China Criticizes US Human Rights Record

This was on another list I subscribe to--I cannot verify its accuracy--but it 
seems like it might be real.

Steven Sherman

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the following is a summary of human rights abuses in the usa, written by the 
information office of china's state council. it is clearly propaganda (w/ 
authoritarian communist undertones), but the information is factual and the 
article is very well put together (and i always think
its clever to accuse the accuser). enjoy!
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China: US Human Rights Record in 2000

The Information Office of China's State Council Tuesday released an article 
titled "US Human Rights Record in 2000." The article said that the Country 
Reports on Human Rights Practices -- 2000 issued by the US State Department on 
Monday made unwarranted charges against more than
190 countries and regions, including China, for their human rights conditions 
and accused these countries of fabricated abuses. At the same time, the US 
reports had nothing to say about America's own human rights situation. 
However, there exist serious infringements on human rights in
the United States, the six part article said.

I. American Democracy - a Myth, Political Rights Infringed By elevating itself 
to a model of democracy, the United States continuously hawks American-style 
democracy to other countries. Under the pretext of safeguarding this kind of 
democracy, the United States continues to make
rash criticism of other countries and interferes in their internal affairs. 
Nevertheless, well-informed people know that the so-called democracy has been 
a myth since the United States was founded more than 200 years ago. Political 
rights of the US citizens have long been
infringed.

Although the US Constitution, adopted in 1787, stipulates the citizen's right 
to vote, the right to vote for every American, regardless of race, color or 
creed, was not implemented in law until 184 years later. Owing to 
discrimination based on race, gender, property, education, age and
residency, the African Americans, women and American Indians as well as 
roughly one-third of white American males were long deprived of their legal 
right to vote.

The African Americans, women and American Indians gained voting rights in 
1870, 1920 and 1948 respectively. In addition, the voter eligibility 
limitations connected to property, poll tax and low education levels were 
removed in 1856, 1964 and 1970 respectively. In 1971, nearly 200
years after the founding of the United States, the federal legislature 
approved the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, stipulating that age cannot 
be a legitimate reason for depriving any American of his or her right to vote, 
and setting the legal voting age at 18. This marked the
beginning of universal voter's rights. Although every American 18 or older is 
legally guaranteed the right to vote, voter turnout in America has remained at 
a comparatively low level.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the voter turnouts for elections for 
the House of Representatives have been ranged between 30 and 60 percent. 
Meanwhile, the highest voter turnout rate in the history of presidential 
elections, which have been touted as major US political
events, stands at 65 percent. Under US law, any presidential candidate who 
wins the majority of votes wins the election. Over the years, President- 
elects only won 35 percent of all the electorate or less. The voter turnout 
rate for the 1996 general election was only 49 percent,
and only 25 percent of registered voters nationwide voted for president. Thus, 
the results of US general elections has not represented the will of the entire 
people or the majority.

The 2000 presidential election further exposed the inherent flaws of the US 
electoral system. The two candidates, separately representing the Democratic 
and Republican parties, filed lawsuit after lawsuit on the counts and recounts 
of ballots in Florida and engaged in non-stop
partisan bickering. Some organizations even issued commemorative coins for the 
election turmoil. The 2000 general election was accompanied by civil 
demonstrations and protests. In line with the electoral system in the election 
law which has been carried out for more than 200 years,
electoral votes ultimately decide which candidate will win. The 50 million 
voters who cast ballots for president represented less than one-fourth of the 
205 million eligible voters nationwide, an all-time low in US election 
history. Since the right to vote is evidently
meaningless to the majority of eligible voters, the myth of American democracy 
was further exposed. The Associated Press reported, "Some were shocked that a 
nation often held as a model of democracy could also stumble." American 
democracy has always been a game for rich people.

In the United States where politics is highly commercialized, any bidder for 
official post needs to spend a significant amount of money to win. No 
presidential or congressional candidate will go far without financial backing. 
The general election in 2000 cost about US$3 billion, 50
percent more than that in 1996 and setting a record. The congressional races 
in various states cost another US$1 billion. While not forbidding political 
donations, US law sets upper limits on donations from individuals to 
candidates, political commissions and parties, but allows
any amount of "soft" donations from companies or trade unions to political 
parties. The soft money collected by various parties and candidates in 2000 
reached 648 million dollars, four times the amount of four years ago. During 
the election campaign, at least 20 donors spent
more than one million dollars each.

