[A-List] China's 2006 Report on U.S. and Human Rights

[Omahkohkiaayo_ipoyi <omahkohkiaayo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Full Text: The Human Rights Record of the US in 2006 

The Information Office of the State Council published a document titled
"The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2006" on Thursday.
Following is the full text: 

On March 6, the U.S. Department of State released its Country Reports on
Human Rights Practices for 2006. As in previous years, the State Department
pointed the finger at human rights conditions in more than 190 countries
and regions, including China, but avoided touching on the human rights
situation in the United States. To help the world people have a better
understanding of the situation in the United States and promote the
international cause of human rights, we hereby publish the Human Rights
Record of the United States in 2006. 

I. On Life, Property and Security of Person 

The life, property and personal security of people of the United States are
affected by rampant violent crimes. 

The U.S. Justice Department reported on Sept. 10, 2006 that there were 5.2
million violent crimes in the United States in 2005,up 2.5 percent from the
previous year, the highest rate in 15 years. Statistics released by the
U.S. Justice Department in 2006 showed that in 2005 American residents age
12 or above experienced23 million crimes; for every 1,000 persons age 12 or
older, there occurred 1 rape or sexual assault, 1 assault with injury, and
3 robberies. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Victimization, in:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs.) Murder, robbery and other violent crimes
reported in the United States jumped 3.7 percent in the first half of 2006
over the same period in 2005, with robbery alone up by a starling 9.7
percent. Murders that occurred in cities with population of between 500,000
and 1 million in the same period were up by 8.4 percent year on year. (FBI:
Violent Crimes up in 1st Half of '06. MSNBC.com, December 19, 2006. in:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11497293.) In the first half of 2006 murder was up
a whopping 27.5 percent in Boston. In Memphis murder increased 43 percent
in 2006. In Cincinnati murder was up 19 percent in the first six months of
2006. Robbery increases for the first half of 2006 across the United States
were stunning: Rochester, N.Y., up 47 percent; suburban Montgomery County,
Md., up 37 percent; Minneapolis up 36.8 percent. (Startling New Stats Show
Cross-Country Crime Spike. ABC News, October 12, 2006.) From January 1 to
Dec. 10, there were 384 slayings in Philadelphia, and the number exceeded
the total toll of victims in 2005. (City Effort Needs to Grow. Editorial,
Philadelphia Inquirer, December 12, 2006.) During the first 11 months in
2006, 147 murders were reported in New Orleans. That means the new
Orleanians were murdering each other at a rate of 73.5 murders per 100,000
residents, exceeding that of the nation's most murderous city Compton,
California, whose rate was 67 murders per 100,000 people in 2005. (Crime
Takes Hold of New Orleans. USA TODAY, December 1, 2006.) Orlando, Florida,
reported 42 murders in the first 10 months in 2006, nearly double the 22
slayings last year in the city of 200,000 people. (USA TODAY, November 1,
2006) And in Washington, police department declared a crime emergency and a
10 p.m. curfew for juveniles in July 2006, after the city had 11 homicides
in 13 days. (Police Chiefs Cite Youths in Crime Rise, Call for More Federal
Funds. The Washington Post, August 31, 2006.) The Washington Post reported
on December 14, 2006 that there had been 35 bank robberies in Montgomery
County in 2006, with three banks robbed on Dec. 13 within minutes of each
other. 

The United States has the largest number of privately owned guns in the
world. The unchecked spread of guns has caused incessant murders. A report
released by the U.S. Justice Department in 2006 said that in 2005, 477,040
victims of violent crimes stated that they faced an offender with a
firearm. A Washington metropolitan police department report stated in 2006
that from 2001 to 2005, 901 of 1,126 homicide victims, or about 80percent,
were fatally shot, while the percentage in New Orleans was 92 percent.
(District Slaying Usually with Gun. The Washington Times, November 17,
2006.) Chicago was hit with 5 slayings and 3 injuries on late May 20 and
early May 21, 2006. (Weekend Shooting Kill 5. The Chicago Tribune, May 22,
2006.) On Nov. 16, Detroit reported 2 people killed and 3 injured within 10
minutes in the western part of the city. (Detroit Man Charged with Murder,
Assault in Apparently Random Shooting Spree That Killed 2. AP, Nov. 20,
2006.) In Kansas, Missouri, a man shot five people to death on Dec. 16,
including his longtime girlfriend and three of their children. He then
killed himself. (Man kills 5 in Family, Then Self. The Kansas City Star,
Dec. 17, 2006.) And on Christmas Eve of 2006, a gunman opened fire at
shopping people in a shopping mall in Florida, and then on the police,
killing one man. (Mall Shooter Likely Knew Victim, Police Say. CNN.com,
Dec. 24, 2006.) 

Campus shootings are rampant in the United States. The country reported 3
campus shootings in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Colorado within one week
from the end of September to the beginning of October 2006. Five girls were
fatally shot and 6 others injured during the shooting incident in an Amish
school in Pennsylvania on Oct. 2, 2006. (Man Shoots 11, Killing 5 Girls, in
Amish School. The New York Times, Oct. 3, 2006.) 

II. On Human Rights Violations by Law Enforcement and Judicial Departments 

In the United States, human rights violations committed by law enforcement
and judicial departments are common. 

