Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009
BEIJING,
March 12 (Xinhua) -- China's Information Office of the State Council
published a report titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States
in 2009" here Friday. Following is the full text:
The State
Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing as "the world judge
of human rights" again. As in previous years, the 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.
The
Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 is prepared to help
people around the world understand the real situation of human rights
in the United States.
I. On Life, Property and Personal Security
Widespread violent crimes in the United States posed threats to the lives, properties and personal security of its people.
In
2008, U.S. residents experienced 4.9 million violent crimes, 16.3
million property crimes and 137,000 personal thefts, and the violent
crime rate was 19.3 victimizations per 1,000 persons aged 12 or over,
according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in
September 2009 (Criminal Victimization 2008, U.S. Department of
Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov).
In 2008, over 14 million
arrests occurred for all offenses (except traffic violations) in the
country, and the arrest rate for violent crime was 198.2 per 100,000
inhabitants (Crime in the United States, 2008, http://www.fbi.gov). In
2009, a total of 35 domestic homicides occurred in Philadelphia, a 67
percent increase from 2008 (The New York Times, December 30, 2009).
In
New York City, 461 murders were reported in 2009, and the crime rate
was 1,151 cases per 100,000 people. San Antonio in Texas was deemed as
the most dangerous among 25 U.S. large cities with 2,538 crimes
recorded per 100,000 people (The China Press, December 30, 2009). The
murder rate rose 5.5 percent in towns with a population of 10,000 or
fewer in 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com, June 1, 2009). Most of the
United States' 15,000 annual murders occur in cities where they are
concentrated in poorer neighborhoods (http://www.reuters.com, October
7, 2009).
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, while a substantial proportion of U.S. gun
owners had more than one weapon.
Americans usually buy 7
billion rounds of ammunition a year, but in 2008 the figure jumped to
about 9 billion (The China Press, September 25, 2009). In the United
States, airline passengers are allowed to take unloaded weapons after
declaration.
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). Firearms were used in 66.9 percent of
murders, 43.5 percent of robberies and 21.4 percent of aggravated
assaults (http://www.thefreelibrary.com).
USA Today reported
that a man named Michael McLendon killed 10 people in two rural towns
of Alabama before turning a gun on himself on March 11, 2009. On March
29, a man named Robert Stewart shot and killed eight people and injured
three others in a nursing home in North Carolina (USA Today, March 11,
2009).
On April 3, an immigrant called Jiverly Wong shot 13
people dead and wounded four others in an immigration services center
in downtown Binghamton, New York (The New York Times, April 4, 2009).
In
the year 2009, a string of attacks on police shocked the country. On
March 21, a 26-year-old jobless man shot and killed four police
officers in Oakland, California, before he was killed by police gunfire
(http://cbs5.com).
On April 4, a man called Richard Poplawski
shot three police officers to death in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On
November 29, an ex-convict named Maurice Clemmons shot four police
officers to death inside a coffee shop in Parkland, Washington (The New
York Times, December 1, 2 and 3, 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.
In the same period, police responded to more than
900 calls to 911 reporting violent incidents at the addresses of
Washington D.C. public schools (A Report of The Heritage Center for
Data Analysis, School Safety in Washington, D.C.: New Data for the
2007-2008 School Year, http://www.heritage.org). In New Jersey public
schools, a total of 17,666 violent incidents were reported in 2007-2008
(Annual Report on Violence, Vandalism and Substance Abuse in New Jersey
Public Schools by New Jersey Department of Education, October 2009,
http://www.state.nj.us).
In the City University of New York, a
total of 107 major crimes occurred in five of its campuses during 2006
and 2007(The New York Post, September 22, 2009).
II. On Civil and Political Rights
In the United States, civil and political rights of citizens are severely restricted and violated by the government.
The
country's police frequently impose violence on the people. Chicago
Defender reported on July 8, 2009 that a total of 315 police officers
in New York were subject to internal supervision due to unrestrained
use of violence during law enforcement. The figure was only 210 in
2007.
Over the past two years, the number of New York police
officers under review for garnering too many complaints was up 50
percent (http://www.chicagodefender.com). 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.com, November
17, 2009).
