Index

China Views US Human Rights Record in 2002  

Xinhua Domestic Service in Chinese 
03 April 2003 


[FBIS Translated Text]     Beijing, 3 Apr (Xinhua) -- The State Council 
Information Office on 3 April issued "The US Human Rights Record in 
2002." The full text is as follows: 

    The US Human Rights Record in 2002 
	
    The State Council Information Office 

     The US State Department released the Country Reports on Human Rights 
Practices for 2002 (hereinafter referred to as the reports for short) on 
1 April Beijing time  at a time when the United States is facing condemnation
from people of various countries in the world for unilaterally launching war 
against Iraq.  With the United States pretending to be "the world's judge 
of human rights," the reports once again assess the human rights situations in 
over 190 countries and regions in the world.   The reports carry 
distorted pictures and accusations of human rights conditions in China 
and other countries without mentioning even a word of the serious human 
rights problems in the United States itself.   Therefore, it is necessary 
to announce to the world the human rights violations in the United States 
in 2002. 

     I. Ineffective Protection of Human Life and Personal Safety 

     In American society, excessive violence has resulted in ineffective 
protection of human life and personal safety. 

     According to a report released by the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation [FBI] on 28 October 2002, the United States recorded 11.8 
million crime offenses in 2001, a 2.1 percent increase over 2000. The 
offenses included murder, rape, robbery, and theft. [Xinhua English 
version reads:   "The offenses included four violent crimes (murder and 
non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated 
assault), and three property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, and motor 
vehicle theft).   [Xinhua English version adds:   "Firearms were involved 
in 26.2 percent of violent crime cases."] Murder cases increased by 2.5 
percent.   There was an offense in every 2.7 seconds, and there were 44 
murders, 248 rapes and 26 hate crimes each day. Among the crime offenses 
were 15,980 murders and 90,491 rapes.   Crime in many major American 
cities went up in 2002. In Washington DC, drug abuse, gang violence, and 
prostitution ran rampant, and crime went up by 36 percent from 2001; in 
Boston the crime rates increased by 67 percent, and in Los Angeles, by 27 
percent.   The murder rate in the United States was five to seven times 
higher than in most industrial nations.   During January-November 2002, 
New York City reported 489 murder case; Chicago registered 485 homicide 
cases, in which 515 people were killed; and Detroit reported 346 murders. 
During the same period Los Angeles reported 595 murder cases with 614 
people killed, up 11.3 percent and 20.5 percent compared to the same 
period in 2001 and 2000, respectively. (Footnote 1) 

     The Constitution of the United States provides that the right of the 
people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and the 
constitutions of 44 states in the nation include provisions safeguarding 
citizens' right to possess guns.   In the United States, guns owned by 
private individuals exceed 200 million, averaging nearly one for every 
citizen.   In 2002, the numbers of gun buyers across the United States 
went up by 13 percent to twice over previous years, and the number of 
rifle owners increased even faster.   The National Rifle Association of 
the United States has over 2. 8 million members. Excessive gun ownership 
has led to frequent shootings, and victims of firearms-related crime 
number more than 30,000 a year.   On 26 March, a retired sheriff's deputy 
in Merced County, California, shot and killed his 5-year-old daughter and 
his three stepchildren while his estranged wife was out for a walk, then 
committed suicide with the body of one of the youngsters in his arms.   
On 30 May,   a gunman opened fire inside a grocery store at a Top Valu 
Market near the downtown marina in Long Beach, California, killing a 
woman and a 7-year-old girl and wounding four others before he was 
fatally shot by police.   (Footnote 2) From 2 to 22 October, serial gun 
shooting cases occurred in Washington DC and neighboring Maryland and 
Virginia states, in which ten people were killed and three others were 
seriously wounded.   The number of gun shootings went up by 40 percent in 
Los Angeles in 2002 over 2001.   Between the evening of November 19 and 
the early morning of November 20, five separate cases of gun shooting 
took place in downtown Los Angeles, leaving two people dead and seven 
others wounded. 

     Crime rates among juveniles in the United States have remained high, 
with youngsters accounting for 20 percent of violent crime.   Drug abuse 
among youngsters has kept increasing.   Drug abuse among tenth-grade high 
school students in the United States went up from 11.6 percent in 1991 to 
22.7 percent in 2001, and 34.4 percent of senior high school students in 
New York City have at least taken marijuana once.   In 2001, there were 
638,000 narcotics-related cases, and drug abuse accounted for 25 percent 
of violent crime in the United States.   After the 11 September   
terrorist attacks, crime in schools decreased as most schools have 
installed metal detectors and video cameras, but it was reported that 6 
percent of the students still carried guns to school.   Violence in 
schools such as bullying rose by 12 percent, and at least 10,000 students 
in the United States choose to stay at home once in a month for fear of 
being bullied. (Footnote 3) 

    Violence in nursing homes for the aged in the United States is 
worrisome. In March 2002, a report submitted to the US Congress said that 
inmates in some of such homes had suffered splash of cold water, battery 
and sexual assault.   However, such acts had never been regarded as 
crime, and most of them had not been prosecuted. Statistics show that 
there are 17,000 homes for the aged and similar institutions in the 
United States, housing 1.6 million aged Americans. Violations of law have 
been found in about 26 percent of them, and two percent of which have 
caused physical injuries. 

