March 27, 2005
WORD FOR WORD | REPORT CARDChina Gives America a D
By PETER EDIDIN
INCE 1977, the United States State Department has issued an annual global report card called the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
The document has long been a thorn in the side of authoritarian governments, including
China's, which responds with a nettled review of its own, called "The Human Rights Record of the United States," the 2004 version of which was
recently released. (It is available in English at:
http://english.people.com.cn/200503/03/eng20050303_175406.html.)
China's assessment, unlike the sober State Department tome, is a frank indictment and draws a picture of America that approaches caricature. But that doesn't mean it won't buttress the negative image of the United States held by its critics around the world.
Excerpts follow, with the document's grammatical and other errors intact.
Life, Liberty and Security of Person
American society is characterized with rampant violent crimes, severe infringement of people's rights by law enforcement departments and lack of guarantee for people's rights to life, liberty and security of person.
The United States has the biggest number of gun owners, and gun violence has affected lots of innocent lives. About 31,000 Americans are killed and 75,000 wounded by firearms each year, which means more than 80 people are shot dead each day.
The United States characterizes itself as "a paradise for free people," but the ratio of its citizens deprived of freedom has remained among the highest.
According to statistics from the Department of Justice, the number of inmates in the United States jumped from 320,000 in 1980 to two million in 2000, a hike by six times. The number of convicted offenders may total more than six million if parolees and probationers are also counted.
Political Rights and Freedom
The United States claims to be "a paragon of democracy," but American democracy is manipulated by the rich and malpractices are common. Elections in the United States are in fact a contest of money. The presidential and Congressional elections last year cost nearly $4 billion.
Campaign advertisement and political debates were full of distorted facts, false information and lies.
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Poverty, hunger and homelessness have haunted the world richest country.
Upper middle- and upper-class families that constitute the top 10 percent of the income distribution are prospering while many among the remaining 90 percent struggle to maintain their standard of living. According to the statistics released by the United States Census Bureau in 2004, the number of Americans in poverty has been climbing for three years. It rose by 1.3 million year on year in 2003 to 35.9 million.
Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination has been deeply rooted in the United States, permeating into every aspects of society. The colored people are generally poor, with living condition much worse than the white. The death rate of illness, accident and murder among the black people is twice that of the white. The rate of being victim of murders for the black people is five times that of the white. The rate of being affected by AIDS for the black people is ten times that of the whites while the rate of being diagnosed by diabetes for the black people is twice that of the whites.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the United States received 29,000 complaints in 2003 of racial bias in the workplace
The Declaration of Independence said all men are created equal, so the gap between black and white people is simply an insult to the founding essence of the United States.
After the Sept. 11 incident, the United States openly restricts the rights of citizens under the cloak of homeland security, and uses diverse means including wire tapping of phone conversations and secret investigations, checks on all secret files, and monitoring transfers of fund and cash flows to supervise activities of its citizens, in which, people of ethnic minority groups, foreigners and immigrants become main victims.
The Rights of Women and Children
The situation of American women and children was disturbing. The rates of women and children physically or sexually victimized were high. According to F.B.I. Crime Statistics, in 2003 the United States witnessed 93,233 cases of raping. The statistics also showed that every two minutes one woman was sexually assaulted and every six minutes one woman was raped.
Children were victims of sex crimes. Every year about 400,000 children in the U.S. were forced to engage in prostitution or other sexual dealings on the streets.
In recent years scandals about clergymen molesting children kept breaking out.
It is believed that from 1950 to 2002 more than 10,600 boys and girls were sexually abused by nearly 4,400 clergymen.
The Human Rights of Foreign Nationals
In 2004, United States Army service people were reported to have abused and insulted Iraqi prisoners of war, which stunned the whole world. The United States forces were blamed for their fierce and dirty treatments for these Iraqi P.O.W.'s. They made the P.O.W.'s naked by force, masking their heads with underwear (even women's underwear), locking up their necks with a belt, towing them over the ground, letting military dogs bite them, beating them with a whip, shocking them with electric batons, needling them sometimes and putting chemical fluids containing phosphorus on their wounds.
The United States frequently commits wanton slaughters during external invasions and military attacks. Spain's Uprising newspaper on May 12, 2004, published a list of human rights infringement incidents committed by the United States troops, quoting two bloodthirsty sayings of two American generals, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead" by Gen. Philip Sheridan, and "we should bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age" by Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay.
A survey on Iraqi civilian deaths, based on the natural death rate before the war, estimates that the United States-led invasion might have led to 100,000 more deaths in the country, with most victims being women and children. In addition, the United States troops often plunder Iraqi households when tracking down anti-United States militants since the invasion. The American forces has so far committed at least thousands of robberies and 90 percent of the Iraqis that have been rummaged are innocent.
Despite tons of problems in its own human rights, the United States continues to stick to its belligerent stance, wantonly trample on the sovereignty of other countries and constantly stage tragedies of human rights infringement in the world.
Instead of indulging itself in publishing the "human rights country report" to censure other countries unreasonably, the United States should reflect on its erroneous behavior on human rights and take its own human rights problems seriously.