Actress Jane Fonda gave a US$12 million check for supporting a new 
pro-abortion group. According to an Associate Press analysis of Federal 
Election Commission data which was released on November 9, 2000, 81 percent of 
year 2000 Senate winners and 96 percent of House winners
outspent their opponents. The AP analysis found 26 of 32 Senate races and 417 
of 433 House races won by the candidate with the most money to spend as of 
October 18, the last date for which figures were available. Larry Makinson, 
executive director of the Center for Responsive
Politics, a nonpartisan group that studies money and campaigns, said, "The 
depressing thing about American democracy is I can check the fund-raising 
balances at the Federal Election Commission and tell you what the election 
results will be before the election. " Thus, the key
to American democracy is money, which directly impacts the election results. A 
Spanish daily, El Mundo, referred to money as the "cancer of American 
democracy." No other country has seen cancer as disastrous as that in the 
United States, the newspaper said. Freedom of the press in
the United States is also influenced by money. Wealthy people have the power 
to manipulate mass media, which can serve as their mouthpieces. If it can gain 
financially, the American establishment will turn a deaf ear to international 
covenants. According to the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, any dissemination on advocating war or ethnic and 
religious hatred among peoples must be prohibited by law in any country.

However, ignoring the international covenant and universal practice in many 
countries, the United States has sold or allowed sales of Adolf Hitler's "Mein 
Kampf" since 1933. During World War II, the United States took in more than 
20,000 dollars worth of tax from sales of the book.
For the next 34 years, the US Department of Justice collected taxes from book 
sales amounting to 139,000 dollars. After buying the book's copyright in 1979, 
the US publisher Houghton Mifflin continued to sell the book. Experts 
estimated that the publishing house has sold at least
300,000 copies, netting profits worth between 300,000 and 700,000 dollars.

II. Rampant Violence and Arbitrary Judicial System Are Jeopardizing the 
freedom and lives of US citizens The United States, the only country where 
carrying a private weapon is a constitutional right, is a society ridden with 
violence. The United States is the world's number one "gun
nation" with more than 200 million private guns, or nearly one for each 
American. The number of registered weapon vendors in the country exceeds 
100,000, more than the total number of overseas outlets of fast food giant 
MacDonald's.

A tracking investigation of 70,000 guns conducted annually by a US agency has 
shown that about 50,000 of them were used in assaults, and the rest turned up 
in criminal investigations: 5,000 were used in murders, 5,000 for assaults, 
several thousand were used in thefts and
robberies, and some were used in drug-related assault incidents. The excessive 
number of privately owned guns has resulted in countless gun-related assaults, 
resulting in tragedy for many innocent people: On February 29, 2000, a 
six-year-old boy in the state of Michigan killed a
girl, one of his classmates.

On April 18 that year, a man in suburban Detroit, who became angry when his 
neighbors complained about him, fired on the office of the apartment complex, 
leaving three women dead or injured. At the night of April 24, seven children 
were senselessly slaughtered by a gunman at the
Washington National Zoo. On December 28, four masked gunmen broke into a home 
in Philadelphia fatally shooting seven people and injuring three. This year on 
January 9, a gunman killed three people in Houston, Texas, and on February 5, 
another gunman killed four people and injured four
others at a factory near Chicago. Statistics have shown that over 31,000 
people in the United States are killed by guns each year, and over 80 people 
are killed in gun-related incidents every day. Police brutality is not 
uncommon in the United States.

Each year, thousands of allegations of police abuse are filed across the 
country, but relatively few police officers who violate the law are held 
accountable. Victims seeking redress faced obstacles that ranged from overt 
intimidation to the reluctance of local and federal prosecutors to
take on police brutality cases. During 1999, about 12,000 civil rights 
complaints, most alleging police abuse, were submitted to the US Department of 
Justice, but over the same period just 31 officers confessed or were 
convicted. The judicial system in the US is extremely
unfair, with the death penalty exercised in 38 of the 50 US states. By July 1, 
2000, there were 3,682 people on death row in the nation, 90 percent of whom 
had been victims of sexual abuse and assault. Most of them had to rely on 
officially appointed lawyers as they were too poor
to pay for their own attorneys. After reviewing the 5,760 death penalty cases 
over a period of 23 years starting 1973 in the US, a team of Columbia 
University professors revealed on June 12, 2000 that 68 percent of the death 
penalty sentences in the country did not fit the crimes.
They said that on average more than two of every three death penalty sentences 
were overturned on appeal.

The rate of erroneous judgment on death penalty in the state of Florida was 73 
percent, while the figures rose to as high as 100 percent in the states of 
Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee, said the professors. A total of 660 people 
have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated
in 1976 by the Supreme Court of the United States; 500 people were executed in 
the past eight years. In 2000, over 70 people were executed, accounting for 11 
percent of the total. The United States violates international conventions by 
convicting and executing juvenile and
mentally retarded offenders, and failing to provide defendants facing 
execution with competent attorneys. Thirty mentally retarded people have been 
executed in the United States in the past decade. Citing figures from the US 
Department of Justice, the American newspaper USA Today
reported in its August 8 edition that about 6.3 million men and women in the 
US were on probation or parole, or were in jail or prison at the end of 1999. 
The figure represents 3 percent of the adult population of the United States. 
The "correctional population" increased 2.7 percent from
1998 and 44.6 percent from 1990, according to the newspaper.