Police abuses are very serious. A Human Rights Watch report issued on Dec.
4, 2006 said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. Department of
Justice has used the material witness warrant to imprison without charge at
least 70 men. The Washington Post reported on Dec. 1, 2006 that citizen
complaints filed with a review board about alleged New York Police
Department abuses had increased by 60 percent from 2001 to 2005. Craig
Futterman, a law professor of the University of Chicago who has studied the
ChicagoPolice Department's handling of complaints against officers, said
over the past five years, 662 out of 13,500 police officers in Chicago had
been the subject of 10 or more complaints, and he saw "a picture of
impunity within the Chicago Police Department. You have a small number of
officers who perpetrate crimes who have absolute impunity." (The Chicago
Tribune, November 29, 2006) In September 2006, four members of the Special
Operations Section of the Chicago Police Department were arrested for
allegations of a string of robberies, kidnappings and false arrests. But
investigation showed that the police internal affairs division had been
aware of numerous allegations against the officers for four years without
taking disciplinary action against them. In November2006, two former
inmates at Cook County Jail filed suit in federal court alleging that they
were attacked by guards and severely beaten while they were handcuffed.
Michael Mejia, one of the inmates, was handcuffed by guards, who then
grabbed the back of his neck and slammed his head and face into the cement
wall. The officers also stomped and kicked the inmates when they were
handcuffed and lying on the floor. The two men later filed complaints, but
the jail's internal affairs division decided not to investigate.
(Ex-inmates Charge County Jail Beating. The Chicago Tribune, November 15,
2006) On Nov. 17, 2006, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a 23-year-old senior of the
UCLA, was stunned with a Taser by a campus police officer after he refused
requests to show his ID card.( The Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2006) On
the morning of Nov. 25, 2006, five officers from the New York Police
Department fired 50 bullets at a car with three unarmed men inside after
the car struck an unmarked police van. The car was struck by 21 bullets.
One man in the car was killed and the other two were wounded.( The
Associated Press, November 25, 2006) On Dec. 5, 2006, a Los Angeles police
officer, Sean Joseph Meade, was caught on videotape applying a chokehold to
a handcuffed 16-year-old boy inside the Central Division station. The
officer's actions were recorded by a hidden camera that had been installed
in the chair. (The Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2006) 

Injustice of the judiciary is quite shocking. A yearlong investigation by
The New York Times of New York State's town and village courts found a long
trail of judicial abuses and errors. In some cases, defendants were sent to
jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a
proper proceeding. (In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power. The
New York Times, September 25, 2006) The Associated Press reported on March
4, 2006 that nearly all records are being kept secret for more than 5,000
defendants who completed their journey through the federal courts from 2003
to 2005. The percentage of defendants who have reached verdicts and been
sentenced but still have most of their records sealed rose from 1.1 percent
in 2003 to 2.7 percent in 2005. Such cases showed that the U.S.
constitutional presumption for openness in the courts is not honored. 

Frame-up and wrong cases can be widely found. The Los Angles Times reported
in June 2006 that investigations and reviews by experts from the University
of Michigan on 328 controversial criminal cases over the past 17 years
found that all of them are frame-up or wrong cases. Based on that finding,
experts estimated that currently there were tens of thousands innocent
people jailed in the United States. A man in Chicago had been in prison
since the mid 1990s after being convicted of raping a woman, and police
turned down his repeated requests for DNA tests on the pretext of lack of
evidence. In 2006, he was told that new DNA tests show that he was not the
assailant. Following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and other government agencies have referred 6,472 individuals
to prosecutors on terrorism-related charges. The Transactional Records
Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said nearly three-quarters of
terrorism suspects seized by the United States in the five years following
the September 11 attacks have not even made it to trial because of lack of
evidence against them. In 64 percent of the cases, federal prosecutors
decided that they were not worth prosecuting, while an additional nine
percent were either dismissed by judges or the individuals were found not
guilty. (Agence France-Presse, September 4, 2006) 

The United States has the world's largest number of prisoners. According to
a report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice on Nov. 30, 2006, by the
end of 2005, nearly 2.2 million inmates were held in state and federal
prisons or country and municipal jails. The adult U.S. correctional
population, including those on probation or parole, reached a high of more
than seven million men and women for the first time. About three percent of
the U.S. adult population, or one in every 32 adults, were in the nation's
prisons and jails or on probation or parole. Four states-Louisiana, Texas,
Mississippi and Oklahoma-have incarceration rates of more than 650 per
100,000, with Louisiana soaring above all other states with the astonishing
rate of 797. (US Addiction to Incarceration Puts 2.3 Million in Prison.
Human Rights Watch, December 1, 2006) As a result, state prisons were
operating between one percent under and 14 percent over capacity. The
federal system was operating at 34 percent over capacity. (Agence
France-Presse, November 30, 2006) According to a report of New York-based
China Press on October 4, 2006, there were currently 173,000 people jailed
in the prisons of California State, and 1,700 of them failed to have normal
living conditions. In 33 prisons the number of inmates was more than twice
the capacity. Some gymnasiums were changed into temporary shelters for
prisoners and even churches were used temporarily for prisoners to sleep. 

Abuses in U.S. prisons are also common. The United States is the only
country in the world that allows the use of police dogs to terrify
prisoners. An investigative report by the Human Rights Watch said that five
state prison systems in the United States, including Connecticut, Delaware,
Iowa, South Dakota and Utah, permit the use of aggressive, unmuzzled dogs
to terrify and even attack prisoners in efforts to remove them from their
cells. Connecticut prisons were found to have used police dogs for nearly20
times to take on prisoners. In Iowa State, 63 such cases were reported from
March 2005 to March 2006. A U.S. government report, issued on Jan. 16,
2006, said that abuses of illegal immigrants happened in five prisons,
which were negligent to illegal immigrants who went on hunger strike or
committed suicide. The illegal immigrants were also provided with
half-cooked food. (The Washington Post, January 17, 2007) It was reported
that the Florida State Prison used chemical agents against prisoners 238
times in 2000, 285 times in 2001, 447 in 2002 and 611 in 2003 and 277 in
2004, which left 10 prisoners seriously injured and some with mental
diseases. (www. Allhatnocattle.net, February 13, 2006)The United States has
nearly 60 "super-security prisons", housing about 2,000 prisoners. The
inmates are jailed in 6-square-meter wards, which are sound proof with
lights and monitors on around the clock. Such prisons have left many
prisoners with mental diseases. What's more, prisoners are often deprived
of some basic rights. An editorial of The New York Times on July 31, 2006
said that the United States has the worst record in the "free world" when
it comes to stripping convicted felons of the right to vote. In contrast,
most European countries hold that right so dear that they bring ballot
boxes into prisons. 