    II. Serious Infringements on Judicial Rights 

    The rights of ordinary Americans have met with challenge after the 11 
September terrorist attacks.    The Anti-terrorism Law, which took effect 
on 26 October 2001, provides law enforcement agencies with greater powers 
for investigation, including wiretapping of phone calls and Internet 
e-mail communications by suspect terrorists.   A Federal Court of Appeals 
on November 18 ruled that the Department of Justice asking for expanding 
its investigative powers is constitutional, and therefore should not be 
restricted.   It aroused great concern among the American public that the 
DOJ would encroach upon their right of privacy in its work.   On 19 
November, Wall Street Journal quoted US House Judiciary Committee 
Representative John Conyers as saying in a statement on the same day, 
"Piece by piece, this Administration is dismantling the basic rights 
afforded to every American under the Constitution."  Some civil rights 
and electronic information organizations worried that there would have no 
effective protection of civil rights after the ruling. 

Police brutality is a chronic malady in American society.   On 6 July 
2002, a bystander videotaped a scene in which several white police 
officers at Inglewood, Los Angeles, slammed the head of a handcuffed 
16-year-old black, named Donovan Jackson, on a squad car and punched him 
in his eyes, neck and hands.   Afterwards, one police officer involved 
was ordered a paid leave.   In contrast, the man who filmed the videotape 
was detained on 10 July.   In another incident, on 8 July, Oklahoma City 
police officers repeatedly beat a black suspect on the ground with their 
batons. The suspect was pepper-sprayed twice.   On 16 September, police 
in Boston shot at a suspect car hijacker in the downtown area and wounded 
him seriously. The incident led to a mass demonstration against police 
brutality. 

     Indiscriminate arrests are another serious problem in the United 
States.   According to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties 
Union (ACLU), prosecutors declined to bring charges in 15,798 arrests in 
2001, or 26 percent of the 60,412 cases they reviewed that year, the vast 
majority brought by Baltimore police. In 2002 the number of monthly 
arrests increased by 15 percent over the previous year to 7,832. 
Prosecutors declined to charge in 24 percent of the cases. Two-thirds of 
the cases they dropped were dropped on the day of arrest because they 
could not be proved in court.   (Footnote 4).   Within half a year after 
the 11 September terrorist attacks, the FBI detained for security reasons 
more than 1,200 non-US nationals, mainly men from Muslim or Middle 
Eastern countries.   (Footnote 5) Most of them were detained for 
overstaying their visas, and according to rules the detention should last 
for no more than 48 hours.   However, many were actually held in custody 
for a month or more, or even up to 50 days. While in custody, they were 
deprived of their basic rights -- making phone calls, access to a lawyer, 
family visits, being informed of the reasons for the detention, or 
challenging the lawfulness of the detention. They were let out for 
exercise and air less than an hour a day. Many were handcuffed, and some 
were even bundled. Those falling ill could not get timely medical 
treatment. 

     In many cases torture was used to extract confessions, and unjust 
charges were often reported in the United States.    According to a 
Reuters report on 11 February 2002, the US    authorities confirmed that 
over 200 inmates had been wrongly convicted since 1973; among them 99 
inmates on death row had been proved innocent, but most of them had not 
got compensations.   (Footnote 6) Ray Krone walked out an Arizona 
courtroom a free man in April 2002 after spending 10 years and three 
months in prison, with more than two years in the death cell. Yet, he 
could hardly obtain any compensation from the state government in 
accordance with state laws. (Footnote 7) A black man in Detroit, named 
Eddie Joe Lloyd, served a term of 17 years, three months and five days in 
jail on a charge of raping and murdering a teenage girl before he was 
freed in August 2002. (Footnote 8) The wrong verdicts are closely related 
to confessions from innocent people extracted by police.   According to 
an American Broadcasting Company [ABC] news report on 15 March, 2002, 
every year thousands of criminals are convicted on the basis of 
confessions obtained from police interrogations. Also according to the 
ABC news report, in 1993, Gary Gauger, a man in Illinois, was forced to 
confess he had killed his parents, a crime he did not commit, when he 
broke down after 21 hours of police interrogation.   He was then 
sentenced to death for double murder. Two years later, the real killers 
confessed to the crime in an unrelated federal investigation.   Gauger 
was freed in 1996, after spending three years behind bars. 

