China hits back with report on U.S. human rights record

Xinhua, April 11, 2011

WOMEN, CHILDREN RIGHTS SITUATION BOTHERING

Gender discrimination against women widely exists in the United States, and women in the country often experience sexual assault and violence.

Statistics showed that some 20 million women are rape victims in the country, some one fifth female students on campus are victims of sexual assault, and nearly 3,000 female soldiers were sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2008, up nine percent from the year before.

Women are also victims of domestic violence in the United States, said the report, as some 1.3 million people fall victim to domestic violence every year, with women accounting for 92 percent.

Many children in the U.S. live in poverty and their physical and mental health is not ensured as nearly one in four children struggles with hunger, according to the report.

The report also pointed out that violence against children is very severe in the country, citing figures from the official website of Love Our Children USA that every year, over three million children are victims of violence reportedly and the actual number is three times greater.

More than 93,000 children are currently incarcerated in the United States, and between 75 and 93 percent of children have experienced at least one traumatic experience, including sexual abuse and neglect, the report said.

According to the report, pornographic content is rampant on the Internet and severely harms American children as seven in 10 children have accidentally accessed pornography on the Internet and one in three has done so intentionally.

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

The United States has a notorious record of international human rights violations, said the report.

The U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused huge civilian casualties.

Figures from the WikiLeaks website revealed up to 285,000 war casualties in Iraq from March 2003 through the end of 2009, with 63 percent of the 109,000 people killed in the Iraq war being civilians.

"The U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and other regions have also brought tremendous casualties to local people," said the report.

The report cited the notorious case of a "kill team" formed by five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The team had committed at least three murders, where they randomly targeted and killed Afghan civilians, and dismembered the corpses and hoarded the human bones.

In addition, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops had caused 535 Afghan civilian deaths and injuries in 2009. Among them 113 civilians were shot and killed, an increase of 43 percent over 2008, the report quoted McClatchy Newspapers as saying.

PRISONER ABUSE SCANDALS

The United States have been holding individuals captured under the pretext of the "war on terror" and abusing detainees with various methods, according to the report.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established secret detention facilities to interrogate so-called "high-value detainees," said the report, citing a document submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council in May 2010.

According to the document, the CIA had taken custody of 94 detainees, and had employed "enhanced techniques" to varying degrees, including stress positions, extreme temperature changes, sleep deprivation and "waterboarding" in the interrogation of 28 of those detainees.

FAILURE TO FULFILL INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS

The United States refused to join several key international human rights conventions and failed to fulfill its international obligations, according to the report.

To date, the United States has ratified neither the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, nor the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, said the report.

Also, the country has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which has been ratified by 96 countries up to now, according to the report.

So far, a total of 193 countries have joined the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but the United States is among the very few countries that have not ratified it, the report said.

In addition, the first report of the domestic human rights situation submitted by the U.S. government to the UN Human Rights Council on August 20, 2010 received a record 228 recommendations by about 60 country delegations for improving its human rights situation during the UN Universal Periodic Review.

These recommendations referred to, inter alia, ratifying key international human rights conventions, rights of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples, racial discriminations and Guantanamo prison. The United States, however, only accepted some 40 of them.

In the discussion on the United States, speakers from some country delegations noted that the United States' commitment to the human rights area was far from satisfying, and they urged the United States to face up to its own human rights record and take concrete actions to tackle the existing human rights problems, according to the report.

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