China uses official US data to hit back at US abuses of Human Rights violations.

[TheBigotBasher]

The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing as "the world judge of human rights" again. As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 is prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States.

On Life, Property and Personal Security

Widespread violent crimes in the United States posed threats to the lives, properties and personal security of its people.

In 2008, U.S. residents experienced 4.9 million violent crimes, 16.3 million property crimes and 137,000 personal thefts, and the violent crime rate was 19.3 victimizations per 1,000 persons aged 12 or over, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2009 (Criminal Victimization 2008, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov). In 2008, over 14 million arrests occurred for all offenses (except traffic violations) in the country, and the arrest rate for violent crime was 198.2 per 100,000 inhabitants (Crime in the United States, 2008, http://www.fbi.gov). In 2009, a total of 35 domestic homicides occurred in Philadelphia, a 67 percent increase from 2008 (The New York Times, December 30, 2009). In New York City, 461 murders were reported in 2009, and the crime rate was 1,151 cases per 100,000 people. San Antonio in Texas was deemed as the most dangerous among 25 U.S. large cities with 2,538 crimes recorded per 100,000 people (The China Press, December 30, 2009). The murder rate rose 5.5 percent in towns with a population of 10,000 or fewer in 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com, June 1, 2009). Most of the United States' 15,000 annual murders occur in cities where they are concentrated in poorer neighborhoods (http://www.reuters.com, October 7, 2009)

snip

II. On Civil and Political Rights

In the United States, civil and political rights of citizens are severely restricted and violated by the government.

The country's police frequently impose violence on the people. Chicago Defender reported on July 8, 2009 that a total of 315 police officers in New York were subject to internal supervision due to unrestrained use of violence during law enforcement. The figure was only 210 in 2007. Over the past two years, the number of New York police officers under review for garnering too many complaints was up 50 percent (http://www.chicagodefender.com). According to a New York Police Department firearms discharge report released on Nov. 17, 2009, the city' s police fired 588 bullets in 2007, killing 10 people, and 354 bullets in 2008, killing 13 people (http://gothamist.com, November 17, 2009). On September 3, 2009, a student of the San Jose State University was hit repeatedly by four San Jose police officers with batons and a Taser gun for more than ten times (http://www.mercurynews.com, October 27, 2009). On September 22, 2009, a Chinese student in Eugene, Oregon was beaten by a local police officer for no reason (The Oregonian, October 23, 2009, http://blog.oregonlive.com). According to the Amnesty International, in the first ten months of 2009, police officers in the U.S. killed 45 people due to unrestrained use of Taser guns. The youngest of the victims was only 15. From 2001 to October, 2009, 389 people died of Taser guns used by police officers (http://theduckshoot.com).

snip

The basic rights of prisoners in the United States are not well-protected. Raping cases of inmates by prison staff members are widely reported. According to the U.S. Justice Department, reports of sexual misconduct by prison staff members with inmates in the country's 93 federal prison sites doubled over the past eight years. Of the 90 staff members prosecuted for sexual abuse of inmates, nearly 40 percent were also convicted of other crimes (The Washington Post, September11, 2009). The New York Times reported on June 24, 2009 that according to a federal survey of more than 63,000 federal and state inmates, 4.5 percent reported being sexually abused at least once during the previous 12 months. It was estimated that there were at least 60,000 rapes of prisoners across the United States during the same period (The New York Times, June 24, 2009).

The report goes on to detail the high levels of poverty in the US, government spying on citizens as a result of the 2001 Patriot Act, National Security Agency surveillance of the internet and police harassment, detailing specifically the harassment of the Pittsburgh G-20 summit demonstrators. It reports with regard to the protestors treatment, "the same conduct in other countries would be called human rights violations, whereas in the United States it was called necessary crime control."

Some statistics are truly shocking.

14.6% of families could not afford food for their families.
712 bodies were cremated by the City of Los Angeles last year, because their relatives were too poor to pay for a burial.
The population in hunger was the highest in 14 years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported on Nov. 16, 2009, that 49.1 million Americans living in 17 million households, or 14.6 percent of all American families, lacked consistent access to adequate food in 2008.

Evidence of pervasive racial discrimination against blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans is provided. the report notes that they are the most oppressed sections of the US working class. It also reports on the rising level of anti Muslim discrimination.