     The United States is one of the few countries to impose capital 
punishment on child offenders and mentally ill people in the world. 
Twenty-three US states permit the execution of child offenders (under 18 
at the time of the crime). Two thirds of the executions of child 
offenders over the past decade worldwide were carried out in the United 
States.   Since 1985, 18 child offenders had been executed, half of them 
in Texas State. (Footnote 9) The executions in 2002 also included three 
child offenders and one mentally ill man. There were 80 child offenders 
on death row, and the figure in the case of the mentally retarded was 
estimated to be around 200 to 300. (Footnote 10) 

     Prisons in the United States are jam-packed with inmates.    
According to a report of the Bureau of Justice Statistics under the 
Department of Justice released on 25 August 2002, the adult U. S. 
correctional population reached a record of almost 6.6 million at the end 
of 2001, or fourfold of the 1980 figure.    About 3.1 percent of the 
nation's adult population, or 1 in every 32 adult residents, were on 
probation or parole or were held in a prison or jail. Roughly two million 
Americans are currently behind bars.   In a report titled "A stigma that 
never fades," the British business magazine Economist said that America 
is "the world's most aggressive jailer," and "when local jails are 
included in the American tally, the United States locks up nearly 700 
people per 100,000." 

     Poor management of prisons leads to lack of protection of inmates' 
legitimate rights.   Extortion, abuse, violence and sexual assault are 
serious in prisons of the United States.      An Amnesty International 
report released on 14 May 2002 said inmate Frank Valdes at the Florida 
State Prison was beaten to death by guards in July 1999.    Autopsy 
reports proved massive injuries, including 22 broken ribs and a fractured 
sternum, nose and jaw, and there were boot marks on his face, neck, 
abdomen and back.   The three guards involved were charged of 
second-degree murder in 1999. But the Florida State prosecutors decided 
in February 2002 to drop the charges.   According to reports of US human 
rights organizations, brutalities targeted at inmates number about 
100,000 a year in American prisons.    A former chief law officer of 
Virginia State estimated the number of such brutalities to be at least 
250,000 or as many as 600,000 a year.   Sexual assaults between male 
inmates are prominent in the prisons. Most of such assaults are coupled 
with the use of force, causing spread of HIV virus and physical and 
mental injuries on victims. The prison and judicial departments remain 
indifferent towards such complaints and take no punishment measures.   
The Sun newspaper reported on 31 August 2002, the Baltimore City 
Detention Center has a poorly run system of health care and suicide 
prevention.   In some cases, the problems resulted in jail suicides, 
heart attack deaths and fatal asthma spasms that federal authorities 
deemed preventable if the inmates had been properly treated.   In another 
case, a fire killed eight inmates locked in cells in Mitchell County jail 
in North Carolina and injured 13 others. The prison authority blamed lack 
of water sprinklers for the tragedy. (Footnote 11) 

    III.   Money-driven Democracy 

     Boasting itself to be the "model of democracy," the United States 
has been trying hard to sell to the world its mode of democracy. In fact, 
American "democracy" has always been democracy of the rich, a small 
number of the population.   Just as an article in the International 
Herald Tribute of the January 24, 2002 issue says, "The American problem 
is domination of politics by money." 

     The dominant role of money in American politics has been very 
obvious, and elections have in fact been turned into races of money. 
During the midterm elections in 2002, spending on campaigning TV 
advertising amounted to 900 million US dollars, surpassing that for the 
presidential election in 2000. 

     According to an analysis made by the Associated Press based of data 
from the Federal Election Commission, in the 2002 midterm elections 95 
percent of the seats in the House of Representatives and 75 percent of 
the seats in the Senate went to candidates who had spent the most in 
campaigning. In a report filed on 30 August 2002, AP said President 
George W. Bush, in order to win control of the House and the Senate, 
cashed in on his cachet to raise donations for midterm elections of his 
Republicans, and collected 110 million US dollars for three GOP 
candidates in Oklahoma and Arkansas, setting records in campaign cash 
raising. (Footnote 12) Election of judges in the United States is also 
like a race of money. In the year of 2000, judge candidates in only two 
states bought TV advertising, whereas during the midterm elections in 
2002, chief justice candidates in nine states bought TV commercials. 

    "Money politics" has made more and more American people lose interest 
in political participation.   Statistics show the United States has 
experienced declining voter turnout in presidential election years for 
about four decades.   Measured against the voting age population, turnout 
in presidential election years fell from its high of 62.8 percent in 1960 
to an estimated 51.2 percent in 2000.   In contrast, 60 percent of 
eligible voters shunned the midterm elections in 2002, leaving the voter 
turnout at 40 percent.   A survey of minority voters in three cities of 
California showed almost all the surveyed were fed up with the fact that 
money can buy over politics and were not interested in political 
participation.   Asian American voters reckon money had too much 
influence over politics, which is unfair; African Americans and Hispanics 
felt being shut out of the door of politics and had become its victims.   
The United States has been flaunting its "freedom of the press," but it 
met with criticism from many sides in 2002 in this respect. In an annual 
report published on 21 February 2002, the International Press Institute 
accused the United States of violating freedom of the press and said "it 
is the most astonishing event of 2001 that the way the Bush 
administration treated the work of the media during the Afghan war and 
the practices of the Bush administration attempting to suppress freedom 
of speech by independent media." (Footnote 13) Two senior journalists 
with the Washington Post wrote in their book entitled "The News About The 
News: American Journalism In Peril" that practices of pursuing profits 
have destroyed the sense of mission of the journalistic community of the 
United States, and believed an overwhelming majority of media owners and 
publishing businessmen forced newspaper editors and TV news executives to 
concentrate on profits as opposed to quality of coverage. (Footnote 14) 