On September 3, 2009, a student of the San Jose
State University was hit repeatedly by four San Jose police officers
with batons and a Taser gun for more than ten times
(http://www.mercurynews.com, October 27, 2009). On September 22, 2009,
a Chinese student in Eugene, Oregon was beaten by a local police
officer for no reason (The Oregonian, October 23, 2009,
http://blog.oregonlive.com).
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. From 2001 to October, 2009, 389
people died of Taser guns used by police officers
(http://theduckshoot.com).
Abuse of power is common among U.S.
law enforcers. In July 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation put
four police officers in the Washington area under investigation for
taking money to protect a gambling ring frequented by some of the
region's most powerful drug dealers over the past two years (The
Washington Post, July, 19, 2009).
In September 2009, an
off-duty police officer in Chicago attacked a bus driver for "cutting
him off in traffic" as he rode a bicycle (Chicago Tribune, September
2009,
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com).
In the same
month, four former police officers in Chicago were charged with
extorting close to 500,000 U.S. dollars from a Hispanic driving an
expensive car with out-of-state plates and suspected drug dealers in
the name of law enforcement, and offering bribes to their superiors
(Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2009).
In November 2009, a
former police chief of the Prince George's County's town of Morningside
was charged with selling a stolen gun to a civilian (The Washington
Post, November 18, 2009). In major U.S. cities, police stop, question
and frisk more than a million people each year - a sharply higher
number than just a few years ago (http://huffingtonpost.com, October 8,
2009).
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. The correctional system
population increased by 0.5 percent in 2008 compared with the previous
year (http://www.wsws.org).
About 2.3 million were held in
custody of prisons and jails, the equivalent of about one in every 198
persons in the country. From 2000 to 2008, the U.S. prison population
increased an average of 1.8 percent annually (http://mensnewsdaily.com,
January 18, 2010). The California government even suggested sending
tens of thousands of illegal immigrants held in the state to Mexico, in
order to ease its overcrowded prison system (http://news.yahoo.com,
January 26, 2010).
The basic rights of prisoners in the United
States are not well-protected. Raping cases of inmates by prison staff
members are widely reported. 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.
Of the 90 staff members prosecuted for sexual abuse of
inmates, nearly 40 percent were also convicted of other crimes (The
Washington Post, September11, 2009). The New York Times reported on
June 24, 2009 that according to a federal survey of more than 63,000
federal and state inmates, 4.5 percent reported being sexually abused
at least once during the previous 12 months. It was estimated that
there were at least 60,000 rapes of prisoners across the United States
during the same period (The New York Times, June 24, 2009).
Chaotic
management of prisons in the United State also led to wide spread of
diseases among the inmates. 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.
The percentage of male and female inmates with
HIV/AIDS amounted to 1.5 and 1.9 percent respectively
(http://www.news-medical.net, December 2, 2009). From 2007 to 2008, the
number of HIV/AIDS cases in prisons in California, Missouri and Florida
increased by 246, 169, and 166 respectively. More than 130 federal and
state inmates in the U.S. died of AIDS-related causes in 2007
(http://thecrimereport.org, 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.org, March 24, 2009).
While
advocating "freedom of speech," "freedom of the press" and "Internet
freedom," the U.S. government unscrupulously monitors and restricts the
citizens' rights to freedom when it comes to its own interests and
needs.
The U.S. citizens' freedom to access and distribute
information is under strict supervision. According to media reports,
the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) started installing specialized
eavesdropping equipment around the country to wiretap calls, faxes, and
emails and collect domestic communications as early as 2001.
The
wiretapping programs was originally targeted at Arab-Americans, but
soon grew to include other Americans. The NSA installed over 25
eavesdropping facilities in San Jose, San Diego, Seattle, Los Angeles,
and Chicago among other cities.
The NSA also announced
recently it was building a huge one million square feet data warehouse
at a cost of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars at Camp Williams in Utah, as well
as another massive data warehouse in San Antonio, as part of the NSA's
new Cyber Command responsibilities.
The report said a man
named Nacchio was convicted on 19 counts of insider trading and
sentenced to six years in prison after he refused to participate in
NSA's surveillance program (http://www.onelinejournal.com, November 23,
2009).
