Let’s See America’s Real Face as a Human Rights Defender

Dec. 10 is World Human Rights Day. The United States, which has always prided itself on being a human rights defender, is now drowning in criticism because of its prisoner torture scandal.

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee recently had to release the CIA torture report because of internal and external pressure, something that should have been done more than six months ago. The report included details of the torture widely in use after 9/11, exposed the severe human rights violations in the United States, and completely removed the mask of hypocrisy the U.S. wore as a so-called human rights defender.

Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Yet, even after the declaration was passed, the United States has publicly refused to follow its principles. After 9/11, the U.S. president at the time, George W. Bush, approved the CIA’s use of extreme interrogation methods on fundamentalist suspects, so that U.S. laws did not need to be followed, and the suspects did not need to be given protection. In fact, during actual operations, the CIA’s interrogation methods widely surpassed Bush’s approved and legal criteria. Just as the report has revealed, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse, and other torture methods, although long-banned by the United Nations, were actively used by the CIA, and they were just the tip of the iceberg. While the CIA’s methods have been widely criticized, no U.S. officials have been penalized for them, and numerous Republican senators and Bush-era administrators have even exclaimed that the report is “nonsense.”

For the U.S. government, promoting hegemonism — rude interference in the sovereignty of other countries — and the use of torture methods is nothing new. The United States has always used the banner of counterterrorism for the past 10-plus years to trample on the human rights of other countries. In Afghanistan and Iraq, scandals of the U.S. military’s prisoner abuse, accidental killings of civilians, and even corpse abuse have never stopped. In Guantanamo Bay, brutal interrogation methods used on prisoners were exposed in 2004. Such evidence exposed the blatant U.S. disrespect for the human rights of other countries.

Within the United States, the record of human rights is just as despicable. The recent New York and Ferguson riots and protests have shown the fundamental racism problems in the United States, the American society’s double-standards for people of different races, and the deep-rooted, unfair treatment of African-Americans. In addition, the neverending shooting incidents and the long-term, large-scale surveillance of the United States via the PRISM program, all managed to show the real face of the human rights defender.

No country’s human rights record is flawless. However, the United States is used to standing on the moral high ground and habitually criticizing and commenting on the human rights issues of other countries and regions, while obscuring and not discussing its own human rights situation. Even as the prisoner abuse scandal worsened, the U.S. government still shamelessly tried to dictate for other countries. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus released a statement on World Human Rights Day, expressing their concern for human rights in China. We know that a country’s own people have the most right to speak about the situation, so how could we allow a country with a tattered record to be the arbitrator, and let it act like a saint, criticizing others? Ever since the People’s Republic of China was founded, especially in the 30-plus years after its opening up and reforming, human rights in China have made great strides — a fact that anyone without any political prejudice can admit. The U.S. disregard for the truth and smearing of China could only expose its own hypocrisy and double-standard on human rights.

The United States is a typical detractor on China’s human rights, and it never sees, nor admits, its own shortcomings. The U.S. government has always used a double-standard, whether for human rights, counterterrorism, trade or other areas; it has always given itself the most leeway and harshly treated others. It can be said that the human rights defender mask the United States wears has long been shed, but the U.S. is still relaxed and willful. It will let domestic and international society keep on criticizing its record, while still sticking to the status quo, without any self-criticism and reflection, and continues to smear other countries from time to time. I wonder how the United States got its nerve and confidence, and what it’s using to improve its international image and soft power? A country that cannot really understand the real meaning of human rights, nor see the improvement of other countries in the area, other than adding noncredible, negative feedback to other countries, can only bring disorder, conflict and instability to international society.

It is time for the United States to shift its attention to its domestic situation, look at its own problems, seriously reflect and correct its human rights problems, and stop its baseless accusations of other countries.