Under US law, whose who are serving prison terms and former inmates out on 
probation or parole are disenfranchised, and one quarter of the states denied 
the right to vote of those who had served their sentences. It is estimated 
that over one million Americans who have finished
serving their sentences are deprived of their right to vote. A report of a US 
judicial policy research institute showed that more than two million men and 
women were behind bars by February 15, 2000, up 75 percent from the 1.14 
million reported 11 years ago, accounting for
one-quarter of the total across the world, and ranking first in the world. The 
US Department of Justice also revealed in August 2000 that the rate of 
incarceration had reached 690 inmates per 100,000 residents by the end of 
1999, also the highest in the world. The state of
Louisiana took the lead with 736 inmates per 100,000. Despite huge spending 
that far exceeds the federal budget for education, US prisons are overcrowded, 
prison violence is rampant and prisoners are badly treated. Statistics show 
that in 1998, 59 inmates in the US were killed
by other inmates, and assaults, fights, and rapes injured 6, 750 inmates and 
2,331 prison staff. Estimates by non-governmental groups in the state of 
California have shown that over 10,000 sexual assaults occur daily in US 
prisons, and male inmates are sexually assaulted by their
roommates. In the most extreme cases, the raped inmates were literally the 
slaves of the perpetrators, being "rented out" for sex, "sold," or even 
auctioned off to other inmates.

Despite the devastating psychological impact of such abuse, perpetrators were 
rarely punished adequately. A report released in September 2000 by the US 
Department of Justice said an "institutional culture that supports and 
promotes abuses" was in place in US prisons. Frequent
reports of physical abuse by prison guards include brutal beatings by officers 
and officers paying inmates to beat other inmates. At Wallens Ridge State 
Prison, Virginia's super-maximum security prison, 50,000-volt stun guns were 
often used against inmates. The Virginia
Department of Corrections reported that between January 1999 and June 2000, 
prison guards at Red Onion State Prison, Virginia's super-max security prison, 
shot a total of 116 blank rounds and 25 stinger rounds of rubber bullets and 
discharged stun guns on 130 separate occasions. At
Corcoran State Prison in California, eight prison guards drove a group of 
inmates to a small playground for a wrestling match that resulted in several 
deaths. Over 20,000 inmates were placed in solitary confinement in special 
maximum security facilities, where they were locked alone in
small and sometimes windowless cells and released for only a few hours each 
week. They were handcuffed, shackled and escorted by officers whenever they 
left their cells. At Wisconsin's new super-maximum prisons, inmates were 
subjected to round-the-clock confinement in
isolation, subject to constant fluorescent lighting in their cells and 24-hour 
video monitoring.

III. Widening Gap Between Rich and Poor and Deteriorating Situation of 
Worker's Economic and Social Rights

The latter part of the 20th century was the most economically prosperous 
period in US history, with the economic growth rate rising steadily 118 months 
by the end of 2000. However, the gap between the rich and poor widened and the 
living standards of the laborers went from bad to worse.
Pressing issues such as poverty, hunger and homelessness proved difficult to 
solve. The gap between the rich and poor in the United States grew at the same 
pace as the economic growth. Statistics show that the richest 1 percent of the 
US citizens own 40 percent of the
total property of the country, while 80 percent of US citizens own just 16 
percent. Since the 1990s, 40 percent of the increased wealth went into the 
pockets of the rich minority, while only 1 percent went to the poor majority. 
From 1977 to 1999, the after-tax income of the richest 20
percent of American families increased by 43 percent, while that of the 
poorest 20 percent decreased 9 percent, allowing for inflation. The actual 
income of those living on the lowest salaries was even less than 30 years ago.

An article in the February 21, 2000 issue of US News and World Report pointed 
out that the average income of the richest 5 percent of families in 1979 was 
10 times of that of the poorest 20 percent of families. In 1999, the income 
gap had been enlarged to 19 times, ranking first among
the developed countries, and setting a record since the Bureau of Census of 
the United States began studying the situation in 1947. The income of the 
executives of the largest US companies in 1992 was 100 times that of ordinary 
workers, and 475 times higher in 2000. According to an
assessment by the US journal Business Week in August 2000, the income of chief 
executive officers was 84 times that of employees in 1990, 140 times in 1995, 
and 416 times in 1999. A survey shows that the real income of the one-fifth 
richest of the families in Silicon Valley has
increased 29 percent since 1992, while the real income of the one-fifth 
poorest of the families in the valley decreased during most of the 1990s, and 
the current income for the poorest has bounced back to the same level in 1992, 
with the employees at the lowest rank now earning 10
percent less than a decade age.