Prisons become hotbeds of diseases and crimes. A report, issued by the U.S.
Department of Justice on Sept. 7, 2006, said that more than half of the
inmates in U.S. prisons suffered from mental problems. About 56 percent of
inmates in state prisons, 64 percent in detention houses and 45 percent of
federal prisoners had received treatment or shown symptoms of various
mental diseases, including serious melancholia, mania and hallucination.
More than 1.5 million inmates are released each year carrying life
threatening contagious diseases. (Rising Prison Problems Begin to Trickle
into Society. USA Today, June 12, 2006) Each year, approximately 7,000
Americans died in U.S. prisons and jails. Some of these deaths are from
natural causes, but many more result from mental disorders left undiagnosed
and diseases left untreated. (Prison Death: A National Shame. The Baltimore
Sun, December 6, 2006) A report published by the U.S. Department of Justice
in November 2006 showed that an estimated 37 percent of county and
municipal jail inmates reported having a current medical problem other than
a cold or virus in a national survey. During 2004, the number of confirmed
AIDS cases in state and federal prisons increased from 5,944 to 6,027. The
rate of confirmed AIDS cases instate and federal prisoners (50 per 10,000
prison inmates) was more than three times higher than in total U.S.
population (15 per10,000 persons). Suicides among inmates are rising. The
USA TODAY reported on Dec. 28, 2006 that 41 inmates committed suicides in
California in 2006. In Texas's prison system, there were 24 suicides. Texas
prisons also reported 652 attempted suicides in 2006, an increase of 17
percent compared with the number in 2005. 

Sexual assaults in U.S. prisons are common. A report by the United Nations
Committee Against Torture on May 19, 2006 said that at least 13 percent of
inmates in U.S. prisons had suffered from sexual assaults and many have
suffered frequent sexual abuses. It estimated that nearly 200,000 inmates
currently in prisons were or will become victims of sexual violence. The
number of prisoners who had suffered sexual assaults over the past 20 years
is likely to exceed one million. 

III. On Civil and Political Rights 

In recent years, American citizens have suffered increasing civil rights
infringements. 

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government has put average Americans
under intense surveillance as part of terrorism investigations. According
to a survey released in December 2006, two-thirds of Americans believe that
the FBI and other federal agencies are intruding on their privacy rights.
(The Washington Post, Dec. 13, 2006) A report from the U.S. Justice
Department, dated April 28, 2006, disclosed that its use of electronic
surveillance and search warrants in national security investigations jumped
15 percent in 2005. According to the report, the FBI issued 9,254 national
security letters in 2005, covering 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal foreign
residents. The Justice Department said the data did not include what
probably were thousands of additional letters issued to obtain more limited
information about some individuals or letters that were issued about
targets who were in the U.S. illegally. (The Los Angeles Times, April 29,
2006) Reports show a Pentagon research team monitors more than 5,000
jihadist web sites, focusing daily on the25 to 100 most hostile and active.
(MSNBC News Service, May 4, 2006) An internal memo of the FBI shows that
the agency has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and
environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the
homeless. In the United States, the government has been secretly collecting
the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. According to USA
TODAY, more employers feel they have justifiable reason to pry, track
workers' whereabouts through Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite,
implant employees with microchips with their knowledge and hire private
investigators to check up on what employees are really doing at work.
According to a study by the American Management Association and The ePolicy
Institute, 76 percent of companies monitor employees' website connections,
65 percent block access to specific sites, and 36 percent track the
content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. More than half of
employers retain and review e-mail messages. (USA TODAY, Nov. 7, 2006) 

As The Associated Press reported on Jan. 4, 2007, a signing statement
attached to postal legislation by U.S. administration may have opened the
way for the government to open mail without a warrant. An internal review
of the U.S. State Department has found that U.S. officials screened the
public statements and writings of private citizens for criticism of the
administration before deciding whether to select them for foreign speaking
projects. The vetting practice, the Washington Post said, appears to have
been part of the administration's pattern of controlling information,
muffling dissenting views. (The Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2006) On May 23,
2006, Electronic Frontier Foundation, a U.S.-based organization committed
to protecting citizens' privacy, accused the FBI for undercutting the
intent of the privacy law, saying the agency has built a database with more
than 659 million records culled from more than 50 FBI and other government
agency sources. (http://www.eff.org/press/ Aug. 30, 2006) 

The United States touts itself as the "beacon of democracy", but the U.S.
mode of democracy is in essence one in which money talks. 

In 2004, candidates for the House of Representatives who raised less than
one million U.S. dollars had almost no chance of winning, the USA TODAY
quoted a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics as saying in a
report on Oct. 29, 2006. The average successful Senate campaign cost 7
million dollars, it said. In 2006, all state campaigns in the United States
were predicted to cost about 2.4 billion dollars. In California, the oil
and tobacco industries were the year's two biggest spenders with a total of
161.6 million dollars, and they became the two biggest winners. (The Los
Angeles Times, Nov. 9, 2006) In the House race in Pennsylvania, the
National Republican Congressional Committee spent 3.9 million dollars,
mostly in ads against Democratic candidate Lois Murphy, and the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee spent 3 million dollars against Republican
candidate Jim Gerlach. (The Baltimore Sun, Nov. 6, 2006) Seventy-four
percent of respondents to a new Opinion Research poll say the U.S. Congress
is generally out of touch with average Americans, as CNN reported on Oct.
18, 2006, and 79 percent of the surveyed say they feel big business does
have too much influence over the administration's decisions. 