After the September 11 attack, the U.S. government, in
the name of anti-terrorism, authorized its intelligence authorities to
hack into its citizens' mail communications, and to monitor and erase
any information that might threaten the U.S. national interests on the
Internet through technical means.
The country's Patriot Act
allowed law enforcement agencies to search telephone, email
communications, medical, financial and other records, and broadened the
discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining
and deporting foreign persons suspected of terrorism-related acts. The
Act expanded the definition of terrorism, thus enlarging the number of
activities to which law enforcement powers could be applied.
On
July 9, 2008, the U.S. Senate passed the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act Amendments Act of 2008, granting legal immunity to
telecommunication companies that take part in wiretapping programs and
authorizing the government to wiretap international communications
between the United States and people overseas for anti-terrorism
purposes without court approval (The New York Times, July 10, 2008).
Statistic
showed that from 2002 to 2006, the FBI collected thousands of phones
records of U.S. citizens through mails, notes and phone calls. In
September 2009, the country set up an Internet security supervision
body, further worrying U.S. citizens that the U.S. government might use
Internet security as an excuse to monitor and interfere with personal
systems.
A U.S. government official told the New York Times in
an interview in April 2009 that NSA had intercepted private email
messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that
went beyond the broad legal limits established by U.S. Congress the
year before. In addition, the NSA was also eavesdropping on phones of
foreign political figures, officials of international organizations and
renowned journalists (The New York Times, April, 15, 2009). The U.S.
military also participated in the eavesdropping programs.
According
to CNN reports, a Virginia-based U.S. military Internet risk evaluation
organization was in charge of monitoring official and unofficial
private blogs, official documents, personal contact information, photos
of weapons, entrances of military camps, as well as other websites that
"might threaten its national security."
The so-called "freedom
of the press" of the United States was in fact completely subordinate
to its national interests, and was manipulated by the U.S. government.
According to media reports, the U.S. government and the Pentagon had
recruited a number of former military officers to become TV and radio
news commentators to give "positive comments" and analysis as "military
experts" for the U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan, in order to guide
public opinions, glorify the wars, and gain public support of its
anti-terrorism ideology (The New York Times, April 20, 2009).
At
yearend 2009, the U.S. Congress passed a bill which imposed sanctions
on several Arab satellite channels for broadcasting contents hostile to
the U.S. and instigating violence (http://blogs.rnw.nl).
In
September 2009, protesters using the social-networking site Twitter and
text messages to coordinate demonstrations clashed with the police
several times in Pittsburgh, where the Group of 20 summit was held.
Elliot
Madison, 41, was later charged with hindering apprehension of the
protesters through the Internet. The police also searched his home
(http://www.nytimes.com, October 5, 2009). Vic Walczak, legal director
of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said the same
conduct in other countries would be called human rights violations
whereas in the United States it was called necessary crime control.
III. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Poverty,
unemployment and the homeless are serious problems in the United
States, where workers' economic, social and cultural rights cannot be
guaranteed.
Unemployment rate in the U.S. in 2009 was the
highest in 26 years. The number of bankrupt businesses and individuals
kept rising due to the financial crisis. The Associated Press reported
in April 2009 that nearly 1.2 million businesses and individuals filed
for bankruptcy in the previous 12 months - about four in every 1,000
people, a rate twice as high as that in 2006
(http://www.floridabankruptcyblog.com).
By December 4, 2009, a
total of 130 U.S. banks had been forced to close in the year due to the
financial crisis (Chicago Tribune, December 4, 2009). Statistics
released by the U.S. Labor Department on Nov. 6, 2009 showed
unemployment rate in October 2009 reached 10.2 percent, the highest
since 1983 (The New York Times, November 7, 2009).
Nearly 16
million people were jobless, with 5.6 million, or 35.6 percent of the
unemployed, being out of work for more than half a year (The New York
Times, November 13, 2009). In September, about 1.6 million young
workers, or 25 percent of the total, were jobless, the highest since
1948 when records were kept (The Washington Post, September 7, 2009).
