====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
Socialist Voice Marxist Perspectives for the 25th Century http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=1176 April 25, 2010 China Challenges U.S. Hypocrisy on Human Rights Introduction by Fred Feldman On March 5, 2010, the government of the People's Republic of China issued a detailed report entitled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009." It is a unique document in world diplomatic history. The U.S. government annually issues reports on the "human rights" records of various countries. Almost invariably these are oppressed nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Washington always gives its imperialist allies a passing grade, and the State Department never fails to give the United States an A+. Some countries regularly receive bad grades: Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea, Nicaragua. The ratings of other countries swing up and down. One that is receiving worse grades now, as its relations with the United States get more strained, is China. The actual level of political freedom among these countries varies widely, but this is not the basis of the selection. The real message from the U.S. government to the targeted country (and "targeted" is the right word) is: "We have issues with you. Settle them to our satisfaction and you may get a better grade. Refuse to do as we demand of you, and these charges will be used to justify a hostile international campaign, subversion, sanctions, or even war." An example of how little Washington's talk about human rights has to do with political and cultural freedom is the shifting position of Washington on Honduras since the overthrow of President Zelaya. At first, the Obama administration claimed to oppose the coup, which was an embarrassment to Washington's democratic posturing, but now, since a rigged election was held, it has shifted to strongly defending the coup regime, even though attacks on democratic rights are rising and death squads have taken dozens of lives of oppositionists. Usually governments that are targeted by these reports make a minimal response. They deny or dismiss the charges, they denounce hypocrisy and intervention in their political affairs and then, at least publicly, they let the matter drop. But China's government had a more creative response. It noticed that, "as in previous years, the [U.S.] reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory." So they prepared a thorough and carefully produced report on the human rights situation in the United States. They did not focus on refuting or confirming or correcting errors in any of the charges against China. Instead they focused on the deteriorating situation of democratic and social rights in the U.S. And they included a stern admonition to the U.S. government to clean up its act. The result is a powerful, well-documented, and actually chilling indictment, which deserves to be widely read and studied by as many people as possible. It is a real contribution from China to the work of fighters for social and political justice internationally, and especially, of course, in the United States. I have never seen this material put together in one concise, pamphlet-sized and readable package. The document includes sections on crime and violence, surveillance and secrecy, prison abuse including rape and the spread of AIDS, discrimination against Blacks and Latinos, attacks on women's rights, U.S. attempts to control and monopolize the Internet, unemployment, health care, the treatment of children, torture, and other matters. Two areas that were passed by were the death penalty, which both China and the United States use, and abortion rights, probably because of the Chinese government's reliance on obligatory abortion as a method of birth control. The report makes no effort to defend the practices of the Chinese state on any of these issues. I think this is positive, because it suggests that there may be room for improvement in the areas of political rights and social conditions there as well. The report concludes: "We hereby advise the U.S. government to draw lessons from the history, put itself in a correct position, strive to improve its own human rights conditions and rectify its acts in the human rights field." +++++++++ The following excerpts from the 8,000-word report, "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009," were selected by Fred Feldman from the English text published by Xinhua. Life, property, and personal security The United States ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns. According to the data from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), American gun owners, out of 309 million in total population, have more than 250 million guns. In the United States, about 30,000 people die from gun-related incidents each year (The China Press, April 6, 2009). According to a FBI report, there had been 14,180 murder victims in 2008 (USA Today, September 15, 2009). Campuses became an area worst hit by violent crimes as shootings spread there and kept escalating. The U.S. Heritage Foundation reported that 11.3 percent of high school students in Washington D.C. reported being "threatened or injured" with a weapon while on school property during the 2007-2008 school