Corruption is a serious problem in U.S. politics. More than 1,000
government employees, including hundreds of police officers, have been
convicted in FBI graft cases in the past two years. Former high-powered
lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion
charges, revealing the biggest scandal of trading money for power to hit
Washington in decades. (CNN, Jan. 3, 2006) Meanwhile, four Republicans have
resigned from the House under clouds in the year. A handful of other
members of the Congress are under investigation. (USA TODAY, Dec. 12, 2006)
Over the past five and a half years, U.S. Republican and Democratic
lawmakers accepted nearly 50 million U.S. dollars in trips, often to
resorts and exclusive locales, as The Washington Post reported on June 6,
2006. From January 2000 through June 2005,House and Senate members and
their aides were away from Washington for more than 81,000 days - a
combined 222 years - on at least 23,000 trips. U.S. lawmakers accepted
thousands of costly jaunts to some of the world's choicest destinations: at
least 200 to Paris, 150 to Hawaii and 140 to Italy, it said. Twenty-five
individual lawmakers accepted more than 120,000 U.S. dollars worth of
travel during the period and private trip sponsors spent the most money on
about two dozen congressional offices.(Seattle Times, June 6, 2006) 

In the United States scandals of government manipulating the media give the
lie to press freedom in the country. To serve its political purposes, the
U.S. government often produces fake news stories and passes them off as
normal news to domestic and overseas audiences. The U.S. State Department,
among 20 federal agencies, was found to have produced and distributed such
items. (The Independent, May 29, 2006) In recent years, some journalists
were harassed or detained by U.S. law enforcement agencies for declining to
reveal their sources. In 2005, a Rhode Island TV reporter spent four months
confined at home by a judge for refusing to expose the source. In San
Francisco, a federal prosecutor tried to force two San Francisco Chronicle
reporters to reveal sources of secret grand jury testimony used in stories.
(USA TODAY, June 22, 2006) Two journalists were sentenced to 18 months in
prison for contempt of court in September 2006 and another Los Angeles
freelancer was sent to prison for a year on contempt charge after refusing
to turn over to a grand jury his private video clips. (SFGate.com August 1,
2006) 

IV. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 

The United States is the richest country in the world, but it lacks proper
guarantee for people's economic, social and cultural rights. 

The Americans in poverty constitute the "Third World" of U.S. society. A
report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on August. 29,2006 said there
were 37 million people living in poverty in 2005, accounting for 12.6
percent of total U.S. population. The report also said there were 7.7
million families in poverty and one out of eight Americans was living in
poverty in 2005. The poverty rates of Cleveland and Detroit were as high as
32.4 percent and 31.4 percent respectively and nearly one out of three was
living under the poverty line. AFP reported on Feb. 24, 2007 that based on
the latest available US census data, the McClatchy Newspapers analysis
found that almost 16 million Americans live in "deep or severe poverty",
the highest number since at least 1975, up by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005.
Between 2000 and 2005, the U.S. economy grew by 12 percent in real terms
and productivity, measured by output per hour worked in the business
sector, rose 17 percent. Over the same period, the median hourly wage-the
wage the average American takes home-rose only three percent in real
(inflation-adjusted) terms. That compared with a 12 percent gain in the
previous five years was lower than it was in 2000. (Financial Times, Nov.
2, 2006) 

Hunger and homelessness remain a critical issue. A report released by U.S.
Department of Agriculture on Nov. 15, 2006 revealed that in the previous
year 34.8 million Americans did not have enough money or other resources to
buy food. A survey on 23 U.S. cities including Chicago, Boston and Los
Angeles by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that in 2006 requests for
emergency food assistance increased by an average of seven percent over
2005,with 74 percent of the cities registering an increase. Also, requests
for emergency shelter assistance increased by an average of nine percent
over 2005, with 68 percent of the surveyed cities showing an increase.
(U.S. Conference of Mayors-Sodexho, Inc. Release 2006 Hunger and
Homelessness Survey, www.usmayors.org) Currently, there are 600,000 or so
homeless people nationwide, including 16,000 homeless in Washington D.C.
and 3,800 in New York City. (The New York Times, The Washington Post and
Reuters reports, October to December, 2006) It is estimated there are 3,000
to 4,000 homeless people in Baltimore on any given night. (The Baltimore
Sun, Nov. 20, 2006) In Hawaii, around 1,000 homeless people are living in
tents along beaches. (The New York Times, Dec. 4, 2006) A survey found that
in Los Angeles City and surrounding communities there were 88,345 homeless
people, and the mayor declared the city to be "the capital of homelessness
in America." (The Los Angeles Times, Jan. 12, 2006) 

The average living standards in the United States are among the highest in
the world but the United States lags behind most countries in legal
protection for labor and family-friendly policies in the workplace. The
Voice of America reported on Feb. 4,2007 that a study of 173 countries with
high, middle and low income jointly conducted by Harvard University and
McGill University found the United States is one of the only five countries
that do not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave, the other four
countries being Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. Of the
173 countries, 137 provide paid annual leave but there is no federal law to
guarantee such leave in the United States. One hundred and forty five
countries provide paid sick leave for their workers but the United States
has no federal law on this, leaving it to be decided by employers. The
United States has no law on maximum work week length or a limit on
mandatory overtime per week, but 134 countries have laws in this regard.
There is no guarantee in the United States to protect working women's right
to breast-feeding but at least 107 countries ensure their working women
have breast-feeding breaks. The United States guarantees fathers neither
paid paternity nor paid parental leave, but 65 countries grant fathers
either paid paternity or paid parental leave. 