In
the week ending on March 7, 2009, the continuing jobless claims in the
U.S. were 5.47 million, higher than the previous week's 5.29 million
(http://247wallst.com, March 19, 2009).
The population in
poverty was the largest in 11 years. The Washington Post reported on
September 10, 2009, that altogether 39.8 million Americans were living
in poverty by the end of 2008, an increase of 2.6 million from that in
2007. The poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, the highest since
1998.
The number of people aged between 18 to 64 living in
poverty in 2008 had risen to 22.1 million, 170,000 more than in 2007.
Up to 8.1 million families were under poverty, accounting for 10.3
percent of the total families (The Washington Post, September 11,
2009).
According to a report of the New York Times on Sept.
29, 2009, the poverty rate in New York City in 2008 was 18.2 percent
and nearly 28 percent of the Bronx borough's residents were living in
poverty (The New York Times, September 29, 2009). From August 2008 to
August 2009, more than 90,000 poor households in California suffered
power and gas cuts.
A 93-year-old man was frozen to death at
his home (http://www.msnbc.msn.com). 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.com).
The
Los Angeles County coroner's office said the poor economy was taking a
toll even on the dead as more bodies in the county went unclaimed by
families who could not afford funeral expenses. A total of 712 bodies
in Los Angles County were cremated with taxpayers' money in 2008, an
increase of 36 percent over the previous year (The Los Angeles Times,
July 21, 2009).
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 (The New York Times, November
17, 2009; 14.6% of Americans Could Not Afford Enough Food in 2008,
http://business.theatlantic.com).
The number of people who
lacked "food security," rose from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million in
2008 (http://www.livescience.com, November 26, 2009). About 15 percent
of families were still working for adequate food and clothing (The
Associated Press, November 27, 2009).
Statistics showed 36.5
million Americans, or about one eighth of the U.S. total population,
took part in the food stamp program in August 2009, up 7.1 million from
that of 2008. However, only two thirds of those eligible for food
stamps actually received them (http://www.associatedcontent.com).
Workers'
rights were seriously violated. The New York Times reported on Sept. 2,
2009 that 68 percent of the 4,387 low-wage workers in a survey said
they had experienced reduction of wages.
And 76 percent of
those who had worked overtime were not paid accordingly, and 57 percent
of those interviewed had not received pay documents to make sure pay
was legal and accurate. Only eight percent of those who suffered
serious injuries on the job filed for compensation.
Up to 26
percent of those surveyed were paid less than the national minimum
wage. Among those who complained about wages or treatment, 43 percent
had experienced retaliation or dismissal (The New York Times, September
2, 2009). According to a report by the USA Today on July 20, 2009, a
total of 5,657 people died at workplaces across the U.S. in 2007, about
17 deaths each day.
About 200,000 workers in New York State were injured or sickened at workplaces each year (USA Today, July 20, 2009).
The
number of people without medical insurance has kept rising for eight
consecutive years. Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Sept. 10,
2009, showed 46.3 million people were without medical insurance in
2008, accounting for 15.4 percent of the total population, comparing
45.7 million people who were without medical insurance in 2007, which
was a rise for the eighth year in a row.
About 20.3 percent of
Americans between 18 to 64 years old were not covered by medical
insurance in 2008, higher than the 19.6 percent in 2007
(http://www.census.gov). A study released by the Commonwealth Fund
showed health insurance coverage of adults aged 18 to 64 declined in 31
U.S. states from 2007 to 2009 (Reuters, October 8, 2009). The number of
states with extremely high number of adults who were not covered by
medical insurance increased from two in 1999 to nine in 2009.
More
than one in every four people in Texas were uninsured, the highest
percentage among all states (http://www.ncpa.org). Houston had 40.1
percent of its residents uninsured (http://www.msnbc.msn.com).
In
2008, altogether 2,266 U.S. veterans under the age of 65 died for lack
of health insurance coverage or medical care, 14 times higher than the
U.S. military death toll in Afghanistan that year (AFP, November 11,
2009).
A report by the Consumer International showed 34
percent of U.S. families with annual income below 50,000 U.S. dollars
and 21 percent of homes with annual income exceeding 100,000 U.S.
dollars lost medical insurance or suffered reduction in medical
insurance in 2009. In addition, two thirds of households with annual
income below 50,000 U.S. dollars and one third of homes earning more
than 100,000 U.S. dollars a year cut their medical expenses last year.