year. (Heritage Center for Data Analysis, School Safety: New Data for the 2007-2008 School Year, http://www.heritage.org1). In New Jersey public schools, a total of 17,666 violent incidents were reported in 2007-2008 (NJ New Jersey Department of Education, October 2009, http://www.state.nj.us2). Civil and political rights According to a New York Police Department firearms discharge report released on Nov. 17, 2009, the city' s police fired 588 bullets in 2007, killing 10 people, and 354 bullets in 2008, killing 13 people (http://gothamist.com3, November 17, 2009). According to the Amnesty International, in the first ten months of 2009, police officers in the U.S. killed 45 people due to unrestrained use of Taser guns. The youngest of the victims was only 15. (http://theduckshoot.com4). Prisons in the United State are packed with inmates. According to a report released by the U.S. Justice Department on Dec. 8, 2009, more than 7.3 million people were under the authority of the U.S. corrections system at the end of 2008. About 2.3 million were held in custody of prisons and jails (http://mensnewsdaily.com5, January 18, 2010). According to the U.S. Justice Department, reports of sexual misconduct by prison staff members with inmates in the country's 93 federal prison sites doubled over the past eight years. It was estimated that there were at least 60,000 rapes of prisoners across the United States during the same period (NYT, June 24, 2009). According to a report from the U.S. Justice Department, a total of 20,231 male inmates and 1,913 female inmates had been confirmed as HIV carriers in the U.S. federal and state prisons at yearend 2008. (http://thecrimereport.org6, December 2, 2009). A report by the Human Rights Watch released in March 2009 said although the New York State prison registered the highest number of prisoners living with HIV in the country, it did not provide the inmates with adequate access to treatment, and even locked the inmates up separately, refusing to provide them with treatment of any kind. (www.hrw.org7, March 24, 2009 Poverty led to a sharp rise in the number of suicides in the United States. It is reported that there are roughly 32,000 suicides in the U.S. every year, nearly double the cases of murder, which numbered 18,000 (http://www.time.com8). The population in hunger was the highest in 14 years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported on Nov. 16, 2009, that 49.1 million Americans living in 17 million households, or 14.6 percent of all American families, lacked consistent access to adequate food in 2008, up 31 percent from the 13 million households, or 11.1 percent of all American families, that lacked stable and adequate supply of food in 2007, which was the highest since the government began tracking "food insecurity" in 1995 (NYT, November 17, 2009; 14.6% of Americans Could Not Afford Enough Food in 2008, http://business.theatlantic.com9). Racial discrimination is still a chronic problem of the United States. Black people and other minorities are the most impoverished groups in the United States. According to a report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Census, the real median income for American households in 2008 was $50,303. That of the non-Hispanic white households was $55,530, Hispanic households $37,913, Black households only $34,218. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, by the end of 2008, 3,161 men and 149 women per 100,000 persons in the U.S. Black population were under imprisonment (www.ojp.usdoj.gov10). The number of life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences given to African-American young people was ten times of that given to white young people in 25 states. The figure in California was 18 times. In major U.S. cities, there are more than one million people who were stopped and questioned by police in streets, nearly 90 percent of them were minority males. Among those questioned, 50 percent were African-Americans and 30 percent were Hispanics. (The China Press, October 9, 2009). A report released by New York City Police Department, of the people involved in police shootings whose ethnicity could be determined in 2008, 75 percent were Black, 22 percent were Hispanic; and 3 percent were white (NYT, November 17, 2009). Since the Sept. 11 event, discrimination against Muslims is increasing. Nearly 58 percent of Americans think Muslims are subject to "a lot" of discrimination, according to two combined surveys released by the Pew Research Center. About 73 percent of young people aged 18 to 29 are more likely to say Muslims are the most discriminated against (http://www.washingtontimes.com11, September 10, 2009). Immigrants live in misery According to a report by the U.S. branch of Amnesty International, more than 300,000 illegal immigrants were detained by U.S. immigration authorities each year, and the illegal immigrants under custody exceeded 30,000 for each single day (World Journal, March 26, 2009). At the same time, hundreds of legal immigrants were put under arrest, denied entry or even sent back under escort every year (Sing Tao Daily, April 13, 2009). Tens of thousands of longtime residents of cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia were sent, by force, to remote immigrant jails in Texas or Louisiana (NYT, November 