US Ought To Reflect On Its Own Human Rights Issues

Not long ago, the U.S. government published its 2012 “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” that unscrupulously criticize over 190 other countries without once mentioning the U.S.’ own terrible human rights track record. On April 21, the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China published its own 2012 “Human Rights Record Of The United States,” offering plain facts.

For many years now, the U.S. has considered itself the defender and judge of human rights in the world. It has publicly carried out human rights-oriented diplomacy and ceaselessly criticized other countries on the grounds of human rights violations. It flaunts itself as the world’s highest exemplar and champion of human rights, demanding that other countries, especially developing countries, follow its example by adopting its values and system of government. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is not a human rights paradise and has a number of its own grave human rights problems.

The U.S. regards itself as a society built on individualism, proclaiming that Americans have extensive freedoms. However, in the name of ensuring safety, the U.S. government employs every means possible of monitoring its citizens. By means of secret wiretaps and surveillance of Internet and email usage, the U.S. government collects vast amounts of its citizens’ personal information and gravely infringes on their right to privacy. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act, Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act and other similar laws all include clauses that allow secretive Internet surveillance. From this, it is clear that U.S. demands for a so-called “Internet freedom” are nothing more than a pretense to be used for pressuring other countries diplomatically.

The U.S. uses “freedom of the press” as a litmus test to evaluate the condition of human rights in other countries and criticize them for censoring the news. But again, the facts prove the hypocrisy of the United States. U.S. media organizations are becoming fearful of increasingly severe media legislation. Furthermore, it is common for reporters in the U.S. to lose their job for publishing dissenting political opinions.

The U.S. once used human rights to legitimize its war on terror, claiming that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would advance the cause of human rights. If one looks at these two wars closely though, the worldwide impression is actually that the U.S. military perpetrated the worst human rights violations of the war, and the occupation of these countries caused a humanitarian catastrophe. It is reported that by 2011, the U.S.-started wars had caused the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis and 31,000 Afghanis, with the majority of the populations of both countries reduced to poverty.

During the wars, the U.S. mistreated prisoners of war, a serious human rights violation. Its military also arrested “al-Qaida” operatives and members of the Taliban, bringing them to Guantanamo Bay, where it declined to respect their rights as granted by the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. used torture in the course of those prisoners’ interrogation, water boarding prisoners over 100 times. Many prisoners have been locked up in Guantanamo without ever being officially accused of a crime, with the ultimate fate of dying in prison without ever standing trial.

Money-driven politics, an unreasonable election system, a wide wealth disparity between rich and poor, racism and every other kind of human rights problem afflicts the U.S. Most significantly, the U.S. human rights problem is not a matter of one or two issues; rather, it is a widespread and systematic problem with deep institutional roots. Consequently, the sole preoccupation of the U.S. has become criticizing other countries, while believing its own lies and ignoring logic. What the U.S. ought to be doing instead is examining its own human rights problem.

The author is a professor at the Institute for International Strategies of the Central Party School.