Quite a few Americans are not covered by basic health insurance. A report
released by the U.S. Census Bureau on August. 29, 2006 said the number of
people without health insurance coverage rose to 46.6 million in 2005,
accounting for 15.9 percent of the total population and up 1.3 million over
2004. Minnesota had the lowest percentage of uninsured of 8.7 percent and
Texas had the highest percentage of uninsured of 25 percent. From 2003 to
2006, the basic Medicare premium increased more than 50 percent to 88.50
U.S. dollars a month from 58.7 U.S. dollars in 2003 and it was predicted
that it would rise to 98.20 U.S. dollars in 2007.The administration said
the cost of the drug benefit would grow an average of 11.5 percent a year
in the next decade, more than twice as fast as the economy. (The New York
Times, May 2, 2006) Statistics showed, in the past six years, average
annual Medicare cost of a U.S. family reached 11,500 US dollars or nearly
3,000 for each American every year. More and more Americans are unable to
afford the high Medicare expenses and looking for overseas medical
treatment. In 2005, some 500,000 uninsured Americans trekked overseas for
medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care.
(Eagle-Tribune, Nov. 27, 2006) 

V. On Racial Discrimination 

Racial segregation and discrimination are still deep-seated in the United
States. African-Americans and other colored people are still living in
"another United States". 

The ethnic minorities are at the bottom of American society. Statistics
released by the U.S. Census Bureau in November 2006 indicated that
according to the 2005 data, the average yearly household income was 50,622
U.S. dollars for whites, compared with36,278 for Hispanics and 30,940 for
blacks. White people's income was 64 percent more than the blacks and 40
percent more than the Hispanics. Three-fourths of white households owned
their homes in 2005, compared with 46 percent of black households and 48
percent of Hispanic households. (The Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2006) The
poverty rate for whites was 8.3 percent in 2005, while the rates were 24.9
percent for blacks and 21.8 percent for Hispanics. (U.S. Census Bureau,
Aug. 29, 2006) Nearly one in five Hispanics lacked sufficient access to
nutritious food and one in 20 regularly went hungry. Blacks took up 42
percent of all the homeless people in the United States. (USA TODAY, Dec.
22, 2006) The percentage of colored people uncovered by government health
insurance was much higher than that of whites. In 2005, the uninsured rate
was 32.7 percent for Hispanics and 19.6 for blacks, compared with 11.3
percent for whites. And in the hurricane-hit southern area, the poor and
blacks lived a much worse life. During its eighty-seventh session the UN
Human Rights Committee noted in its consideration of a report submitted by
the United States on its implementation of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, that the committee "remains concerned about
information that poor people and in particular African-Americans were
disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented when Hurricane
Katrinahit the United States, and continue to be disadvantaged under the
reconstruction plans". (Human Rights Committee, Eighty-seventh session,
10-28 July 2006) 

The African-Americans and other ethnic minorities have been subject to
discrimination in employment and workplace. The unemployment rate of the
blacks was more than twice that of the whites. According to statistics
released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Dec. 8, 2006, the unemployment
rate in November 2006 was 8.6 percent for the blacks and 3.9 percent for
the whites. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission receives more
than 500 complaints against racial discrimination every week and more than
26,000 every year; in fiscal year 2005, it received 26,740 charges of race
discrimination. A report released by an economic and policy research center
in the United States on Dec. 15, 2006 said that biased government policies
and negative coverage of the media have limited the development of the
youngsters of ethnic minorities in the U.S. Whites are more easily to be
promoted to the management than the blacks and Hispanics. An
African-American employee of Merrill Lynch & Co. accused the largest U.S.
retail brokerage of racial discrimination in 2005. And in 2006, 16 current
and former black employees of the company joined the lawsuit, accusing
Merrill of systematic and pervasive discrimination against African-American
brokers and trainees nationwide in hiring, promotion and compensation.
Tyson Foods Inc., the largest U.S. meat company was also accused by
thirteen current and former African-American employees of racial
discrimination in 2006. (Reuters, Nov. 7, 2006) 

Racial disparities in education are also growing. According to U.S. Census
Bureau's 2005 data, in the United States more than half ethnic minority
males dropped school before high school graduation, 67.5 percent Hispanics
and 53 percent blacks got no further education after graduating from high
school. White Americans were more likely to hold a graduate or professional
degree. At least 30 percent white adults held a bachelor's degree, compared
with 17 percent black adults and 12 percent Hispanic adults. Racial
segregation in education is in fact quite serious. According to a symposium
held in the University of California at Los Angeles in October 2006, in the
Los Angeles school district, 67 percent Hispanic students studied in 90
percent to 100 percent non-white schools. The racial divide in Los Angeles
high schools was more serious. In Beverly High School, 73 percent students
were whites, 8 percent were Asians, and 6 percent were Hispanics. As a
contrast, among the 4,940 students in Rosevelt High School, 98.9 percent
were Hispanics and 1 percent were blacks. There were big disparities in
school facilities due to the racial divide. 

Racial discrimination is deep-rooted in America's law enforcement and
judicial systems. Discrimination against Muslims in law enforcement has
persisted in the United States since the September 11 attacks. According to
Associated Press reports, in November 2006 six Muslims, who were returning
from a religious conference, were taken off an airliner from Minneapolis to
Phoenix, handcuffed and questioned, only because a passenger had passed a
note about them to a flight attendant. In the aftermath of the September 11
terror attacks, four airlines accused of breaking federal
anti-discrimination laws settled with the government. Transportation
Department investigations found the airlines had unlawfully removed
passengers because of perceived ethnic or religious backgrounds. (The
Associated Press, Nov. 28, 2006) And Latino and African-American motorists
in most areas of Los Angeles were significantly more likely than whites to
be asked during police stops to leave their vehicles and submit to
searches, according to a study ordered by the city in 2006 (Los Angeles
Times, July 13, 2006). 