California imposed life sentences on 18 times more black defendants than white.

Next years will have the disgrace that is Arizona in it I guess.

It is an incredibly detailed report. When a Country that has an appalling human rights record can throw back abuses that are as bad, if not worse, it makes you wonder what happened over the last 30 years.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-03/12/c_13208219.htm

[ixion]

1. The US has ZERO moral highground to criticize other nations

we sacrificed that decades ago. It doesn't stop us, but it does make our criticisms laughable, at best.

[bridgit]

2. Hahahaha, stay classy China: China Admits to Organ Harvesting...

China doesn't have to data mine any further than DU to come up with a list of pernicious willful American slanders http://globalpoverty.change.org/blog/view/china_admits_to_organ_harvesting

[TheBigotBasher]

3. Is China slandering the US?

I read the report and none of it appears exaggerated.

We know China is bad everyone knows, the US does a report detailing the abuses. China is pointing out that the US is not exactly an angel either.

[bridgit]

4. China is positioning their brand

[TheBigotBasher]

5. What is their "brand"?

[bridgit]

6. For instance: when China was caught using lead based toy paint...

on Mattel toys, China made Mattel say they were sorry for casting any recall/aspersion upon the workmanship & trustworthiness of Chinese made products; which as we know is thrown into question some what routinely, but remains virtually everywhere in that China seeks to become the manufacturers to the world - the *world* - from The Middle Kingdom to you

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070921/toy_recall_070921/20070921?hub=CTVNewsAt11

They say there's no such thing as bad advertising, but that isn't true across the board. China could have done themselves better by using no-lead toy paint, by not poisoning cat food & baby milk, and putting less formaldehyde in sheets of dry wall, etc, so China perceives rightly they do have a brand that does need to be positioned as a forward thinking matter

And with talk of tariffs, China's manipulation of currency, military expansion, known Chinese hacking of US Gov mainframes and the like out there on the near horizon they have rightly identified a need to enhance their brand: Made In China

[TheBigotBasher]

7. Didn't China do as Mattel specified?

The factories manufacture "goods" to the specification that they are given.

I'm not defending the abuses in China, the point being made by China is that the US is no angel when it comes to abuse either.

[bridgit]

8. No I hear you, the US is no angel by any stretch but as a practical matter...

I'm fairly sure that Mattel didn't specify lead based paint for their toys, but, you know...maybe they did. I think there's an over-arching theme here that speaks to marauding, irresponsible capitalism and lord knows there are a few such irresponsible 'private sectors' here in the states of that there can be no doubt

In view of the latest Google/China episode regarding China seeking to throttle net access in & out of China; I find it interesting as to why China would reach beyond their own wall to impugn upon the reputation of one of, at least for the time being: larger economies of the world: America. Perhaps more importantly I understand why...

China can no more absorb hit after hit upon the integrity of their ability to produce safe, consumable products in a global consumer driven econ - maybe even less so in that when the US absorbs such hits, or as Toyota experienced also more recently - some factories are shut down, people are sent into unemployment by the millions due to some CEO's short-sighted view of profits and consumer protections

When China views the possibility of absorbing such hits, I do think China's oligarchs understand most completely that 100's of millions of people could lose their jobs and make for lots of unhappy people and impacting their strides toward modernization. China doesn't want that and other than Wall Street I don't know who would. So maybe it plays a little like a very serious, adult version of that childhood game: hot potato, where whether it is yours or not someone tossed it, we caught it but its too hot to handle, so it gets tossed somewhere else anywhere else. There are other analogies/allegories, but so far as I'm concerned the matter is talked out

I also think it to be true; that the days of Juggernaut America just chugging away through favorable trade winds, like there is no tomorrow: are over

Though as I mentioned at the top - China didn't have to go much further than www.wsws.org and the so-inclined cadres of DU to find voice to the established, aggregated ills of the US

[Juche]

9. I love it when other nations knock us down a peg

We have this ignorant sense of entitlement in the US that we 'earned' the right to be called a great country. That is crap. You earn that by working at it.

Our literacy, health care, environmental policy, science attitudes, are all behind virtually all first world countries and also falling behind many middle income countries in Asia & Latin America too.