A great number of Americans suffer from poverty and hunger. According to the 
statistics of the US government, over 32 million citizens, or 12.7 percent of 
the total population of the country, live under the poverty line. The 
incidence of poverty is higher than in the 1970s, and higher
than in most other industrialized countries. An investigation by the US 
Department of Agriculture in March 2000 showed that 9.7 percent of American 
families did not have enough food, and at least 10 percent of families in 18 
states and Washington D.C. often suffered from hunger and
malnutrition. In 1998, 37 million American families did not have enough food. 
In the state of New Mexico, 15.1 percent of the families were under threat of 
hunger. The number of homeless Americans has continued to increase. A study in 
the mid-1990s showed that 12 million US citizens
were or had been at some time homeless. According to a survey of 26 large 
cities conducted by the Conference of Mayors, the urgent demand for housing 
increased in two-thirds of the cities in 1999 over previous years.

A report in The New York Times of July 9, 2000, said that housing in New York 
was in the shortest supply of recent decades. More than 130,000 families in 
the city were waiting for public housing at that time, and homeless shelters 
sometimes had to receive 5,000 families and 7,000
individuals for a night. Serious infringements upon worker's rights have been 
reported. Compared with other developed countries, the working hours of 
laborers in the United States are the longest, while their social security 
benefits and rights are the worst. According to a report
in US News and World Report in March 2000, the average working time of US 
citizens was 1,957 hours annually, longer than in other developed countries. 
In Manhattan, about 75 percent of the people with high-level education aged 
between 25 and 32 years old work more than 40 hours a
week. In 1977, only 55 percent of the people worked the same amount of time.

A newly published book in the United States said that some female cashiers and 
workers on production lines have to wear protective undergarments because they 
are not allowed to take time to go to the toilet. The International 
Confederation of Free Trade Unions submitted a
report to the World Trade Organization in July of 1999, saying that the rights 
to organize and strike were not guaranteed in US labor laws. When employers 
decide to break up or prevent the establishment of trade unions, laborers have 
no legal redress. Only 13 percent of US workers
have joined trade unions. More than 7 million of the 14 million functionaries 
in the state and local governments have no right to collective negotiation, 
not to mention the right to strike. Millions of workers, including farm 
laborers, domestic workers, and low-level
supervisors, were explicitly excluded from protection under the law 
guaranteeing the right of workers to organize. In the 1950s, hundreds of 
workers were retaliated by employers for exercising their right for 
association. By the 1990s, the number climbed to 20,000. Worker's rights
and social security cannot be guaranteed for U. S. workers.

A study by the US Department of Energy in 2000 showed that the incidence of 
cancer among workers in nuclear weapons production was much higher than 
workers in other industries due to exposure to harmful radiation and chemical 
substances. Since the end of World War II, 22 forms of
cancer have been diagnosed among the 600,000 workers in 14 nuclear plants in 
California, Washington and other states; this incidence rate was several times 
that found in ordinary factories. The US government treads lightly on this 
issue until it was exposed by media in recent
years. Under public pressure, the US government had to acknowledge the 
mistake.

About 30 million US citizens had no social security eight years ago, and the 
figure has increased to 46 million currently. The British newspaper Financial 
Times reported on October 25, 2000, that 12.3 percent of US citizens had no 
medical insurance 20 years ago, and the rate has
increased to 15.8 percent now, or one out of every six Americans. The 
education situation in the United States is surprisingly poor. According to a 
report in USA Today on November 29, 2000, illiteracy is still a serious 
problem in such a highly developed country. One in five high
school graduates cannot read his or her diploma; 85 percent of unwed mothers 
are illiterate; 70 percent of Americans arrested are illiterate; 21 million 
Americans cannot read. According to a child protection foundation, 71 percent 
of fourth graders are not at the education level
they ought to be. College tuition has grown faster than the increase of middle 
class families' income. The dropout rate among college students has risen to 
37 percent. Statistics from the US Census Bureau show that the income of 
middle class families increased only 10 percent from 1989
to 1999, while the college tuition increased 51 percent during the same 
period. The average college tuition in 1999 was 8,086 US dollars, accounting 
for 62 percent of the income of low-income families. The average tuition fee 
of private colleges was 21,339 US dollars in 1999,
up 34 percent over 1989, accounting for 162 percent of the income of poor 
families, but only making up for four percent of the income of rich families. 
More than 30 million low-income families could not afford to send their 
children to community colleges.

IV. Gender Discrimination & Ill-treatment of Children Gender discrimination is 
widespread in almost every aspect of US society. American women have not yet 
enjoyed equal constitutional rights compared to men. Women in the United 
States not only have weak voice in politics,
but also are discriminated in terms of employment, job status and wages. The 
labor protection standards for women are below the international norms, and 
sexual violence, sexual harassment and domestic violence against women are 
also rampant in the United States.