In judicial practice, blacks are usually more severely punished than
whites. According to statistics of the National Urban League, of the
sentences issued in 12 crime categories in the State Courts, sentences for
black males were longer than white males in all of them. (The State of
Black America 2006, issued by National Urban League, March 27, 2006) Black
people account for only 12.1 percent of the U.S. population, however,
according to statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice, at the end of
2005, about 40 percent of all male inmates sentenced to more than one year
were black, and 20 percent were Latino Americans. According to a report
released by the Human Rights Watch on Dec. 1, 2006, the number of black
inmates was 6.6 times that of whites and the number of Latino inmates was
2.5 times that of white inmates. Statistics showed that about one out of 12
black men were in jail or prison, compared with one in 100 white men.
Researchers pointed to poverty, a lack of opportunities, racism in the
criminal justice system forthe black-white prison gap. (Answer to AIDS
Mystery Found Behind Bars, Washington Post, March 9, 2006) 

Racial segregation and discrimination results in an increase of hate
crimes. The number of extreme racist and neo-Nazi organizations has
increased by 33 percent in recent five years, rising from 672 in 2004 to
803 in 2005. ([Argentina] Clarin, May 25, 2006) Meanwhile, the number of
hate crimes kept increasing. Ananalysis of the 7,160 single-bias incidents
by bias motivation revealed that 54.7 percent were motivated by a racial
bias. (FBI press release, Oct. 16, 2006) New York City reported 230 hate
crimes in 2006, about 8 percent more than in 2005, with the number of those
targeted at Asian Americans more than doubled. 

A CNN/Opinion Research poll published in December 2006 found that 84
percent of blacks and 66 percent of whites believe racism is a serious
problem, and there are many different kinds of racism aimed at many
different groups in U.S. society. (CNN, Dec. 15, 2006) ¡¡ 

VI. On the Rights of Women, Children, the Elderly and the Disabled 

The human rights situation of women, children, the elderly and the disabled
in the United States is worrisome. 

Women in the United States do not share equal rights with men in politics.
Despite the fact that women outnumber men in the U.S. population, they hold
only 82 seats in the 109th U.S. Congress, including 14 seats or 14 percent
of the Senate and 68 or 15.6 percent of the seats in the House of
Representatives. Among the 243 mayors of the cities with a population of
over 100,000 in the United States, only 35 were women by January 2006. By
December 2006, there were only 78 women serving in statewide executive
office, 24.8 percent of the total 315 working posts, and 22.8 percent of
the state legislators in the United States were women. (Women in Elective
Office 2006, issued by Center for American Women and Politics, Dec. 2,
2006) 

American women and men are not equally paid for the same work, and the
income of women has always been lower than that of men. Statistics released
by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2006 said the median earnings of women and men
were about 32,000 and 42,000 U.S. dollars, respectively. The female-to-male
earnings ratio was 76 percent. (U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov) On
November 29, 2006,two female brokers of the Citigroup joined three others
in filing an amended complaint with a local court in California, charging
that the bank's policies were designed to deprive female brokers of
opportunities offered to male brokers, and Citigroup kept male brokers at
the top of the compensation scale and female brokers at the bottom.
(Reuters, New York, Nov. 29, 2006) 

Low-income American women lack proper labor protection and social security
and live a hard life. A survey by the Community Service Society showed that
among low-income working mothers living on less than 32,000 U.S. dollars
for a family of three, more than half were not entitled to even a single
day of paid sick leave; 61 percent did not have paid vacation; and 80
percent did not receive any employee health benefits for themselves or
their children. In 2005, 37 percent of the low-wage mothers had to give up
necessary medical care, and a third had their electricity or phone turned
off because they could not pay the bills. Forty-three percent had to rely
on food pantries, and 42 percent fell behind in their rent. (The Other
Mothers, The New York Times, May 14, 2006) The poverty rate of single
mothers is the highest in the population of the United States. A report
released by the U.S. Census Bureau on August 29, 2006 showed that 28.9
percent of the mothers in the United States were single in 2005, and about
4 million were living below the poverty line. 

The rate of female prisoners keeps increasing. Since 1995, the annual rate
of growth in female prisoners averaged 4.6 percent. Females account for 7
percent of all prisoners in the United States. (Prisoners in 2005, U.S.
Department of Justice, Nov. 30, 2006) The United Nation's Committee Against
Torture reported on May 19, 2006 that treatment of female detainees in U.S.
prisons needed to be improved urgently. The recommendations were made on
the fact that female detainees were humiliated in prisons in the United
States, where pregnant women had been kept in chains and leg restraints
into the third trimester of their pregnancies; some had been shackled even
while in labor. In March 2006, Chen Xucai, a woman from China's Fujian
Province, was arrested in New York for selling fake brand name handbags.
She was later found pregnant in jail. The jailers not only mistreated her
rudely but also stopped her medication, resulting in her abortion in
prison. (The China Press, New York, March 19, 2006) 

American women face high risks of sexual offense. The FBI reported in
September 2006 that during 2005, there were an estimated 93,934 female
victims of forcible rape, or 62.5 out of every 100,000 women suffered from
forcible rape. Women are often sexually harassed while at work. Statistics
released by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2006 showed
that the commission received 12,679 charges of sexual harassment in 2005,
with 85.7 percent of them filed by women. 

American children are among the groups with high poverty rate. According to
figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2006, 12.9 million
children under 18 lived below the poverty line by the end of 2005,
accounting for 17.6 percent of the population of this age group and 35.2
percent of the 37 million people in poverty in the United States. Twenty
percent of children under six lived in poverty, and 42.8 percent of
children under 18 living in female headed families, with no husband
present, were poor. In Los Angeles County, an estimated three-quarters of
the county's more than 1.2 million households with children struggled
economically. Other statistics showed that the number of uninsured children
under 18 increased from 7.9 million in 2004 to 8.3 million in 2005,and the
proportion rose to 11.2 percent. (www.census.gov) 

There are a large number of homeless children in the United States.
According to a report of the Mexican newspaper El Universal on April 10,
2006, nearly 1.3 million American children who were homeless or fled home
wandered in streets. Among the children aged 10 to 18, one out of seven
fled home. About 5,000 waifs were killed every year in fights, diseases and
suicide. Children in homeless families represent about 55 percent of the
roughly 2,000 homeless people in Fairfax County, which has about 1million
residents. (USA TODAY, Dec. 22, 2006) In California, there were 95,000
homeless children in 2005-06 school year, and two-thirds of them were
primary school students. 

