Beijing Xinhua Domestic News Service [FBIS Translated Text] Beijing, 27 Feb (Xinhua) -- The State Council Information Office today issued an article, entitled: "The US Human Rights Record in 2000." Its full text is as follows:
February 27, 2001US Human Rights Record in 2000
2月27日，美国国务院发布"The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices -- 2000."The United States, once again, regarded itself as "judge of human rights situations in the world." Through distortions and fabrications, it gathered human rights offenses against over 190 countries and regions in the world, including China, and falsely accused these countries and regions of certain abuses. However, the US report on human rights around the world completely avoided and had nothing to say about the United States' own human rights situation. The following materials precisely showed that serious human rights abuses exist in the United States:
I.作为政治权利被滥用的“民主”神话已被滥用
总是自称是一个“民主模式”United States has been peddling "American-style democracy" to other countries in the world. Under the pretext of safeguarding "democracy," the United States makes rash criticisms of other countries and interferes in their internal affairs. However, well-informed people fully understand that the 200-odd-year-old American "democracy" has always been nothing more than a "fairy tale" since its citizens' political rights have been ruthlessly abused persistently.
尽管美国规定其citizens' right to vote when it promulgated its Constitution in 1787, its citizens had to await 184 years before they could legally achieve universal suffrage. Due to various restrictions governing voters' race, sex, property, educational level, age, length of residence, and other fields, blacks, women, native Americans, and about one-third of white men had been denied their legal rights to vote for quite a long period. Blacks, women, and native Americans only legally attained their rights to vote in 1870, 1920, and 1948, respectively; that is, 94, 144, and 172 years respectively after the United States' founding. Meanwhile, the United States only legally revoked restrictions governing voters' property, poll tax, and educational level in 1856, 1964, and 1970, respectively. It wasn't until 1971, or nearly 200 years after the United States' founding, that the United States adopted Amendment 26 to the Constitution that stipulated: Age shall not be a factor for revoking the right to vote by a citizen who is 18 years old or above, thereby legally materializing universal suffrage.
However, attaining universal suffrage legally and achieving it in practice are two different issues. The percentage of US citizens who vote has always been very low. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the percentage of voters who voted in various elections for the House of Representatives has always been between 30 and 60 percent. The highest percentage of US voters who voted in US presidential elections that have traditionally been termed as important political events was only 65 percent. For a candidate to win in a presidential election, he only need attain more than 50 percent of the total number of votes cast by voters. Consequently, US presidents actually attained support from a very small percentage of the total voters of the right age: They persistently won less than 35 percent of the total number over the past many years. The voter turnout rate for the 1996 general election was only 49 percent, and only 25 percent of registered voters nationwide voted for the president. Thus, the results of the US so-called "general elections" have never represented the will of the entire people or the majority.
The 2000 presidential election further exposed the inherent flaws of the US electoral system. The result of the election was changed three times on a single day. Vote counting was unbearably chaotic and full of loopholes. The two candidates, separately representing the Democratic and Republican parties, filed lawsuit after lawsuit on the counts and recounts of ballots in Florida and engaged in non-stop partisan bickering. Some organizations even issued commemorative coins for the election turmoil to profit from it. The 2000 general election was accompanied by demonstrations and protests. In line with the electoral system in the election law which has been carried out for more than 200 years, electoral votes, not the popular votes, ultimately decide which candidate will win. The 50 million voters who cast their ballots for the winning candidate represented less than one-fourth of the 205 million eligible voters throughout the nation, hitting a record low in US election history. As a result, the general election and the citizens' electoral power have lost their practical meaning. The myth of the US democratic system was once again exposed. The Washington Post cried out in alarm, saying the US political and electoral system had "exploded." Reuters called the election "absurd." The Associated Press reported, "Some were shocked that a nation often held as a model of democracy could also stumble" (Footnote 1). Like a drop of water that may cause water in a cup to spill over, the "X-ray film of the election" has exposed the inherent undemocratic nature of the US election system.
美国民主一直是“对富人的游戏”。它被称为“钱包的民主”。在政治完全商业化的美国，任何出价的官方职位都需要花费大量的钱才能获胜。没有财务支持，任何总统或国会候选人都不会走得很远。竞选资金继续攀升，所需的巨额资金可能会使人们的呼吸消失。2000年的大选耗资约30亿美元，比1996年高出50％，并达到了历史最高水平。在各个州的比赛又花费了10亿美元。尽管不禁止政治捐款，但美国法律对个人捐款，政治委员会和政党的捐款设定了上限，但允许公司或工会向政党捐款。结果，政党和候选人收集的“软钱”数量达到了6.48亿美元，是四年前的四倍。在竞选期间，至少有20位贡献者的花费超过100万美元。 Actresses Jane Fonda wrote a $12 million check in support of a new pro-abortion rights organization. Business circles also spent a lot of money lobbying US political circles. In the 18 months before 30 June 2000, 18 British companies spent $30 million, and the US National Rifle Association, together with firearms manufacturers, funneled several billion dollars to Capitol Hill, lobbying congressional members to oppose limits on gun sales and possession. As a result, gun control legislation did not pass. In an article on 25 October 2000, the British newspaper Financial Times pointed out that the political system in the United States is decaying to a point where even American voters can smell the stink of money. The election made it clear that the federal election system has been reduced to "collective bribery" and US democracy could be sold to the highest bidders.