     In its annual report published on 2 May 2002, Reporters Without 
Borders exposed since the 11 September attacks, the United States has 
exerted pressure on the journalistic community in the war against 
terrorism, which has restricted freedom of the press. (Footnote 15) On 6 
August 2002, a major news organ in the United States published a survey 
showing the public wanting the media to "shut up."   The survey found 
among the respondents, 69 percent believe the media is biased, and over 
two thirds of them read news reports with disbelief. 

     IV. Poverty, Hunger, and Homelessness 

     The United States is the only superpower in the world, however, the 
poor, hungry and homeless have formed a "Third World" in this most 
developed nation, owing to the widening gap in wealth between the rich 
and the poor and social injustice. 

     In the last two years, a series of scandals of major corporate fraud 
were exposed in the United States, resulting in a credibility crisis and 
financial losses, which has deprived ordinary Americans of a sense of 
economic security due to the serious losses they suffered.   The Labor 
Department of the United States reported on January 10, 2003 that between 
2001 and 2002, the United States lost 1.6 million jobs. In December 2002, 
the country's unemployment rate was six percent; the number of jobless 
people stood at 8.6 million; and employers slashed payrolls by 101,000 
workers.   (Footnote 16) In the United States, 60 percent of households 
own stock shares. As corporate fraud scandals brought down the stock 
market, its capitalization was slashed by 2.5 trillion US dollars, with 
the employees of the affected big firms and their shareholders suffering 
great losses. Since energy giant Enron filed for bankruptcy protection, 
its stock price plunged from 85 US dollars a share to less than one US 
dollar a share.    Millions of Enron stockholders have suffered enormous 
losses.   A large number of Enron employees lost all their pension funds, 
while teachers, fire fighters and some government workers lost one 
billion US dollars in pensions.   WorldCom's filing for bankruptcy also 
plunged its stock share price to a few cents from 62 US dollars; 17,000 
of its employees became jobless, while investors had their interests 
severely damaged.   (Footnote 17) 

     The gap in wealth between rich and poor has become even wider.   The 
US Federal Reserve reported on January 22, 2003 that between 1992 and 
1998, the gap in wealth between the 10 percent of families with the 
highest incomes and the 20 percent of families with the lowest incomes 
increased by 9 percent, but between 1998 and 2001, the gap jumped by 70 
percent. 

     The Washington Post reported on 24 September 2002, that the top 20 
percent residents with highest income in the United States accounted for 
50 percent of the total income of the country, while the share of the 
richest 5 percent (with an annual income of 150,000 US dollars and above) 
in the national total went up from 22.1 percent in 2000 to 22.4 percent 
in 2001. 

     Poverty and hunger have kept increasing. According to the Census 
Bureau of the United States, in 2001, another 1.3 million people fell 
below the poverty line; in 2002, the poor population continued growing. 
According to the American organization Bread for the World,, 33 million 
Americans lived in households that experience hunger or the risk of 
hunger in 2002.    The newspaper USA Today reported that the nation's 
estimated 3 million homeless had harder times in 2002, as authorities 
reduced assistance to them and tough laws were passed against them.   
(Footnote 18) 

    A survey report published by the US Conference of Mayors indicates 
that the year 2002 witnessed an average of 19 percent increase in 
requests for emergency food assistance in 25 large cities in the country, 
and also an average of 19 percent increase in requests for emergency 
shelter assistance in 18 major cities, the steepest rise in a decade. And 
all the cities in the survey expect that requests for both emergency food 
assistance and shelter assistance would increase again in 2003. Boston 
Mayor and President of the US Conference of Mayors Thomas M. Menino 
commented, "The world's richest and most powerful nation must find a way 
to meet the basic needs of all its residents." The Associate Press 
reported on November 3, 2002 that 777,000 people in Los Angeles, or 33 
percent of its population, were food insecure and could not always afford 
to put food on the table.    By July 2002, homelessness in New York grew 
by 66 percent compared with four years ago.   (Footnote 19) In 2002, Los 
Angeles County alone had 84,000 homeless people, and every night, 43 
percent of 9,000-15,000 vagrants could not find shelters and had to sleep 
on downtown sidewalks. According to statistics by relevant American 
organizations, the current homelessness situation in the United States 
has become nearly as severe as at the end of World War II. Most 
vulnerable to poverty and hunger are pregnant women, the aged, people 
without ID, and single-parent families.   The report by the US Conference 
of Mayors indicates that among those requesting for emergency food 
assistance, 48 percent were members of families with children; 38 percent 
of the adults requesting such assistance were employed; of the homeless, 
39 percent were from families with children, 22 percent were employed, 
and 73 percent were from single-parent families. 