The number of missing children is alarming. Reports said the U.S.
Department of Justice received nearly 800,000 cases of missing children and
kidnapping every year. The Department said among the nearly 100 dangerous
missing cases each year, about 40 percent of the missing children were
killed eventually. ( [Mexico]El Universal, April 10, 2006) 

The United States is one of the few countries that sentence child offenders
to death. Statistics showed that among the 2,985 inmates sentenced to death
for whom the date of arrest was available, 342 inmates, or 11 percent, were
19 or younger at the time of their arrest. (U.S. Department of Justice,
Dec. 10, 2006, www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs) 

American juveniles often fall victim to on-campus violence crimes.
Statistics showed that from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005,there were 21
homicides at American schools. Twenty-eight percent of students 12 to 18
years old reported being bullied at school, and 24 percent of students
reported that there were gangs at their schools during the first six months
of 2005. The Los Angeles Times reported on Nov. 14, 2006 that about 7,400
students were arrested for on-campus crimes in Chicago schools during the
2005-06 school year. 

The situation of the elderly people in the United States is worrisome.
Statistics released by U.S. Census Bureau in 2006 showed that the number
for seniors aged above 65 in poverty increased from 3.5 million in 2004 to
3.6 million in 2005, with the poverty rate reaching 10.1 percent. A total
of 1.5 million older Americans live in nursing homes, 90 percent of which
have inadequate staffing. (The New York Times, Nov. 14, 2006) In
California, 100,000 elder abuse cases were filed in 2003, accounting for 20
percent of the 500,000 similar reports nationwide. Some 6,000 cases of
elder abuse were reported annually in Orange County in California. (The New
York Times, Sept. 27, 2006) 

The rights and interests of the disabled people in the United States are
not properly protected. The Associated Press reported on April 10, 2006
that only 34 percent of working-age people with disabilities had full-time
or part-time jobs over the past two decades, while people without
disabilities had an employment rate of 78 percent. People with disabilities
are nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than people without
disabilities; 26 percent of people with disabilities had annual household
income below 15,000 U.S. dollars, versus 9 percent those without
disabilities. A survey conducted in Los Angeles County showed that49
percent of the 88,345 homeless people in the county had a physical or
mental disability. (The New York Times, Jan. 15, 2006) 

VII. On the United States' Violation of Human Rights in Other Countries 

Relying on its strong military power, the United States have trespassed on
the sovereignty of other countries and violated human rights in other
countries. 

A large number of innocent Iraqi civilians have died in the war launched by
the United States in 2003. On Oct. 11, 2006, the Washington Post reported
that a survey of Bloomberg School of Public Health under Johns Hopkins
University estimated that more than 655,000 Iraqis have died in Iraq since
war started in March 2003, meaning about 500 unexpected violent deaths per
day throughout the country. The estimate was produced by interviewing
residents during a random sampling of households in 47 neighborhood
clusters throughout Iraq. On Nov. 19, 2005, a U.S. marine unit searched an
Iraqi community door-to-door and slaughtered 24 Iraqi civilians after a
marine was killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. Those who died included a
76-year-old disabled man, a three-year-old child, and seven women. (Haditha
'Massacre' - One Year on, BBC News, Nov. 19, 2006) According to another
report by British newspaper the Sunday Times (March 26, 2006), a family of
eleven were shot dead by U.S. troops on March 15, 2006; among the dead were
five children aged from six months to five years, and four women. On March
12, 2006, four U.S. soldiers raped 14-year-old girl Abeer Qassim al-Janabi
and then killed her, her parents and her five-year-old sister ( [UK] The
Independent website Aug. 7, 2006). On May 31, 2006, U.S. forces killed two
Iraqi women, one of them about to give birth, when the troops shot at a car
that failed to stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad. On
June 5, 2006, CNN reported that U.S. squad took a 52-year-old disabled
Iraqi to a roadside hole and shot him before planting a shovel and an AK-47
to make it appear that he was an insurgent planting a bomb. On December 8,
2006, U.S.-led forces killed 20 suspected insurgents during a raid
targeting fighters from the group al-Qaeda in Iraq northwest of Baghdad.
Amir Alwan, mayor of Ishaqi, said 10 men, four women and 10 children in his
village were killed (The Washington Post, Dec. 9, 2006). The Associated
Press reported that on May 9, 2006 four U.S. soldiers murdered three
suspected insurgents (Iraqi civilians) during a raid called "Objective
Murray" in Salah ad-Dinof Iraq. Raymond L.Girouard, a soldier of the four,
said they were under orders to "kill all military age males", which is also
the ROE (rule of engagement) of "Objective Murray". 

