[Paleopsych] NYT: Report Card: China Gives America a D

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Week in Review > Word for Word | Report Card: China Gives America a D
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/weekinreview/27word.html
March 27, 2005

    By PETER EDIDIN

    SINCE 1977, the United States State Department has issued an annual
    global report card called the Country Reports on Human Rights
    Practices.

    The document has long been a thorn in the side of authoritarian
    governments, including

    China's, which responds with a nettled review of its own, called "The
    Human Rights Record of the United States," the 2004 version of which
    was

    recently released. (It is available in English at:

    [1]http://english.people.com.cn/200503/03/eng20050303_175406.html.)

    China's assessment, unlike the sober State Department tome, is a frank
    indictment and draws a picture of America that approaches caricature.
    But that doesn't mean it won't buttress the negative image of the
    United States held by its critics around the world.

    Excerpts follow, with the document's grammatical and other errors
    intact.

    Life, Liberty and Security of Person

    American society is characterized with rampant violent crimes, severe
    infringement of people's rights by law enforcement departments and
    lack of guarantee for people's rights to life, liberty and security of
    person.

    The United States has the biggest number of gun owners, and gun
    violence has affected lots of innocent lives. About 31,000 Americans
    are killed and 75,000 wounded by firearms each year, which means more
    than 80 people are shot dead each day.

    The United States characterizes itself as "a paradise for free
    people," but the ratio of its citizens deprived of freedom has
    remained among the highest.

    According to statistics from the Department of Justice, the number of
    inmates in the United States jumped from 320,000 in 1980 to two
    million in 2000, a hike by six times. The number of convicted
    offenders may total more than six million if parolees and probationers
    are also counted.

    Political Rights and Freedom

    The United States claims to be "a paragon of democracy," but American
    democracy is manipulated by the rich and malpractices are common.
    Elections in the United States are in fact a contest of money. The
    presidential and Congressional elections last year cost nearly $4
    billion.

    Campaign advertisement and political debates were full of distorted
    facts, false information and lies.

    Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

    Poverty, hunger and homelessness have haunted the world richest
    country.

    Upper middle- and upper-class families that constitute the top 10
    percent of the income distribution are prospering while many among the
    remaining 90 percent struggle to maintain their standard of living.
    According to the statistics released by the United States Census
    Bureau in 2004, the number of Americans in poverty has been climbing
    for three years. It rose by 1.3 million year on year in 2003 to 35.9
    million.

    Racial Discrimination

    Racial discrimination has been deeply rooted in the United States,
    permeating into every aspects of society. The colored people are
    generally poor, with living condition much worse than the white. The
    death rate of illness, accident and murder among the black people is
    twice that of the white. The rate of being victim of murders for the
    black people is five times that of the white. The rate of being
    affected by AIDS for the black people is ten times that of the whites
    while the rate of being diagnosed by diabetes for the black people is
    twice that of the whites.

    The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the United States
    received 29,000 complaints in 2003 of racial bias in the workplace

    The Declaration of Independence said all men are created equal, so the
    gap between black and white people is simply an insult to the founding
    essence of the United States.

    After the Sept. 11 incident, the United States openly restricts the
    rights of citizens under the cloak of homeland security, and uses
    diverse means including wire tapping of phone conversations and secret
    investigations, checks on all secret files, and monitoring transfers
    of fund and cash flows to supervise activities of its citizens, in
    which, people of ethnic minority groups, foreigners and immigrants
    become main victims.

    The Rights of Women and Children

    The situation of American women and children was disturbing. The rates
    of women and children physically or sexually victimized were high.
    According to F.B.I. Crime Statistics, in 2003 the United States
    witnessed 93,233 cases of raping. The statistics also showed that
    every two minutes one woman was sexually assaulted and every six
    minutes one woman was raped.

    Children were victims of sex crimes. Every year about 400,000 children
    in the U.S. were forced to engage in prostitution or other sexual
    dealings on the streets.

    In recent years scandals about clergymen molesting children kept
    breaking out.

    It is believed that from 1950 to 2002 more than 10,600 boys and girls
    were sexually abused by nearly 4,400 clergymen.

    The Human Rights of Foreign Nationals

    In 2004, United States Army service people were reported to have
    abused and insulted Iraqi prisoners of war, which stunned the whole
    world. The United States forces were blamed for their fierce and dirty
    treatments for these Iraqi P.O.W.'s. They made the P.O.W.'s naked by
    force, masking their heads with underwear (even women's underwear),
    locking up their necks with a belt, towing them over the ground,
    letting military dogs bite them, beating them with a whip, shocking
    them with electric batons, needling them sometimes and putting
    chemical fluids containing phosphorus on their wounds.

    The United States frequently commits wanton slaughters during external
    invasions and military attacks. Spain's Uprising newspaper on May 12,
    2004, published a list of human rights infringement incidents
    committed by the United States troops, quoting two bloodthirsty
    sayings of two American generals, "The only good Indians I ever saw
    were dead" by Gen. Philip Sheridan, and "we should bomb Vietnam back
    to the Stone Age" by Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay.

    A survey on Iraqi civilian deaths, based on the natural death rate
    before the war, estimates that the United States-led invasion might
    have led to 100,000 more deaths in the country, with most victims
    being women and children. In addition, the United States troops often
    plunder Iraqi households when tracking down anti-United States
    militants since the invasion. The American forces has so far committed
    at least thousands of robberies and 90 percent of the Iraqis that have
    been rummaged are innocent.

    Despite tons of problems in its own human rights, the United States
    continues to stick to its belligerent stance, wantonly trample on the
    sovereignty of other countries and constantly stage tragedies of human
    rights infringement in the world.

    Instead of indulging itself in publishing the "human rights country
    report" to censure other countries unreasonably, the United States
    should reflect on its erroneous behavior on human rights and take its
    own human rights problems seriously.

References

    1. http://english.people.com.cn/200503/03/eng20050303_175406.html