    V.   Women and Children Are in Worrisome Situation 

     Discrimination against women is common in the United States.   USA 
Today reported on January 6, 2003 that women hold merely 14 percent of 
seats in Congress. According to a survey report released by researchers 
at Rutgers university, discrimination against ethnic minorities was found 
in one third of business firms in the United States, and discrimination 
against women was reported in one fourth of 200,000 firms. In hospitals, 
shops, restaurants and bars, women of African, Latin American and Asian 
descent made up 70 percent of those who have been hurt. 

     American women are likely to become victims of crimes and violence.  
 A study report published by the Harvard School of Public Health on 17 
April 2002 said that American females are at the highest risk of murder, 
and the US female homicide victimization rate is 5 times that of all the 
other high income countries combined. The United States accounts for 70 
percent of all female homicides in the 25 high income countries, and 
4,400 American females are murdered each year, with about half by 
firearms. 

     American women are also likely to become victims of sexual assaults. 
In 2002, several scandals of sexual assaults on women by clergies were 
exposed. According to reports, over the past five years, in Arizona, 
Colorado, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, and Wisconsin, a 
number of faith healing-related sexual assaults were exposed, with some 
faith healers found to have raped women during the therapy. Police and 
public prosecutors believe that hundreds of women in Los Angeles and 
other places were sexually abused when they sought help from faith 
healers. (Footnote 20) Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that a survey 
conducted by researchers at St. Louis University in 1996 but kept under 
wraps after completion shows that about 40 percent of American Catholic 
nuns (about 35,000) have been sexually abused, often at the hands of a 
priest or another nun. (Footnote 21) 

     American children often fall victim to domestic violence, social 
crimes, their parents' divorces, and abandonment.    According to a study 
published by researchers at Harvard University in 2002, in American 
states and regions with high gun ownership, children have more chances to 
be murdered, to commit suicide or to meet accidental death. Between 1988 
and 1997, a total of 6,817 children, aged 5-14, were shot to death in the 
50 states of the United States.   (Footnote 22) Young girls missing and 
the kidnapping of children are frequent. Statistics show that in the 
United States, 58,000 children were kidnapped by people other than their 
families each year, and 40 percent of them were slain in the end.    
Another 200,000 children were kidnapped by their family members, mostly 
for the right of custody.   (Footnote 23) 

     In 2002, a series of scandals of sexual assaults on children by 
Catholic clergies were exposed. An article titled "Sins of the Fathers" 
published by the Newsweek magazine on 4 March 2002 reported that the 
child-sexual-abuse settlements may have cost the American church one 
billion US dollars during the 1986-1996 period. Some 80 priests have been 
accused of sexually abusing children, with one said to have assaulted 
more than 100 children over the past 40 years.   (Footnote 24) The Sun 
newspaper reported on 29 April 2002 that there were 46, 000 priests in 
the United States, and in the past 18 years at least 1,500 had been 
charged.   (Footnote 25) According to the newspaper Christian Science 
Monitor, the targets of sex-related crimes committed by American clergies 
were mostly children, and since 1985 over 70 clergies and priests were 
imprisoned for molestation of children.   (Footnote 26) 

     Many children have encountered serious difficulties in their life, 
medical treatment and education, and many of them have not received 
parental love and care.   According to a report published by the Public 
Policy Institute of California in November 2002, 20 percent of 
Californian children aged under 5 years live in poverty, compared with 
the national average of 15 percent.   The New York Times reported last 
July that the proportion of American children who grow up in parentless 
families is increasing, from the previous 7.5 percent to the present 16.1 
percent. 

     The nongovernmental Women's Commission for Refugee Women and 
Children says in its 2002 report that nearly 5,000 children were detained 
every year by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service for entering 
the United States illegally.    Their average age is 15 years, with the 
youngest only one and a half years. Most of these children did not have 
other criminal records except illegal entry.    However, over 30 percent 
of these children were commingled with young offenders, handcuffed and 
shackled, sent to prisons or detained in warehouses with very poor safety 
conditions. 

     VI.   Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination 

     Racial discrimination is deep-rooted in the United States.   Senate 
Republican leader Trent Lott had repeatedly made remarks supporting 
racial segregation during his political life.   He had tried by every 
means to prevent the Congress from passing a bill on establishing the 
birthday of Martin Luther King, a murdered civil rights leader of the 
blacks, as a national holiday. On 5 December 2002, when attending a 100th 
birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond from South Carolina, who ran for 
the presidency in 1948 as a segregationist candidate, Lott said that the 
United States would be better off if Strom Thurmond had won the 
presidency that year. Lott's remarks triggered strong reaction of the 
Congressional Black Caucus.   In the end, Lott quitted his post as Senate 
Republican leader under the pressure of public opinion.   (Footnote 27) 

     For more than 100 years between 1862 and 1965, the United States had 
enforced a law restricting immigrants from Asia and forbidding marriage 
between immigrants of Asian descent and white people.    Many states 
nullified the law in the 1940s-1960s, but it is still in effect in the 
states of New Mexico and Florida. 