The United States has a flagrant record of violating the Geneva Convention
in systematically abusing prisoners during the Iraqi War and the War in
Afghanistan. A report released in News Night of British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC), originally provided by the U.S.-based Human Rights
First, showed that since August 2002, 98 prisoners had died in American-run
prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the dead, 34 died of premeditated
murder, 11 deaths were suspicious, and 8 to 12 were tortured to death (AFP,
Feb. 21, 2006). A Human Rights Watch report in July 2006 said torture and
other abuses against detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq were authorized and
routine. Detainees were routinely subject to severe beating, painful stress
positions, severe sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold and hot
temperatures. Soldiers were told that many abusive techniques were
authorized by the military chain of command and Geneva Conventions did not
apply to the detainees at their facility. Detainees at Camp Nama, a U.S.
detention center at the Baghdad airport - in violation of international law
- not registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross, were
regularly stripped naked and subject to beatings. Some detainees were used
for target practice. In May 2006 human rights group Amnesty International
condemned the detention of some 14,000 prisoners in Iraq without charge or
trial. On February 15, 2006, Australia's SBS TV aired more than 10pictures
and video clips taken at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison; the images included: a
man's throat was cut off, left forearm of a man was left with burns and
shrapnel wounds, a blood-stained interrogation room, and a seemingly insane
man's body covered with his own feces. U.S. army's criminal investigation
division gathered materials included 1, 325 photographs and 93 video clips
of suspected abuse of detainees, 546 photographs of suspected dead Iraqi
detainees, all recorded between Oct. 18 and Dec. 30, 2003 ( [UK] Guardian,
Feb. 17, 2006). Another report carried by the New York Times in December
2006 says a man named Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago
who went to Iraq as a security contractor, was detained by American
soldiers and put into detention center Camp Cropper for 97 days. The man
said American guards arrived at his cell periodically, shackled his hands
and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation.
When he was returned to his cell, he was fatigued but unable to sleep, for
the fluorescent lights were never turned off and at most hours, heavy metal
or country music blared in the corridor. He was not allowed to use
telephone and denied the right to a lawyer at detention hearings. The New
York Times reported on March 18, 2006 that an elite Special Operations
forces unit Task Force 6-26 converted one of Saddam Hussein's former
military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There,
American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture
chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners
with rifle butts. 

According to another report by British newspaper The Independent, 460
people were confined in the Guantanamo prison camp, including dozens of
adolescent prisoners, with more than 60 under 18 and the youngest only 14.
A young man named Mohammed el-Gharani was allegedly accused of member of
al-Qaeda and conspiracy in the 1998 al-Qaeda London terrorist conspiracy
when he was only 12. In 2001, he was arrested at the age of 14 ([UK] The
Independent, Children of Guantanamo Bay, May 28, 2006). According to a
report by the Washington Post, on May 30, 2006, 75 prisoners in Guantanamo
went on a hunger strike against U.S. soldiers' maltreatment. On June 10,
2006, three prisoners hung themselves with bed sheets and clothing (The
Associated Press, June 11, 2006). Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi's
family said his organs including the brain, liver, kidney and heart were
all taken away when the corpse arrived. Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi
Al-Utaybi's cousin said that might be done to conceal the truth behind his
brother's death. Another Saudi Arabian prisoner's father thought his son's
death was not suicide but intentional hanging as he found bruises on his
son's body. The Amnesty International described it as another "indictment"
of the worsening U.S. human rights record. Human rights experts with the
United Nations have condemned the United States for long-term arbitrary
detention of suspects and abuses of detainees as serious violations of
international law and relevant international conventions. 

The U.S. Military Commissions Act signed into law on October 17,2006 allows
more severe means be used to interrogate terrorist suspects. Martin
Scheinin, UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of Human
Rights and fundamental freedom, issued a statement noting that a number of
provisions of the Act contradictthe universal and fundamental principles of
fair trial standards and due process enshrined in Common Article 3 of the
Geneva Conventions and relevant provisions of the International Convention
on Civil Rights and Political Rights (UN Expert on Human Rights and Counter
Terrorism Concerned That Military Commissions Act is Now Law in United
States. Press Release, United Nations, October 27, 2006). 

The United Nations and all peace- and justice-loving countries and people
have unanimously condemned the U.S. act of disregarding internationally
recognized human rights principles and trespassing on other countries'
sovereignty and human rights. In July 2006, at its 87th session the UN
Human Rights Committee expressed its concern over U.S. infringements on
human rights overseas. The committee also expressed concerned and raised
recommendations on U.S. security measures, detaining people secretly and in
secret places for long periods, abuses of prisoners, and non-compliance
with international conventions in the war on terror. On June 14, 2006 five
independent UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights issued a joint statement
calling on the United States to immediately close the Guantanamo Bay
detention center (UN rights experts call for immediate closure of US
Guantanamo centre after suicides, UN News Center, June 14, 2006.
http://www.un.org/). 

America's international image has been greatly hurt by its government's
violation of human rights flaunting the banner of "safeguarding human
rights". A poll by the BBC World Service released on January 23, 2007
showed that the image of the United States has deteriorated around the
world in the past year. During the poll 26,381 people were questioned in 25
countries. Some 73 percent of the total disapproved of the U.S.
government's handling of the military campaign in Iraq, with 49 percent of
respondents saying Washington was playing a mainly negative role
internationally. An average of only 29 percent of some 18,000 people
surveyed in 18 countries over the last three months believed that the
United States is having a mainly positive influence internationally, down 7
percent from the previous poll conducted a year earlier. 

Though the poll did not directly address their reasons, GlobeScan President
Doug Miller told AFP by phone, the negative views appeared to be driven by
US intervention in the Middle East and the "disconnect" between its
declared values and actions, such as in Guantanamo Bay (AFP, London, Jan.
23, 2007). 

To "name and shame" other countries in annual Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices is a world strategy of the U.S. government to wage the
Cold War in the second half of the last century and typical of Cold War
mentality. To interfere in other countries' internal affairs and provoke
international confrontations on human rights issues not only violates
universally recognized international law principles such as equality of
sovereignty and non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, but
also goes against the trend of our times, which promotes peace, development
and cooperation, and encourages dialogue instead of confrontation in the
field of human rights. The United States has lorded it over other countries
by condemning other countries' human rights practices while ignoring its
own problems, which exposes its double standard and hegemonism on the human
rights issue. We urge the U.S. government to acknowledge its own human
rights problems and stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs
under the pretext of human rights.

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