  said some 80 American
companies were involved in the manufacture,  marketing and export of
instruments of torture, including electric- shock tools, shackles and
handcuffs with saw-teeth. Many  instruments of torture and police tools
are high-tech products,  which can cause serious harms to the human
body. For instance,  handcuffs,which would tear apart the flesh of the
tortured if the victim slightly exerts himself, are very cruel, and so
is a high- pressure rope for tying up a person. Although categorically
 prohibited by U.S. law, the Commerce Department of the United  States
has given official export licenses for exporting such tools. According
to statistics, American companies have secured export  licenses and
sold tools of torture overseas valued at 97 million U. S. dollars since
1997 under the category of "crime control  equipment." It is
inconceivable that, while the U.S. State  Department is talking about
human rights, the U.S. Department of  Commerce has given export
licenses for products determined as  instruments of torture in statutes
of the U.S. government, said Dr. William Schulz, who conducted the
investigation.

  The United States has also conducted irradiation experiments with the
dead bodies of babies from overseas. The Daily Telegraph and the
Observer of the United Kingdom disclosed in June of 2001  that the
United States has recently declassified some top-secret documents,
which indicate that in the 1950s the United States carried out what was
called "Project Sunshine" experiments. For these experiments, about
6,000 dead babies were obtained from overseas and cremated without
permission of their parents. The ashes were sent to laboratories for
irradiation studies.

 The U.S. government has until this day refused to sign the Basel
Convention, which restricts the transfer of waste materials. It often
transfers dangerous waste materials by different methods to developing
countries, damaging the health of the people of  other countries. The
Associated Press reported on February 25,  2002 that, according to an
estimate by environmental protection  organizations, as much as 50
percent to 80 percent of the  electronic wastes collected by the United
States in the name of recycling have been shipped to a number of
countries in Asia for waste treatment, causing serious environmental
and health problems to the local people. The United States has
announced its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, refusing to bear the
responsibilities of improving the environment for human survival and
bringing about negative impacts on environmental protection efforts in
the world.

The Third UN Conference Against Racism held in Durban of South African
in September 2001 was an important gathering in the area of
international human rights at the beginning of the new century. It
attracted representatives from more than 190 countries, which reflected
the burning desire of the international community to  eliminate hatred
accumulated over time and eradicate the remnants  of racism through
dialogue and cooperation. The United States, however, turned a deaf ear
to the voices of the international community.Ignoring its international
obligations, it asserted  openly to boycott the conference before it
was opened. Although the United States sent a low-level delegation to
the conference as a result of prompting and persuasion by the United
Nations, it took the lead in opposing discussing slave trade and
colonial  compensation, expressed opposition to putting Zionism on a
par with racism, and walked out of the conference midway. Behaviors
of the United States at the conference revealed its hypocrisy when
it professes itself as "a world judge of human rights" and show how
 arrogant and isolated the hegemonic acts of the U.S. government  are.

For many years, the U.S. government has year after year  published
reports on human rights conditions in other countries in disregard of
the opposition of many countries in the world,  cooking up charges,
twisting facts and censoring all countries  except itself. It also
publishes a report every year to make a so- called appraisal of anti-
drug trafficking campaigns of 24  countries including all Latin
American countries. The United  States deals with any country it deems
"inefficient in cracking  down on drug trafficking" with condemnation,
sanctions,  interference in the latter's internal affairs, or outright
 invasion.

In 2001, without support from the majority of member countries, the
United States was voted out of the United Nations Human Rights
Commission and the International Narcotics Committee. This shows, from
one aspect, that it is extremely unpopular for the United States to
push double standards and unilateralism on such issues as human rights,
crackdowns on drug trafficking, arms control and  environmental
protection. We urge the United States to change its  ways, give up its
hegemonic practice of creating confrontation and interfering in the
internal affairs of others by exploiting the  human rights issue, go
with the tide of the times characterized by cooperation and dialogue in
the area of human rights, and do more  useful things for the progress
and development of the human  society.  Enditem

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2002-03/11/content_310843.htm




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