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Human Rights: Abusers And Accusers

By Farooque Chowdhury

14 April, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Human rights issue, an effective, soft, but sharp tool in geopolitics, and being used publicly as a pretense for pressing, threatening, coercing countries and for intervening, now signifies the on-going changes in world balance of power. Now, the tool is not the monopoly of Empire. That monopoly is weakening. For general public, debate on the issue helps see two faces of actors in geopolitics as abusers appear accusers.

Empire’s interest, very usually, drives its human rights “concerns”. The US State Department’s report on human rights (HR) for the year 2010 criticized the HR records of China, North Korea, Myanmar, Cuba, Belarus, Iran, Iraq, the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Ukraine and Russia. The US report focused on three global trends related to HR: growing crackdowns on groups and activists, violations of free expression and discrimination against vulnerable minorities. But the Empire “forgot” to look on the mirror.

While introducing the more than 7,000-page report Hillary Clinton said: a negative human rights trend noted in China in 2010 has worsened this year.

It has been reported that since an online call to stage a “Jasmine Revolution” in China, a group of high profile human rights lawyers have been detained and denied access to lawyers; at least a dozen more lawyers were detained briefly, pressured by the authorities; a few other lawyers’ computers were confiscated, and have been visited every few days by police, who warned them against representing fellow lawyers or lobbying on their behalf. Ai Weiwei, one of China’s most famous artists and political critic, has also been detained.

Director for the Asia-Pacific of Amnesty International said: “Ai Weiwei was not even involved in any call for ‘Jasmine’ protests.” “It seems China not only wants to silence potential critics, but also to render them utterly defenseless,” said the director. “This is not behavior we should accept from a modern world power.”

China “reciprocated” the US criticism on its HR situation by publishing a report on the US HR. This was beyond imagination only a few years back. The “reciprocation” reflects China’s increasing assertion of its growing power, and gradual diminishing trend of the US monopoly of politics with human rights. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson advised “the US … to reflect on its own human rights issues and not to position itself as a preacher of human rights.” The spokesperson added: Washington should “stop using the issue of human rights reports to interfere in other countries' internal affairs.”

The US HR Situation

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010 report by the Information Office of China’s State Council reveals a reality that undermines moral position and propaganda power of US-friends in countries.

The US reports are “full of distortions and accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries … But the US turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation and seldom mentioned it,” the China report (CR) said. The US, it said, has taken HR as “a political instrument to defame other nations’ image and seek its own strategic interests. The US could not be justified to pose as the world’s “human rights justice.” These moves expose the US’ hypocrisy by exercising double standards on HR and its malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights. It suggested the US to “take concrete actions to improve its own human rights conditions, check and rectify its acts in the human rights field, and stop the hegemonistic deeds of using human rights issues to interfere in other countries' internal affairs.”

The US, the CR said, regards itself as “the beacon of democracy” although its democracy is mostly based on money. The US House and Senate candidates busted fundraising records for the midterm election held in November 2010, taking in more than $1.5 billion as of October 24. The election cost $3.98 billion, the most expensive in the US history.

Violation of civil and political rights in the US was mentioned in the CR as severe: Citizen’s privacy has been undermined.

Abuse of violence and torturing suspects, the CR said, to get confession is serious in the US law enforcement, and “wrongful conviction occurred quite often.” While advocating Internet freedom, the US imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. The country applies double standards on Internet freedom by requesting unrestricted “Internet freedom” in other countries, which becomes an important diplomatic tool for the US to impose pressure and seek hegemony, and imposing strict restriction within its own territory.

“Racial discrimination,” the CR said, “deep-seated in the United States, has permeated every aspect of social life.” It is evident in the law enforcement and judicial systems. Racial hate crimes are frequent, and immigrants’ rights and interests are not guaranteed. Minority groups face discrimination in employment and education. The black people are treated unfairly or excluded in promotion, welfare and employment. One-third of black people experienced discrimination at work. The US minority groups with high unemployment rate do not enjoy equal political status.

Citing the US media figures the CR said: Poverty proportion among the US minorities is high. In case of the blacks, it was 25.8% in 2009, and those of Hispanic origin and Asian, it were 25.3% and 12.5% respectively, much higher than that of the non-Hispanic white, which was 9.4%. The health care for African-American people is worrisome.

Gender discrimination against women, the CR said, widely exists in the US. Women there often experience sexual assault and violence. About 20 million women are rape victims, about one-fifth female students on campus are victims of sexual assault, and nearly 3,000 female soldiers were sexually assaulted in 2008, up 9% from the year before. About 1.3 million people fall victim to domestic violence every year, with women accounting for 92%.

Many children in the US live in poverty and their health, physical and mental, is not ensured as nearly one in four children struggles with hunger, according to the CR. It also pointed out that violence against children in the US is very severe. Every year, over three million children are victims of violence reportedly while the actual number is three times higher. At present, more than 93,000 children are incarcerated in the US, and 75-93% of children have experienced at least one traumatic experience, including sexual abuse and neglect, the CR said.

It said: The US experiences the world’s highest incidence of violent crimes. Lives, properties and personal security are not duly protected. One out of every five people is a victim of a crime there every year. Citing the US department of justice figures the CR said: In 2009, an estimated 4.3 million violent crimes, 15.6 million property crimes and 133,000 personal thefts were committed against US residents aged 12 or older, and the violent crime rate was 17.1 victimizations per 1,000 persons.

With about 90 million people owning an estimated 200 million guns in the US, which has a population of about 300 million, the US ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns, and had high incidence of gun-related crimes. There were 12,000 gun murders a year in the US, the CR said. It mentioned frequent campus shootings in the US in recent years.

This is only a fraction of human rights reality in the US, the world “champion” of HR. The financial crisis has worsened the situation. “Benevolent” acts of capital, the foremost and main violator of human rights, have not been mentioned in the CR with very obvious reason. Preaching of human rights sounds lies while poverty is imposed on lives and poverty encroaches human rights space.

World capital has to violate human rights in vulgar, militant and forceful ways in increasing frequency and speed, and without any shroud of civility that it very often dons as its crises deepens and prolongs. Its violations of human rights are not limited in respective country only. The violation boldly enters in other countries also. In that act, in cases, it gets coverage of law, often in the name of bringing in economic “prosperity”. Increasing competition among its fractions is unmasking faces of human rights abusers, and creating space to maneuver for the matured forces.




 


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