Reuters reported on March 22, 2000, that as many as 1,100 women have joined a 
class action gender discrimination lawsuit, which was initiated by five women 
in 1978, against the US Information Agency and Voice of America on 48 charges 
involving job discrimination because of gender.
Following an investigation, the court discovered that the human resource 
departments of the defendants had purposely overlooked female candidates 
through deceptive means such as revising test results and selecting 
beforehand. It was not until 2000 that the U. S. government was forced
to accept an out-of-court settlement and paid 508 million U. S. dollars in 
compensation after 46 out of 48 charges were upheld by the court.

The breadth and depth of gender discrimination in the US can be seen from this 
case, which involved the highest compensation for such a case since 1964. A 
report released in November 2000 by an American institute studying policy on 
women showed that women are paid an average of 26
percent less than their male colleagues. The number of female prisoners has 
been increasing markedly in the United States, and they often are the victims 
of various abuses. Since 1980, the number of prisoners in the United States 
has tripled, while that of the female prisoners has
quadrupled. A report released by the US government in December 1999 showed 
that accusations against jail officers of sexual abuse and other negligent 
behavior are widespread and criminal prosecution of prison guards for abuse of 
power has been on the rise.

The following major cases have been reported since December 1999:

-- Eleven guards and one officer at a county jail were accused of sexual 
assault and sexual harassment by 16 female inmates;

-- a jail guard in New Mexico was convicted of sexual assault;

-- a prison officer in New York was sentenced to three years imprisonment with 
probation for raping two female inmates;

-- a prison officer in Ohio was sentenced to four years of imprisonment for 
conviction of sexual assault of three female inmates;

-- Some female inmates at a prison in New York disclosed that a number of 
female inmates were raped and even some of them gave birth to babies in their 
cells.

The majority of the female prisoners who have been sexually assaulted cannot 
get access to adequate legal protection. The state of Michigan stipulates 
explicitly that prisoners are not protected by civil rights laws. Quite a 
number of women and children have been smuggled to the
United States who are subject to slavery and torture. According to a report 
released by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in November 1999, as many as 
50,000 women and children are smuggled from Asia, Latin America and Eastern 
Europe to the United States every year.

They are often forced to become prostitutes or ill-treated workers and 
servants, the youngest of whom are aged nine. Despite as many as 100,000 women 
and children were smuggled to the country in recent two years, only 250 of 
whom are listed as the victims of relevant cases. The New
York Times reported on April 2, 2000 that in 1999, the US Immigration and 
Naturalization Service conducted an investigation in 26 cities and found 
smuggled women in 250 brothels.

An article carried on the " Insight" weekly in December 2000 revealed that the 
human trafficking and the sexual slave trade has become the third largest 
illegal trade in terms of business volume in the United States, following 
drugs and arms smuggling. An incomplete statistics
showed that criminal rings in the United States earn 7 billion U. S. dollars 
from human trafficking annually. Children in the United States live under 
worrying conditions, and they are often the major victims of violence and as 
many as 5, 000 children are shot fatally annually. The
percentage of gunshot victims under age 14 is 21 times that of 25 other 
industrialized countries. Some 1.5 million children, or two percent of the 
country's total, have one or both parents in prison. The United States, one of 
five countries that have the death penalty for juveniles,
has the highest number of juveniles sentenced to death in the world. 
Twenty-five states of the country give death penalty to juveniles, four of 
which set the lowest age for the death penalty at 17 years and the other 21 
states set 16 years as the bottom line or have no age limit at
all.

Since 1990, 14 juvenile criminals have been executed in the United States, and 
in the first seven months of 2000, four juvenile criminals were put to death, 
more than the figure of other countries combined in the past seven years. By 
October 2000, 83 juvenile criminals, who were
under 18 when their crimes were committed were waiting to be executed. The US 
Department of Justice released a report on February 27, 2000, indicating that 
from 1985 to 1997, the inmates under age 18 in adult prisons more than doubled 
from 3,400 to 7, 400; and 90 percent of
juvenile criminals were high school dropouts. To date, more than 100,000 
children are incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities and many of them 
are subject to brutal treatment. Many children in the United States are 
threatened by poverty.

According to an investigation conducted by the UNICEF, the poverty rate of 
children in the United States ranks second among the 29 members of the 
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 1998, the poverty 
rate of American children hit 18. 7 percent, 2.5 percent higher
than that of 1979. To date, as many as 13 million children live in poverty, 
three million more than the figure of 1979. Reuters reported on January 20, 
2000, that children in 15.2 percent of the families in the US are starving, 
and that children aged below six years in 16.3 percent
of households don't have enough food.