About
28 percent Americans chose not to see a doctor when they fell ill; a
quarter of them could not afford medical bills; 22 percent postponed
medical treatment; a fifth of them did not buy medicine prescribed by
doctors or undergo medical checkups; 15 percent took expired drugs or
did not follow medical instructions to take medicine on time in order
to save money (http://www.oregonlive.com).
According to a
report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) on December 8, 2009, average life expectancy of Americans was
78.1 years in 2007, ranking the fourth from bottom among all member
states of OECD. The average life expectancy of OECD member states was
79.1 that year (http://www.msnbc.msn.com).
The number of
homeless has been on the rise. Statistics show that by September 2008,
an upward of 1.6 million homeless people in the U.S. had been receiving
shelter, and the number of those in families rose from 473,000 in 2007
to 517,000 in 2008 (USA Today, July 9, 2009). Since 2009, homeless
enrollments in the six counties of Chicago area had climbed, with
McHenry County seeing the biggest hike - an increase of 125 percent
over the previous year (Chicago Tribune, November 28, 2009).
These
families could only live in shabby places such as wagons. In March
2009, a sprawling tent city was seen in Sacramento of California where
hundreds of homeless gathered. Police in Santa Monica of southern
California even regularly used force to drive the homeless out of the
city (www.truthalyzer.com). In October, several thousand homeless in
Detroit got into a fight, worrying they might not receive the
government's housing subsidies (USA Today, October 8, 2009).
In
December, there were 6,975 homeless single adults in shelters in New
York City, not including military veterans, chronically homeless
people, and the 30,698 people living in short-term housing for homeless
families (The New York Times, December 10, 2009). The Houston Chronicle
reported on March 16, 2009 that large numbers of houses in Galveston
were destroyed by Hurricane Ike in September 2008, leaving thousands
homeless. About 1,700 households did not receive any aid and most of
them do not have fixed residences (Houston Chronicle, March 16, 2009).
IV. On Racial Discrimination
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 U.S. dollars. That of the non-Hispanic white households was
55,530 U.S. dollars, Hispanic households 37,913 U.S. dollars, black
households only 34,218 U.S. dollars.
The median incomes of
Hispanic and black households were roughly 68 percent and 61.6 percent
of that of the non-Hispanic white households. Median income of minority
groups was about 60 to 80 percent of that of majority groups under the
same conditions of education and skill background (The Wall Street
Journal, September 11, 2009; USA Today, September 11, 2009).
According
to the U.S. Bureau of Census, the poverty proportion of the
non-Hispanic white was 8.6 percent in 2008, those of African-Americans
and Hispanic were 24.7 percent and 23.2 percent respectively, almost
three times of that of the white (The New York Times, September 29,
2009). About one quarter of American Indians lived below the poverty
line.
In 2008, 30.7 percent of Hispanic, 19.1 percent of
African-Americans and 14.5 percent of non-Hispanic white lived without
health insurance (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the
United States: 2008, www.census.gov). According to a report issued by
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a record 10,552
fair housing discrimination complaints were filed in fiscal 2008, 35
percent of which were alleged race discrimination (The Washington Post,
June 10, 2009).
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention reported that while African-Americans make up 12 percent of
the US population, they represent nearly half of new HIV infections and
AIDS deaths every year (The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2009; revised
statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
Employment
and occupational discrimination against minority groups is very
serious. Minority groups bear the brunt of the U.S. unemployment.
According to news reports, the U.S. unemployment rate in October 2009
was 10.2 percent. The jobless rate of the U.S. African-Americans jumped
to 15.7 percent, that of the Hispanic rose to 13.1 percent and that of
the white was 9.5 percent (USA Today, November 6, 2009).
Unemployment
rate of the black aged between 16 and 24 saw a record high of 34.5
percent, more than three times the average rate. Unemployment rates for
the black in cities such as Detroit and Milwaukee had reached 20
percent (The Washington Post, December 10, 2009). In some American
Indians communities, unemployment rate was as high as 80 percent (The
China Press, November 6, 2009).
