The Information Office of China's State Council released on Thursday the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2007. Key facts and figures in the report are as follows:
Individual Security
-- About 1.41 million violent crimes were reported nationwide in 2006, an increase of 1.9 percent over 2005. Of the violent crimes, the estimated number of murders and non-negligent manslaughters increased 1.8 percent, and that of robberies increased 7.2 percent.
-- Throughout 2006, US residents age 12 or above experienced an estimated 25 million crimes of violence and theft. The violent crime rate was 24.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older, for property crimes it was 159.5 per 1,000 households.
-- Males experienced 26 violent victimizations per 1,000 males age 12 or older; females, 23 per 1,000 females age 12 or older. Blacks experienced 33 violent victimizations per 1,000 persons age12 or older, higher than 23 for whites.
-- One violent crime was committed in every 22.2 seconds, one murder committed in every 30.9 minutes, one rape in every 5.7 minutes, one robbery in every 1.2 minutes and one aggravated assault in every 36.6 seconds.
-- About 30,000 people die from gun wounds every year.
-- Among students age 12-18, there were about 1.5 million victims of nonfatal crimes at school in 2005. In the same year, 8 percent of students in grades 9-12 reported being threatened or injured with a weapon in the previous 12 months.
Human Rights Violations by Law Enforcers
-- Cases in which US law enforcement authorities allegedly violated victims' civil rights increased by 25 percent from fiscal year 2001 to 2007 over the previous seven years.
-- By the end of 2006, there were 2.26 million inmates in US prisons, up 2.8 percent from a year ago. The number is the highest over the last six years. The U.S. population only accounted for 5 percent of the world total, but its inmates made up 25 percent of the world total.
-- An estimated 60,500 inmates, or 4.5 percent of State and Federal inmates, experienced one or more incidents of sexual victimization, 2.9 percent of the inmates reported an incident involving prison staff, 0.5 percent said they had been sexually victimized by both other inmates and staff, 0.8 percent of the inmates were injured as a result of sexual victimization
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
-- There were 36.5 million people, or 7.7 million families living in poverty in 2006.
-- The poverty rate of major American cities was 16.1 percent. The rate was 15.2 percent in suburban areas and 13.8 percent in the South.
-- The earnings of the highest one percent of the population accounted for 21.2 percent of American total national income in 2005, compared with 19 percent in 2004. The earnings of the lowest50 percent of the population accounted for 12.8 percent of the total national income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent in 2004.
-- Suicide rate among Americans aged 45-54 rose by about 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the highest since records began 25 years ago.
-- At least 35.5 million Americans, including 12.63 million children, went hungry in 2006, an increase of 390,000 from 2005. About 11 million people lived in "very low food security."
-- Nearly 90 million people below the age of 65 were not covered by health insurance at one point or throughout the period from 2006 to 2007. The number accounted for 34.7 percent of the population falling in that age.
Racial Discrimination
-- Median income of black households was 31,969 US dollars in2006, or 61 percent of that for non-Hispanic white households. Median income for Hispanic households stood at 37,781 US dollars,72 percent of that for non-Hispanic white households.
-- Poverty rate for blacks was 24.3 percent in 2006, that for Hispanics was 20.6 percent, and for non-Hispanic whites, it was 8.2 percent.
-- The unemployment rate for African Americans was 8.4 percent, twice that of non-Hispanic whites (4.2 percent). The unemployment rate for Hispanics was 5.7 percent.
-- The 75,768 charges it received in 2006, 27,328, or 35.9 percent of the total, were related to racial discrimination.
-- At year end 2006, 815 of every 100,000 blacks were behind the bars. The rate was 283 per 100,000 for Hispanics and 170 for whites.
-- There were 7,722 hate crimes in the country in 2006, up eight percent. Among them, 51.8 percent were motivated by racial bias.
Women and Children's Rights
-- At year end 2006, more than 5.58 million single women above the age of 18 were living in poverty, accounting for 22.2 percent of women in that group. Some 4.1 million, or 28.3 percent of female-householder-with-no-husband-present families were living in poverty in 2006, much higher than the national family poverty rate of 9.8 percent.
-- About 1,400 women are beaten to death every year by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States. It is estimated that two to four million women are battered each year.
-- By the end of 2006, there were 12.8 million children under the age of 18 living in poverty in the United States, accounting for 17.4 percent of the country's children population. Children account for 35.2 percent of the impoverished population in the United States.
-- By the end of 2006, some 8.7 million children under the age of 18 had no medical insurance in the United States, up by 11.7 percent from 2005. The rate of children without medical insurance reached 19.3 percent.
-- About 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexually misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade.
-- Millions of underage girls become sex slaves in the United States. Statistics from the Department of Justice show some 100,000 to three million American children under the age of 18 are involved in prostitution.
Human Rights Violation in Other Countries
-- Since the invasion in 2003, 660,000 Iraqis have died, of which 99 percent were civilians. That translates into a daily toll of 450.
-- There were 75,000 children living in refugee camps or makeshift shelters in Iraq. About 760,000 pupils could not go to school.
-- The US troops has detained 700 people in Afghanistan and 18,000 in Iraq for reasons related to the fight against terrorism.
(Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2008)