About one million immigrant children who do not hold U. S. citizenship are not 
covered by the medical insurance system. More than one million children in the 
country live on the streets, 40 percent of whom are under 5, 20 percent suffer 
from hunger, 20 percent are not covered by
the medical insurance system, 10 percent have seen murders, shootings, rapes 
and violence, and 25 percent have experienced domestic violence. In the United 
States, at least 290,000 children are working in factories, mines and farms 
where working conditions are dangerous.
Children working on farms often have to work 20 hours a day and run the risk 
of pesticide poisoning, injury and permanent disability. They account for 8 
percent of the country's total child workers, while the job-related deaths 
among them make up 40 percent of the country's total
occupational death toll. Among these child farm laborers, merely 55 percent 
have graduated from high school.

It is estimated that there are one million cases of human rights violations 
against these child farm workers in the United States every year; yet the US 
Labor Department listed only 104 such cases in 1998. V. Racial Discrimination 
Prevails, Minorities Ill-Treated Racial
discrimination in the US has a long history and is well known throughout the 
world; it stands as one of the most serious social problems in the United 
States. A US report on implementation of the International Convention on 
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
submitted to the United Nations in September 2000 admitted that racism exists 
as one of the most daunting challenges facing the US The minorities in the 
United States have been called the "Third World of the First World." Racial 
discrimination is evident everywhere in America.
The Washington Post reported on February 3, 2000, that even in large U. S. 
cities, few residential areas are actually racially integrated.

In the 1990s, the actual earnings of high-income families increased by 15 
percent on average; however, the rich-poor gap between whites and minorities 
remained unchanged. A survey made by the US Federal Reserve in March 2000 
indicated that in 1998 the average net wealth of a
middle-income family of Latin Americans, African Americans, or other 
minorities stood at 16,400 US dollars, equal to just 17.28 percent of that of 
a white family. The percentage was basically unchanged compared with 1992's 
17.23 percent. In 1998, 72.2 percent of the white families
owned their own homes while the proportions for African American and Latin 
American families were only 46.4 percent and 44.9 percent respectively. Even 
worse, nearly two million aboriginals were living on streets of big cities in 
the United States and 40 percent of them went
without food for up to three days at a time. They are the poorest people in 
the world's richest country.

The Christian Science Monitor reported in May 2000 that immigrant families 
account for over one-fifth of the US poverty- stricken population and 
one-fourth of the total number of poor children. Among the immigrants in the 
US, over nine million, or 43 percent of the total,
do not have medical insurance. In contrast, 12 percent of white people do not 
have medical insurance, according to a research report released last year by 
the Journal of American Medical Association. The report also indicated that 41 
percent of white youths could receive higher
education while the rate for young Latin Americans was only 22 percent. The 
discrimination against minorities is deeply rooted in America. The 
unemployment rate among African Americans is double that of whites. An 
investigation made in 1996 indicated that 90 percent of the chief
executives or managers of US companies have never given any black people the 
same status and responsibilities. Computer giant Microsoft had a staff of over 
20,000 in the US in 1999; only 557 of them were African Americans. The number 
accounted for 2.6 percent of the company's total
employees. The company has 5,155 mid-level administrative personnel and only 
82 people, or 1.6 percent, are African Americans. A report in USA Today in 
2000 said that charges of sexual harassment on immigrated workers had 
witnessed a fast increase, up 10 times from 1986 to 1999.
About 2,200 cases were reported in the 1980s, while the figure became 15,150 
in the 1990s. Racial discrimination has also emerged as a very serious problem 
in the courts. A total of 98 percent of the judges in the US are white while 
most of the people receiving prison terms or the
death sentence are blacks or other minorities. Twelve percent of the US 
population are African American; nearly half of the two million prison inmates 
in the US are black, and another 16 percent are Latin American.

Black men are eight times more likely to be in prison than white men, with an 
incarceration rate of 3,408 per 100,000 black males compared to the rate of 
417 per 100,000 white males. In 11 states, the incarceration rate of African 
American men is from 12- 26 times greater than that of
white men. The US Department of Justice estimated that 9.4 percent of all 
black men at the age of 25-29 years were in prison in 1999, compared to one 
percent of white men in the same age group. Also in 1999, the juveniles 
belonging to minority groups constituted one-third of the
adolescent population in the United States, but they comprised two-thirds of 
the young people confined in local detention and state correctional systems. 
One of every three young black people were confined in juvenile facilities or 
out on bail.

An investigation funded by the Justice Department indicated that the number of 
young black inmates jailed on first offenses is six times higher than that of 
white youths. Among the violent crime cases, the number of incarcerated black 
youths is nine times higher than that of
the white youths. Fifteen percent of juveniles under 18 are black; while among 
the confined people of the same age group, 26 percent are African American. 
Among youths held in adult prison facilities, 58 percent are black. The 
likelihood of conviction for black youths is much higher than
that for whites.