According to the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for black male college
graduates aged 25 and older in 2009 has been twice that of white male
college graduates, 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent (The New York
Times, December 1, 2009).
In 2008, a record number of workers
filed federal job discrimination complaints, with allegations of race
discrimination making up the greatest portion at more than one-third of
the 95,000 total claims (AP, April 27, 2009). According to an
investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a
Houston-based oil and gas drilling company faced five complaints of
racial harassment and discrimination (AP, November 18, 2009).
According
to a news report, by the end of May 2009, the black and Hispanic groups
each accounted for roughly 27 percent of New York City's population,
but only 3 percent of the 11,529 firefighters were black, and about 6
percent were Hispanic since the city's fire department unfairly
excluded hundreds of qualified people of color from the opportunity to
serve (The New York Times, July 23, 2009). The U.S. minority groups
face discriminations in education.
According to a report
issued by the U.S. Bureau of Census, 33 percent of the non-Hispanic
white has college degrees, proportion of the black was only 20 percent
and Hispanic was 13 percent (US Bureau of Census, April 27, 2009,
www.census.gov). According to a report, from 2003 to 2008, 61 percent
of black applicants and 46 percent of Mexican-American applicants were
denied acceptance at all of the law schools to which they applied,
compared with 34 percent of white applicants (The New York Times,
January 7, 2010).
African-American children accounted for only
17 percent of the U.S. public school students, but accounted for 32
percent of the total number which were expelled from the schools.
According to a research by the University of North Carolina and
Michigan State University, most of the black juvenile believed that
they were victims of racial discrimination (Science Daily, April 29,
2009).
According to another study conducted among 5,000
children in Birmingham, Ala., Houston and Los Angeles, prejudice was
reported by 20 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Hispanics.
The
study showed that racial discrimination was an important cause to
mental health problems for children of varied races. Hispanic children
who reported racism were more than three times as likely as other
children to have symptoms of depression, blacks were more than twice as
likely (USA Today, May 5, 2009).
Racial discrimination in law
enforcement and judicial system is very distinct. 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.gov).
The number of life imprisonment without
parole 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. Only 10
percent were white people (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
(The New York Times, November 17, 2009).
According to a report
by Human Rights Watch, from 1980 to 2007, the ratio of the
African-Americans being arrested for dealing drugs across the U.S. was
2.8 to 5.5 times of that of the white (www.hrw.org, March 2, 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.com, 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). A report released by the
Constitution Project and Human Rights Watch revealed that from 1999 to
2008, about 1.4 million detained immigrants were transferred. 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 (The New York Times, 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 dollar a
day (The New York Times, 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.org, 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.gov).
Among those
hate crimes, more than 70 percent were against black people. In 2008,
anti-black offenses accounted for 26 persons per 1,000 people, and
anti-white crimes accounted for 18 persons per 1,000 people (victim
characteristics, October 21, 2009, www.fbi.gov).
On June 10,
2009, a white supremacist gunned down a black guard of the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum with another two wounded (The Washington
Post, June 11, 2009, The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2009).
According
to a report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an environment
of racial intolerance and ethnic hatred, fostered by anti-immigrant
groups and some public officials, has helped fuel dozens of attacks on
Latinos in Suffolk County of New York State during the past decade (The
New York Times, September 3, 2009).
V. On the Rights of Women and Children
The
living conditions of women and children in the United States are
deteriorating and their rights are not properly guaranteed. Women do
not enjoy equal social and political status as men.
Women
account for 51 percent of the U.S. population, but only 92 women, or 17
percent of the seats, serve in the current 111th U.S. Congress.
Seventeen women serve in the Senate and 75 women serve in the House
(Members of the 111th United States Congress, http://en.wikipedia.org).
A study shows minorities and women are unlikely to hold top positions
at big U.S. charities and nonprofits.
The study reveals that
women make up 18.8 percent of nonprofit CEOs compared to just 3 percent
at Fortune 500 companies. Among the 400 biggest charities in the U.S.,
no cultural organization, hospital, public affairs group, Jewish
federation or other religious organization is headed by a woman (The
Washington Times, September 20, 2009).