     Racial discrimination is serious in law enforcement.   According to 
a study by the Justice Policy Institute of the United States, blacks 
constitute only 12.9 percent of America's total population, but black 
prisoners account for 46 percent of the total in jail in the nation; 
approximately one in every five blacks is jailed for some time during his 
or her life. The number of blacks in jail is greater than that of blacks 
at college. In 2000, about 800,000 blacks were in jail, compared with 
only 600,000 blacks registered in institutions of higher learning. Among 
the new inmates put in prison since 1980, people of African and Latin 
American descent have accounted for 70 percent.   The Sun newspaper 
reported on 8 January 2003 that defendants who kill white people are 
significantly more likely to be charged with capital murder and sentenced 
to death than are killers of non-whites, and a black offender accused of 
killing a white victim is most likely to be put on death row. 

     The paper quoted a study as saying that the probability that someone 
accused of killing a white person will be charged with capital murder is 
1.6 times higher than the probability for a black-victim homicide.   
Blacks who kill whites are two and one-half times more likely to be 
sentenced to death than are whites who kill whites, and three and 
one-half times more likely than are blacks who kill blacks.   Though a 
majority of Maryland's homicide victims were black, of the 12 inmates on 
Maryland's death row awaiting execution, eight were black, and all were 
convicted of killing white people. 

     Minorities are among the poorest groups in the United States.   A 
Federal Reserve report issued on January 22, 2003 said that the gap in 
wealth between American whites and ethnic minorities widened by 21 
percent between 1998 and 2001.    The US Census Bureau reported in its 
2002 annual report on income and poverty that in 2001, the poverty rate 
in the United States rose to 11.7 percent; the poverty rate was 22.7 
percent among African Americans, and 21. 4 percent among Hispanics, both 
nearly double the rate for other ethnic groups. 

     African American and Hispanic homeowners paid higher interest rates 
for housing loans than white people did.    In the metropolitan area of 
Washington D.C., among households that made at least 120 percent of the 
typical income in the area, 32 percent of blacks held high-interest loans 
while only 11 percent of whites did; among households that made 80 
percent or less of the typical income, 56 percent of blacks had 
high-interest loans and 25 percent of whites did. 

     Minorities also suffer from unfair treatment in schooling.   Racial 
segregation in public schools has got even worse than decades ago.    
Only four of all 185 school districts across the United States witnessed 
increase in black-white exposure (exposure of black students to white 
students) between 1986 and 2000.    The 24 school districts with the 
worst racial segregation were found in Texas and Georgia states. The 
newspaper Christian Science Monitor reported on Jan. 21, 2003 that in the 
state of Georgia 32 percent of white elementary school teachers left 
their posts at predominantly black schools in 2001. The situation was the 
same in Texas, California and North Carolina. Lots of classes had to be 
taught by substitute teachers who didn't have degrees and weren't 
licensed to teach, and "black students aren't getting an equal shot at 
good schooling."   Among the third graders in elementary schools in 
California, 70 percent of white children met the required educational 
attainment standard, compared with 37 percent of black children and 27 
percent of Hispanic children. The enrollment rate of minority students in 
schools of higher learning was declining. 

     A 2002 report by researchers of Harvard University pointed out that 
America's pervasive legacy of slavery, racism, and substandard, 
segregated health care for many of the nation's minorities has left a 
deep chasm between the health status of most minorities and whites.   
Blacks have enjoyed much poorer medical treatment than whites ever since 
they came to America from Africa. African Americans have much higher 
rates of heart diseases, diabetes, AIDS and some cancers.   Blacks have a 
cancer death rate about 35 percent higher than that of whites, the AIDS 
cases among black women and children are 75 percent higher than among 
white people, and African-American children also have much higher rates 
of asthma and juvenile diabetes than white children.   There is a life 
expectancy gap of about seven years between whites and African Americans. 
  (Footnote 28) 

    Racial discrimination has been on the rise in the United States since 
the 11 September terrorist attacks. The US authorities have intensified 
restrictions on new immigrants and slowed down its procedure for 
approving entry of immigrants.   Tougher regulations have been adopted, 
requiring new immigrants to register their residences at Immigration and 
Naturalization Service (INS) offices, or otherwise face imprisonment, 
fines or even deportation. In August 2002, in airport safety inspections 
the FBI arrested a large number of immigrant airport workers, mostly 
Latinos. 