2, 2009). The New York City Bar Association received a startling petition in October 2008 which was signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the Varick Street Detention Facility in the middle of Manhattan. The letter described their cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day (NYT, November 2, 2009). Some detained women who were still in lactation period were denied breast pumps in the facilities, resulting in fever, pain, mastitis, and the inability to continue breastfeeding upon release (www.hrw.org7, March 16, 2009). A total of 104 people have died while in custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency since October 2003 (The Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2009). Ethnic hatred crimes are frequent. According to statistics released by the U.S. Federal Investigation Bureau on November 23, 2009, a total of 7,783 hate crimes occurred in 2008 in the United States, 51.3 percent of which were originated by racial discrimination and 19.5 percent were for religious bias and 11.5 percent were for national origins (www.fbi.gov12). Among those hate crimes, more than 70 percent were against Black people. On the rights of women and children According to statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau in September 2009, the median incomes of full-time female workers in 2008 were $35,745, 77 percent of those of corresponding men. (The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2009; www.censusgov13, September 10, 2009). By the end of 2008, 4.2 million, or 28.7 percent of families with a female householder where no husband is present were poor (www.censusgov13, September 10, 2009). About 64 million, or 70 percent of working-age American women have no health insurance coverage, or have inadequate coverage, high medical bills or debt problems, or problems in accessing care because of cost (The China Press, May 12, 2009). The United States has the highest rape rate among countries which report such statistics. It is 13 times higher than that of England and 20 times higher than that of Japan (Occurrence of Rape, http://www.sa.rochester.edu14). According to a report released by the Pentagon, more than 2,900 sexual assaults in the military were reported in 2008, up nearly 9 percent from the year before. And of those, only 292 cases resulted in a military trial. The report said the actual numbers of such cases could be five to ten times of the reported figure (CBS, March 17, 2009). American children suffer from hunger and cold A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that 16.7 million children, or one fourth of the U.S. total, had not enough food in 2008 (The Washington Post, USA Today, November 17, 2009). The food relief institution Feeding America said in a report that more than 3.5 million children under the age of five face hunger or malnutrition. (www.feedingamerica.org15, May 7, 2009). According to statistics from the U.S-based National Center on Family Homelessness, from 2005 to 2006, more than 1.5 million children, or one in every 50 children, were homeless in the U.S. every year. Among the homeless children, 42 percent were younger than 6 and the majority were African-Americans and Indians (CNN.com, MSNBUC.com, March 10, 2009). In 2008, nearly one tenth of the children in the United States were not covered by health insurance. It was reported that about 7.3 million children, or 9.9 percent of the American total, were without health insurance in 2008. On August 13, 2009, a state board voted that California will begin terminating health insurance for more than 60,000 children on October 1. The program could ultimately drop nearly 670,000 children by the end of June 2010 (The Los Angeles Times, The China Press, August 14, 2009). A research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center showed that lack of health insurance might have led or contributed to nearly 17,000 deaths among hospitalized children in the U.S. in the span of less than two decades (Journal of Public Health, October 30, 2009). 1,494 children younger than 18 nationwide were murdered in 2008 (USA Today, October 8, 2009). A survey conducted by the U.S. Justice Department on 4,549 kids and adolescents aged 17 and younger between January and May of 2008 showed, more than 60 percent of children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year, either directly or indirectly. Nearly half of all children surveyed were assaulted at least once in the past year; about 6 percent were victimized sexually. (The Associated Press, October 7, 2009). According to research of U.S.-based institution and public health media reports, in the U.S., one third of children who run away or were expelled from home performed sexual acts in exchange for food, drugs and a place to stay every year. The justice system no longer considers them as young victims, but as juvenile offenders (The China Press, October 28, 2009). The U.S. is the only country in the world that does not apply parole system to minors. Detentions of juveniles have increased 44 percent from 1985 to 2002. Many children only committed only minor crimes. For the full text of China's Report Card, see http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-03/12/c_13208219.htm16. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