Women have difficulties
in finding a job and suffer from low income and poor financial
situations. According to statistics from the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC), workplace discrimination charge filings
with the federal agency nationwide rose to 95,402 during Fiscal Year
2008, a 15 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.
Charge
of workplace discrimination because of a job applicant's sex maintained
a high proportion (www.eeoc.gov, November 3, 2009). 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 U.S.
dollars, 77 percent of those of corresponding men whose median earnings
were 46,367 U.S. dollars, which is lower than the 78 percent in 2007
(The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2009; www.census.gov, September
10, 2009).
According to the Associated Press, a female
pharmacist who had been working for Walmart for ten years was fired in
2004 for demanding the same income as her male counterparts (The
Associated Press, October 5, 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.census.gov, 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).
Women are frequent victims of violence and
sexual assault. It is reported that 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.edu).
In San
Diego, a string of similar attacks happened to five women who have been
sexually assaulted by a home invader in March 2009 (Sing Tao Daily,
March 14, 2009).
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 (The evening news of the Columbia Broadcasting System, March 17,
2009). Reuters reported that based on in-depth interviews on 40
servicewomen, 10 said they had been raped, five said they were sexually
assaulted including attempted rape, and 13 reported sexual harassment
(Reuters, April 16, 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.
This figure accounts for 17 percent of American children aged
five and under. In 11 states, more than 20 percent of young children
were at risk for hunger. Louisiana, with 24.2 percent, had the highest
rate of child food insecurity (www.feedingamerica.org, May 7, 2009).
Children
at or below 18 account for more than one third of the U.S. people in
poverty. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that the number of
children younger than 18 who live in poverty increased from 13.3
million in 2007 to 14.1 million in 2008 (http://www.census.gov, The
Washington Post, September 11, 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.
In Nevada, 20.2 percent of the children were uncovered
by insurance (http://www.census.gov, the Washington Post, September
21). 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).
The
A/H1N1 flu has infected about 8 million children under 18 from April to
October 2009, killing 540 of them, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention of the United States (USA Today, The Wall Street
Journal, November 13, 2009).
Children are exposed to violence
and living in fear. It is reported that 1,494 children younger than 18
nationwide were murdered in 2008 (USA Today, October 8, 2009). A report
released by the Health Department of the New York City on June 16, 2009
showed that between 2001 and 2007, the national average rate of child
deaths was 20 per 100,000 children aged 1 to 12 years. Homicide rates
were 1.3 deaths per 100,000 among the group (http://www.nyc.gov).
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, and 13 percent reported
having been physically bullied in the past year (The Associated Press,
October 7, 2009). There have been at least 1,227 children died from
abuse or neglect in Texas since 2002 (The Houston Chronicle, October
22, 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).
Child farmworkers are prevalent.
An organization devoted to protecting children's rights disclosed that
as many as 400,000 children are estimated to work on U.S. farms. Davis
Strauss, executive director of the Association of Farmworker
Opportunity Programs, noted that for decades, children, some as young
as eight years old, have labored in the fields using sharp tools and
toiling amongst dangerous pesticides.
The association's
president Ernie Flores said children account for about 20 percent of
all farm fatalities in the United States (Spain's Uprising newspaper,
October 14, 2009). A labor standards act permits a child beyond 13 to
work in heat for long time in a farm, but does not permit that child to
work in an air-conditioned office and even forbids them working in a
fast food restaurant.
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 but could not get assistance from lawyers.
Many procurators and judges turned a blind eye on abuse in juvenile
prisons.
VI. On U.S. Violations of Human Rights against Other Nations
The
United States with its strong military power has pursued hegemony in
the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and
trespassing their human rights.
As the world's biggest arms
seller, its deals have greatly fueled instability across the world. The
United States also expanded its military spending, already the largest
in the world, by 10 percent in 2008 to 607 billion U.S. dollars,
accounting for 42 percent of the world total (The AP, June 9, 2009).
