China’s State Council analyses US human rights observance over 2001

PRAVDA.Ru’s correspondent Andrei Krushinsky reports from Beijing

China’s response to US criticism of its human rights record can be characterized with the following phrase: “It is not an aggressor, who can teach others the good manners”.

The Chinese State Council’s Information Office circulated a document titled “On American human rights in 2001”. It is a response to the US report on the human rights in the world over 2001 issued by the US Department of State on March 4, 2002.

There are six parts in the document:

"Lack of safeguard for life, freedom and personal safety"

"Serious rights violations by law enforcement departments"

"The plight of the poor, hungry and homeless"

"Worrying conditions for women and children"

"Deep-rooted social discrimination"

and "Wantonly infringing upon human rights of other countries by the USA".

The document reports the following facts:

• -According to the statistics by the US police, the murder rate has increased in 2001 as compared with the previous year in US’s largest cities. The murder rate in the United States at present stands at 5.5 persons per 100,000 people.
• - The USA is the country with the largest number of private guns. 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.
• - 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. The U.S. National Association of Education estimates that about 100,000 students in the United States take arms to school every day.
• - Uncontrolled violence of the police and wrong actions of the administration of justice used for a long period already, have become a great problem for the USA.
• - From 1973 to 1995, the verdicts of 68 percent of convicts on the death row were overturned owing to misjudgement by the court. Since 1973, a total of 99 convicts on the death row have been proven innocent.
• - 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. 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.
• - 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.
• - 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. Besides, the United States is among the few countries where psychiatric and mentally retarded offenders could be executed.
• - 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 unemployment rate was twice as high for blacks as for whites.
• - 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.
• - 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.
• - Since the 1990s, the United States has used force overseas on more than 40 occasions, sovereignty of other countries was violated at that.
• - 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 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.
• - 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.

Andrei Krushinsky PRAVDA.Ru Beijing

Translated by Maria Gousseva

In the photo: US Secretary of State Colin Powell

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/03/11/38105.html