In California, children of color are 6.2 times more likely than white youths 
to be charged with crimes, and seven times more likely to be sentenced to 
prison when they are tried as adults. The proportion of black men sent to 
state prisons on drug charges to the state's total
population is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. The number of black 
youths sent to correctional facilities for drug offenses is 48 times higher 
than that for whites. In at least 15 states, the number of African American 
men sent to prison on drug charges is 20 to 57 times
more often than white men. In seven states, 80 to 90 percent of all drug 
offenders are black men. Although the majority of crack cocaine users are 
white, almost 90 percent of convicted federal drug offenders are black. In the 
200-plus years since the US was founded, a total of 18,
000 people have been sentenced to death; only 38 of them were white, 
accounting for 0.2 percent of the total. No white man has ever been sentenced 
to death for raping a black woman. Between 1977 and 1998, African Americans 
comprised 10 to 12 percent of the total US population.
However, out of the 5,709 people sentenced to death, 41 percent were black.

A report from the Department of Justice issued on September 12, 2000, 
acknowledged that in the past five years, lawyers proposed to sentence 183 
offenders to death, 20 percent of them were whites, nearly half of them were 
blacks, around 30 percent were Latin Americans and the rest of
were other minorities. Of all death penalty sentences upheld by the US federal 
courts since 1995, the number of colored people accounts for 74 percent. The 
ratio of African American and white murder victims was almost the same; 
however, since 1997, 82 percent of the total number
executed were African Americans who had murdered white people.

VI. Waging War Frequently and Rampantly Infringing Upon Human Rights of Other 
Countries The United States, assuming an air of self-importance and practicing 
power politics in the world, has done a great deal of damage by encroaching on 
human rights in other countries.

The United States has, over a long period of time, built many military bases 
over the world. Hundreds of thousands of US troops stationed in these bases 
have committed a series of crimes that violated the human rights of local 
residents. Such acts by the US troops have occurred
frequently since 2000 and numerous scandals have been exposed. In 1995 a 
Japanese schoolgirl was raped by three American soldiers stationed at Okinawa, 
sparking a massive protest by the Japanese people. Following this incident, a 
serviceman with the US Marine Aircraft Group at Futemma
Air Station was imprisoned for allegedly attempting to rape a Japanese woman 
in the city of Okinawa on January 14, 2000.

That same month, three servicemen of the US Navy in southern Nagasaki sexually 
harassed two 15-year- old Japanese girls; on January 9 this year, a seaman of 
the US Navy sexually assaulted a 16-year-old Japanese girl in Okinawa. On 
January 13, 2000, a US soldier on peacekeeping duty
in Kosovo raped and killed an Albanian girl. The incident aroused strong 
indignation from Albanians in Kosovo. In July last year, Green Korea United, 
an environmental protection group of the Republic of Korea (ROK), revealed 
that the American military base in Seoul discharged
embalming fluid used for its servicemen into the Han River. The group reported 
that since 1991 another US military base in ROK has discharged waste oil into 
a local river, which is the source of drinking water for 210,000 local people. 
The actions of the American troops seriously
polluted the local environment and endangered the health of local people.

A Cuban newspaper reported on November 6, 2000, that an environmental group 
found more than 50 areas in some island countries such as Fiji and Kiribati 
that had been seriously polluted by dangerous refuse. All of the material has 
been traced back to US military interests or other
interests of the US The acting vice-minister of foreign affairs of Panama 
revealed on July 24, 2000, that during its nearly 100-year occupation of the 
Panama Canal, the US has stationed troops in the area, and numerous Panamanian 
women were used and cast away by American
soldiers, leaving hundreds of thousands of fatherless children. When the US 
troops withdrew from the Panama Canal area at the end of 1999, they left 
behind 700 pregnant women in Panama and Colon provinces alone.

The United States butts into the internal affairs of other countries and 
cultivates its influence in secrecy, infringing upon human rights in other 
countries. The US Department of Defense launched a research institute for 
safety cooperation in the western hemisphere, while the
predecessor of the institution is Escola Das Americas affiliated with the US 
Army Forces, which is famous for training Latin American and Caribbean troops 
to torture suspects, carry out secret executions and mail threatening letters 
to political dissidents. The school, described
by international human rights organizations as a training base for "dictators, 
hangmen and assassins," trained 56,000 people during the period between 1946 
when it was first established, and December of 2000 when it was closed. The 
school also trained numerous personnel for
various purposes. Many notorious human rights violators and ringleaders of 
criminal gangs are graduates of this school, and nearly all of the major 
massacre cases in the Latin America and Caribbean areas have connections with 
these graduates. A terrorist organization formed by
graduates of the Escola Das Americas slaughtered 767 innocent villagers in a 
remote area of Columbia in 1981. Among those murdered were people over age 90 
and less than two months old.