According
to a report by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. foreign arms sales in 2008
soared to 37.8 billion U.S. dollars from 25.4 billion a year earlier,
up by nearly 50 percent, accounting for 68.4 percent of the global arms
sales that were at its four-year low (Reuters, September 6, 2009). At
the beginning of 2010, the U.S. government announced a 6.4-billion-U.S.
dollar arms sales package to Taiwan despite strong protest from the
Chinese government and people, which seriously damaged China's national
security interests and aroused strong indignation among the Chinese
people.
The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan have placed heavy
burden on American people and brought tremendous casualties and
property losses to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Iraq
has led to the death of more than 1million Iraqi civilians, rendered an
equal number of people homeless and incurred huge economic losses.
In
Afghanistan, incidents of the U.S. army killing innocent people still
keep occurring. Five Afghan farmers were killed in a U.S. air strike
when they were loading cucumbers into a van on August 5, 2009
(http://www.rawa.org). On June 8, the U.S. Department of Defense
admitted that the U.S. raid on Taliban on May 5 caused death of Afghan
civilians as the military failed to abide by due procedures.
The
Afghan authorities have identified 147 civilian victims, including
women and children, while a U.S. officer put the death toll under 30
(The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 9, 2009).
Prisoner abuse is one
of the biggest human rights scandals of the United States. A report
presented to the 10th meeting of Human Rights Council of the United
Nations in 2009 by its Special Rapporteur on the promotion and
protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering
terrorism showed that the United States has pursued a comprehensive set
of practices including special deportation, long-term and secret
detentions and acts violating the United Nations Convention against
Torture.
The rapporteur also said, in a report submitted to
the 64th General Assembly of the United Nations, that the United States
and its private contractors tortured male Muslims detained in Iraq and
other places by stacking the naked prisoners in pyramid formation,
coercing the homosexual sexual behaviors and stripping them in stark
nakedness (The Washington Post, April 7, 2009).
The U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has begun interrogation by torture
since 2002. The U.S. government lawyers disclosed that since 2001, CIA
has destroyed 92 videotapes relating to the interrogation to suspected
terrorists, 12 of them including the use of torture (The Washington
Post, March 3, 2009). The CIA interrogators used a handgun and an
electric drill to frighten a captured al-Qaeda commander into giving up
information (The Washington Post, August 22, 2009).
The U.S.
Justice Department memos revealed the CIA kept prisoners shackled in a
standing position for as long as 180 hours, more than a dozen of them
deprived of sleep for at least 48 hours, three for more than 96 hours,
and one for the nearly eight-day maximum.
Another seemed to
endorse sleep deprivation for 11 days, stated on one memo
(http://www.chron.com). The CIA interrogators used waterboarding 183
times against the accused 9/11 major plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
and 83 times against suspected Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah (The New
York Times, April 20, 2009).
A freed Guantanamo prisoner said
he experienced the "medieval" torture at Guantanamo Bay and in a secret
CIA prison in Kabul (AFP, London, March 7, 2009). In June 2006, three
Guantanamo Bay inmates could have been suffocated to death during
interrogation on the same evening and their deaths passed off as
suicides by hanging, revealed by a six-month joint investigation for
Harpers Magazine and NBC News in 2009 (www.guardian.co.uk, January 18,
2010).
A Somali named Mohamed Saleban Bare, jailed at
Guantanamo Bay for eight years, told AFP the prison was "hell on earth"
and some of his colleagues lost sight and limbs and others ended up
mentally disturbed (AFP, Hargisa, Somali, December 21, 2009). A
31-year-old Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay who had been on a long
hunger strike apparently committed suicide in 2009 after four prior
suicide deaths beginning at 2002 (The New York Times, June 3, 2009).
The
U.S. government held more than 600 prisoners at Bagram Air Base,
Afghanistan. A United Nations report singled out the Bagram detention
facility for criticism, saying some ex-detainees allege being subjected
to severe torture, even sexual abuse, and some prisoners put under
detention for as long as five years. It also reported that some were
held in cages containing 15 to 20 men and that two detainees died in
questionable circumstances while in custody (IPS, New York, February
25, 2009).
An investigation by U.S. Justice Department showed
2,000 Taliban surrendered combatants were suffocated to death by the
U.S. army-controlled Afghan armed forces
(http://www.yourpolicicsusa.com, July 16, 2009).
CCTV