在2000年的选举中，民主党人乔恩·科津（Jon Corzine）花了超过6000万美元的价格赢得了参议院的新泽西州，为国会选举活动支出树立了新的记录。美联社对2000年11月9日货币与选举胜利之间相关性的数据的数据分析表明，参议院冠军中有81％和去年选举中96％的众议院获胜者超过对手，截至10月18日，截至26年10月18日在32场参议院比赛中，有433场众议院比赛中有417次由候选人赢得了最多的钱。一位研究金钱和运动的美国专家确定了选举成功的秘诀：“我可以检查联邦选举委员会的筹款余额，并告诉您选举之前的选举结果是什么”（脚注2）。显然，美国民主的关键是金钱，它决定了选举的过程和结果。难怪西班牙报纸埃尔·蒙多（El Mundo3）。
同样地,美国的新闻自由fluenced by money. Wealthy people have the power to manipulate the mass media, which have always served as the mouthpieces of the rich as well as the propaganda machinery with which those in power shape public opinion. If the rich and the powerful are so inclined, and if there are financial gains to be had, press freedom in the United States is abused now and then, even to the point of flouting international norms. Article 20 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Human Rights clearly states that "any propaganda for war" and "any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred" shall be prohibited by law. However, the United States has disregarded the provisions of the international covenant and the universal practices in many countries, sacrificing principle for profit by selling or allowing the sale of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's notorious anti-Semitic autobiography, ever since 1933. During World War II, the United States earned more than $20,000 in taxes from sales of this book. For 34 years after World War II, the US Justice Department continued to sell the book quietly, earning more than $139,000 in taxes. After buying the book's copyright in 1979, the US publisher Houghton Mifflin has continued to sell the book. It is estimated that at least 300,000 copies of the book have been sold over the past 20 years, generating $300,000 to $700,000 in profits.
II. Rampant Violence and Unjust Judicial System Jeopardize the Safety of US Citizens' Lives and Their Freedom
美国,世界上唯一的国家here carrying a private weapon is a constitutional right, is a society ridden with violence. The United States is the world's number one "gun nation" with more than 200 million private guns, or nearly one for each American. The number of registered weapon vendors in the country exceeds 100,000, more than the total number of overseas outlets of fast food giant McDonald's A tracking investigation of 70,000 guns conducted annually by a US agency showed that about 50,000 of them were used in assaults, and the rest turned up in criminal investigations: 5,000 were used in murders, 5,000 for assaults, several thousand were used in thefts and robberies, and some were used in drug-related assault incidents. The excessive number of privately owned guns has resulted in countless gun-related assaults, resulting in tragedy for many innocent people: On 29 February 2000, a six-year-old boy in the state of Michigan killed a girl, one of his classmates. On 18 April 2000, a man in suburban Detroit, who became angry when his neighbors complained about him, fired on the office of the apartment complex, leaving three women dead or injured. At the night of 24 April, seven children were senselessly slaughtered by a gunman at the Washington National Zoo. On 28 December, four masked gunmen broke into a home in Philadelphia fatally shooting seven people and injuring three. On 9 January 2001, a gunman killed three people in Houston, Texas, and on 5 February, another gunman killed four people and injured four others at a factory near Chicago. Statistics showed that over 31,000 people in the United States were killed by guns each year, and over 80 people were killed in gun-related incidents every day.
Police brutality is common in the United States. Each year, thousands of allegations of police abuse were filed across the country, but relatively few police officers who violated the law were held accountable. Victims seeking redress faced obstacles that ranged from overt intimidation to the reluctance of local and federal prosecutors to take on police brutality cases. In 1999, about 12,000 civil rights complaints, most alleging police abuse, were submitted to the US Department of Justice, but over the same period just 31 officers confessed or were convicted.