     Discrimination against Muslims and Arabs is the most serious.   
According to statistics from the Islamic Society of North America, 48 
percent of Muslims living in the Unites States said their lives have 
changed for the worse since Sept. 11. By the first anniversary of the 
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, approximately 60 percent of Muslims had 
experienced in person or witnessed acts of discrimination against Muslims 
including public harassment, physical assault and property damage. There 
had been nearly 2,000 vicious criminal cases against Muslims, including 
11 murders and 56 death threats.   In Los Angeles, assaults on Islamic 
institutions rose by 16 times from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. In Toledo 
City, Ohio, more than 10,000 residents of Arab descent were monitored and 
wiretapped by judicial departments after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 
and they were not allowed to talk to lawyers. Moreover, judicial 
departments can have house search at any time. 

     The US Immigration and Naturalization Service announced in August 
2002 that males from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan are to be 
fingerprinted on entering the United States. In November the same year, a 
new federal regulation added another 13 countries including Afghanistan 
to the list. Males from these 18 countries, who are 16 years and older 
and on temporary visas to the United States are subject to "special 
registration," to report to relevant departments and be fingerprinted and 
photographed before the designated deadline. On 16 December 2002, more 
than 1,000 Muslims from Iran, Iraq and other Middle East nations went to 
the immigration offices in California for the "special registration" 
procedures.   However, most of them were detained by immigration officers 
right away, under accusations of holding invalid visas, overstaying their 
visas or other wrongdoing. The US Department of Justice later admitted 
that about 500 immigrants of Middle East descent were arrested.   While 
statistics from local Islamic institutions showed that at least 700 
people were arrested, some even put it at about 1,000. News reports said 
that as the immigration detention center was overcrowded, some of the 
detainees were moved to prison. The detainees complained that they were 
stripped, searched, and given prison suits after their clothes were taken 
away. Many people were locked in one cell, with no bed or quilt, and had 
to sleep on the icy cement floor. 

    VII.   Brutal Violations of Human Rights in Other Countries 

     The United States is following unilateralism in international 
affairs and has frequently committed blunt violations of human rights in 
other countries. 

     Regardless of the strong call for no war from the international 
community, the United States, together with a few other countries, 
launched a war against Iraq on 20 March 2003. The war, which has openly 
violated the purpose and principles of the UN Charter, has caused 
casualties of innocent Iraqi civilians and serious humanitarian 
disasters. 

     During its air attacks against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 
2002, the US troops dropped nearly a quarter-million cluster bombs and 
raided a number of nonmilitary targets, causing heavy civilian 
casualties. Newsweek disclosed civilians killed in the Afghan war had 
exceeded 3,000. 

     The cluster bombs also left an estimated 12,400 explosive duds that 
continue to take civilian lives to this day.   (Footnote 29).    In 2001 
the US   bombing of Mudoh village reduced the local population to 100 
from 250 and leveled all buildings in the village to the ground.   A 
similar attack on Kakrakai village in central Afghanistan on 1 July 2002 
left at least 54 civilians dead and more than 100 others injured. 
(Footnote 30) 

     The rights and interests of prisoners of war (POWs) were also 
violated. According to Cable News Network [CNN], a total of 12,000 
Taliban fighters were reported to have been captured since the US 
launched its military action in Afghanistan, but only 3,500 to 4,000 of 
them survived.   It was found that these POWs were locked into 
unventilated steel shipping containers after their capture, and many of 
them died of sweltering heat, suffocation or extreme thirst en route to 
the prison. Numerous mass graves in which the bodies of the dead POWs 
were dumped have been found in Afghanistan. There are also evidence of US 
troops' involvement in the shipping of the POWs. In November 2001, some 
1,000 Taliban and Al-Qa'ida fighters who had surrendered in the northern 
Afghan city of Konduz died on their way to the prison after they were 
packed tightly into unventilated container trucks. (Footnote 31) 
According to media reports, in 2002 the United States was holding more 
than 600 detainees from 42 countries, mostly captured during the Afghan 
war, in its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.   However, the 
detainees were denied "prisoner of war" status by the US government and 
therefore faced uncertainty of their futures. It was unclear for how long 
they would remain in custody or what kind of treatment they would 
receive. These detainees were allegedly confined for 24 hours a day to 
small cells and were not allowed to meet their families or lawyers. 
Former al-Qa'ida members were also subject to torture or other forms of 
maltreatment. 

     Hundreds of thousands of US troops are stationed overseas, and such 
troops have committed crimes and human rights abuses wherever they stay. 
Each year US troops stationed in the Republic of Korea (ROK) are caught 
responsible for more than 400 traffic accidents, but only less than 10 
cases would go for trial in ROK courts.   On 13 June 2002, two US 
soldiers driving an armored vehicle crushed two 14-year-old South Korean 
girls to death, but both offenders were acquitted by a US military 
tribunal in November.   On Sept. 2, three other US soldiers in 
Kyonggi-do, ROK, started a tussle on a road, and they deliberately 
smashed a taxi car parked on the roadside and beat up its Korean driver.  
 Earlier reports said six American soldiers stationed in the ROK were 
charged with sexual harassment, assault and scuffle after drinking. 