Nearly 10 years have passed since the end of the Cold War. Peace and 
development are now the common aspirations of people the world over. However, 
the United States, as the only remaining superpower, has yet to relinquish its 
Cold War mentality. It stations troops abroad, boosts
military spending, sells ammunition to other countries and regions, and 
rattles its sabers around the world. The US has become a major threat to world 
peace and stability, and infringes upon the sovereignty and human rights of 
other countries. A report released by the US Department of
State and the US Congressional Research and Service Bureau said that the US 
military spending and ammunition exports rank first in the world: Its military 
expenses account for one-third of the world's total and exports of ammunitions 
amount to 36 percent of the global total. Its military
spending budget for 2001 increased by 12.6 billion US dollars compared with 
the 200 billion US dollars for 2000. Incomplete statistics show that the 
United States has waged wars in foreign countries and regions more than 40 
times in the 1990s.

The country uses cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells, which are banned 
by international law, and new weapons of mass destruction in foreign 
countries, killing and injuring local people and also wreaking havoc on the 
eco-environment in these places. Reports say that US troops
tested depleted uranium (DU) weapons in shooting ranges in Panama 30 years 
ago. The US army dropped 940,000 DU bombs in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. 
About 10,000 DU bombs were dropped by the US army during the 1994-1995 
Bosnia-Herzegovina war. The US army also tested DU weapons in
military maneuvers in Japan's Okinawa in 1995 and 1996. In 1999, the US army 
used more than 31,000 DU bombs in 112 locations in Yugoslavia. The number of 
cancer patients has increased by 30 percent in Yugoslavia due to DU radiation, 
and at least 10,000 civilians have died of radiation.
About 40 out of some 80 babies born in two months in a Bulgarian town adjacent 
to Yugoslavia have suffered from physical deformities.

A number of European soldiers and civilians once served in Bosnia, Croatia and 
Yugoslavia including Kosovo have contracted "Balkan Syndrome," and at least 27 
of them have died. The U.N. Environmental Program has analyzed samples 
collected in Yugoslavia and confirmed that
they contain radioactive substances, according to a spokesman for the U.N. 
secretary- general. Although it is well known that uranium is a sort of 
radioactive heavy metal, the United States refuses to admit that DU is harmful 
to human health, and prevents other countries and
international organizations from investigating the matter. It even refuses to 
stop using DU bombs. Currently, the US troops stationed in Kosovo are still 
equipped with DU weapons. In fact, the United States has long since had full 
knowledge of the harm brought by DU weapons.
Before the breakout of the Gulf War in July 1990, a test panel affiliated with 
the US army pointed out in a report that the explosion of DU bombs would 
produce strong Alfa radiation that is cancer-inducing, and soldiers carrying 
out tasks in DU weapon-stricken areas must take
preventive measures. However, in the same area, the local residents had not 
received any notice from the US army and they thus became victims of DU bombs.

The United States has always adopted a passive attitude towards international 
human rights conventions. Although the United States was a founding member of 
the U.N., it did not accede to any key international human rights convention 
until 1988 when it joined the convention the
Convention on The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. That is 
to say, the United States did not ratify the treaty until 40 years after it 
was signed. In addition, it did not ratified the International Covenant on the 
Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 
for 28 years and 15 years respectively after it signed them. The United States 
still has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and 
Cultural Rights, although it signed it 24 years
ago.

The United States is one of the only two countries in the world that have not 
acceded to the International Convention on Children's Rights, and one of 
several countries that have not joined the Convention on the Elimination of 
All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The United
States has always opposed the right to development as a human right, and it is 
the only western country that has voted against the Declaration on the Right 
to Development. Although it is a founding member of the Organization of 
American States, it refuses to accede to the Human
Rights Convention of America and other human rights conventions approved by 
the organization. As for the international conventions it has already signed, 
the United States has always ensured that the enforcement of the conventions 
is strictly limited to within the scope of the US
constitution and laws, or let them only apply to the federation instead of 
states, by making reservations, declarations and allowances for them. In this 
way, the United States has reduced the international conventions into nothing 
but empty rhetoric. Actions speak louder than words, and
the public champions justice. The promotion of human rights is the common task 
of all nations in the world.

The United States not only closes its eyes to its own serious human rights 
problems, but also releases the " Human Rights Report" annually to condemn 
other countries' human rights records. All these realities have exposed the 
true face of the United States, showing it to be a
defender of power politics rather than human rights. China would like to offer 
this advice to the US government: abandon your old ways and make a new start, 
take effective measures to improve the human rights record in your own 
country, take steps to promote international cooperation in
human rights, and stop ordering other countries on the pretext of safeguarding 
human rights.



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