     The US troops in Okinawa, Japan has long been notorious for its 
constant involvement in criminal cases such as arson and rape. 
Investigation shows that after World War II US soldiers have committed 
more than 300 sex crimes in Okinawa, with over 130 rape cases reported 
since 1972. In the wee hours of Jan. 7, 2002, Frederick Thompson, a US 
Navy marine stationed in Okinawa, was arrested by local police on charges 
of trespassing on private property after he broke into the apartment of a 
24-year-old woman.   On Dec. 3 the same year, the police department of 
Okinawa prefecture issued an arrest warrant against Major Michael Brown 
of the US Marine Corps, who was accused of attempted rape and damaging of 
private articles, but the US side refused to hand him over to the police 
department. (Footnote 32) 

     According to a news report in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo of 1 
April 2002, there are more than 52,000 illegitimate children in the 
Philippines fathered by US marines stationed in this Southeast Asian 
country before 1991. Recently tens of Filipino teenage girls, some of 
them not yet 13, were sent to Mindanao in southern Philippines, to 
entertain US marines stationed there. 

    VIII.   Double Standards in International Field of Human Rights 

     The United States, taking a negative attitude toward the 
international human rights conventions, is one of the only two countries 
in the world that have not ratified the United Nations Convention on the 
Rights of the Child.   To date, it hasn't ratified the Convention on the 
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the 
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which 
have got ratification from or accession of most countries in the world. 

     In 2002, the United States shrank remarkably from its previous 
stance on international human rights affairs.   It used to ask for the 
removal of any text in UN draft resolutions that involved human rights 
conventions which all countries were expected to observe or the US 
government had not yet ratified, on the pretext of the US being not a 
state party to these conventions. When its request was rejected, the 
United States would ask for a separate voting on the text, or even cast 
the only dissenting vote. In July 2002, the United States withdrew a 
34-million-dollar contribution it had promised to the United Nations 
Population Fund (UNFPA), forcing the UNFPA to cancel its projects of 
assistance to women in countries like Burundi, Algeria, Haiti and India. 

The United States has been releasing annually Country Reports on Human 
Rights Practices, censuring other countries for their human rights 
situations, but it has turned a blind eye to serious violations of human 
rights on its own soil. This double standard on human rights issues 
cannot but meet with strong rejection and opposition worldwide, leaving 
the United States more and more isolated in the international community. 

Footnotes: 

    1. AFP report, 21 Nov 2002, Los Angeles. 

    2. AFP report, 31 May 2002, Long Beach, California. 

    3. "School Crime Decreasing, US Says, But Students Still Fear 
Bullying, Reports Show," Sun 10 Dec 2002. 

    4. "Survey on Records of Police Arrests," Sun 9 May 2002. 

    5. EFE report, 10 Dec 2002, Washington. 

    6. Reuters report, 11 February 2002, Washington. 

    7. "Easy to Obtain Free Trade, Hard to Obtain State Government 
Compensation," USA Today, 18 June 2002. 

    8. "A Man Was Not Convicted of Murder and Released After a DNA Test," 
New York Times report, 27 August 2002. 

    9. EFE report from the United Nations 9 May 2002. 

    10. Report by the Amnesty International: "USA: The Human Rights Day 
Needs to be Reconsidered." 

    11. Washington Post report: "Eight Inmates Locked in Mitchell County 
Jail Died," 3 May 2002. 

    12. Sun report, 30 Aug 2002. 

    13. AFP report, 21 Feb 2002, Vienna. 

    14. Associated Press report, 29 March 2002, New York. 

    15. EFE report 2 May 2002, Paris. 

    16. Sun report: "US Economic Shrinkage Leads to Unemployment," 11 
January 2003. 

    17. Sun report, 26 June 2003. 

    18. Report by USA Today, 27 December 2002. 

    19. Associated Press report, 20 August 2002. 

    20. Los Angeles Times report, 13 March 2002. 

    21. AFP report, 5 Jan 2003, Washington. 

    22. Reuters report, 28 Feb 2002, Boston. 

    23. Xinhua report, 6 Aug 2002, Washington. 

    24. Newsweek article, 4 Mar 2002. 

    25. Sun report, 29 Apr 2002. 

    26. Report by Christian Science Monitor, 21 March 2002. 

    27. USA Today: "Black Caucus Unforgiving After Lott's Apology," by 
William M. Welch, 11 Dec 2002. 

    28. USA Today: "Blacks Suffer Most From Managed Care," by Julianne 
Malveaux, 29 Nov 2002. 

    29. Human Rights Watch: "Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use 
by the United States in Afghanistan," 18 Dec 2002. 

    30. Newsweek article, 22 July 2002. 

    31. AFP report, 18 Aug 2002, Washington. 

    32. Report by Asahi Shimbun, 15 Dec 2002. 


[Description of Source: Beijing Xinhua Domestic Service in Chinese -- 
China's official news service (New China News Agency)]