The US judicial system is extremely unfair. Thirty eight of the 50 US states carry out the death penalty. By 1 July 2000, there were 3,682 people on death row in the nation, more than 90 percent of whom had been victims of sexual abuse and assault. Most of them were poor, attained low educational levels, were not covered by Medicare services, and had to rely on officially appointed lawyers as they were too poor to pay for their own attorneys. The probability that the death sentences were erroneously meted out was very high. After reviewing the 5,760 death penalty cases in the United States over a period of 23 years between 1973 and 1995, Columbia University published a report on 12 June 2000, pointing out that 68 percent of the death penalty sentences in the country did not fit the crimes. It said that on average more than two of every three death penalty sentences were overturned on appeal. The rate of erroneous judgment on death penalty in the state of Florida was 73 percent, while the figures rose to as high as 100 percent in the states of Kentucky, Maryland, and Tennessee. According to statistics, over 660 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 by the US Supreme Court. Out of the total, 500 people or 70 percent were executed in the past eight years. In 2000, over 70 people or 11 percent of the total were executed. The United States also violates international conventions by convicting and executing juvenile and mentally retarded offenders, and failing to provide defendants facing execution with competent attorneys. Thirty mentally retarded people were executed in the United States in the past decade.
美国声称这是“天堂liberals." However, compared to other countries, the United States has the highest number of incarcerated people in the world. According to a report of the US Department of Justice, the American newspaper USA Today reported in its 8 August edition (Footnote 5) that about 6.3 million men and women in the United States were on probation or parole, or were in jail or prison at the end of 1999. The figure represented 3.0 percent of the adult population of the United States. The "correctional population" increased 2.7 percent from 1998 and 44.6 percent from 1990. Under US laws, those who are serving prison terms after being convicted of felonies and former inmates out on probation or parole are disenfranchised, and one quarter of the states denied the right to vote for those who had served their sentences. It is estimated that over one million Americans who have finished serving their sentences are deprived of their right to vote. A report of a US judicial policy research institute showed that more than two million men and women were behind bars by 15 February 2000, up 75 percent from the 1.14 million reported 11 years ago, accounting for one-quarter of the world's total inmates, and ranking first among various countries in the world. The US Department of Justice also revealed in August 2000 that the rate of incarceration had reached 690 inmates per 100,000 US residents by the end of 1999, also the highest in the world. The state of Louisiana took the lead with 736 inmates per 100,000.
尽管巨大的开支远远超过联邦budget for education, US prisons are overcrowded, prison violence is rampant, and prisoners are badly treated. Statistics showed that in 1998, 59 inmates in the United States were killed by other inmates, and assaults, fights, and rapes injured 6,750 inmates and 2,331 prison personnel. Estimates by nongovernmental groups in the state of California showed that some 10,000 sexual assaults occur daily in US prisons, and male inmates are sexually assaulted by their cellmates. In some extreme cases, the raped inmates were literally sex slaves of the perpetrators, being "rented out" for sex, "sold," or even auctioned off to other inmates. Despite the devastating psychological impact of such abuse, perpetrators were rarely punished. A report released in September 2000 by the US Department of Justice said an "institutional culture that supports and promotes abuses" was in place in US prisons. Verifiable reports of physical abuses include brutal beatings by prison officers and officers paying inmates to beat other inmates. At Wallens Ridge State Prison, Virginia's super-maximum security prison, 50,000-volt stun guns were often used against inmates. From January 1999 to June 2000, prison guards at Red Onion State Prison, Virginia's super-maximum security prison, shot a total of 116 blank rounds and 25 stinger rounds of rubber bullets and discharged stun guns on 130 separate occasions. At Corcoran State Prison in California, eight prison guards drove a group of inmates to a small playground for an ancient Roman-style wrestling match that resulted in several deaths. Over 20,000 inmates were placed in solitary confinement in special maximum security facilities, where they were locked alone in small and windowless cells and released for only a few hours each week. They were handcuffed, shackled, and escorted by officers whenever they left their cells. At Wisconsin's new super-maximum prisons, inmates were subject to round-the-clock confinement in isolation, subject to 24-hour fluorescent lighting in their cells and 24-hour video monitoring (Footnote 6).
iii。富人与贫困和恶化的工人经济和社会权利之间的差距是令人担忧的
The latter part of the 20th century was the most economically prosperous period in US history, with the economic growth rate rising steadily for 118 months by the end of 2000. However, the gap between the rich and the poor widened and the laborers' living conditions went from bad to worse. Pressing issues such as poverty, hunger, and homelessness proved difficult to solve.
富人与穷人之间的差距与经济增长的速度相同。统计数据表明，美国最富有的1.0％的公民拥有该国总财富的40％，而80％的美国公民只有16％。自1990年代以来，有40％的财富进入了富人少数民族的口袋，而只有1.0％的人属于贫困人口。从1977年到1999年，最富有的20％的美国家庭的税后收入增加了43％，而最贫穷的20％的收入在允许通货膨胀后减少了9.0％。今天以最低薪水生活的人的实际收入甚至不到30年前（脚注7）。2000年2月21日的《美国新闻和世界报道》上的一篇文章指出，1979年最富有的5.0％家庭的平均收入是最贫穷20％的家庭的10倍。1999年，收入差距已扩大到19倍，在发达国家中排名第一，自美国人口普查局于1947年开始研究这种情况以来，创造了新的记录。1992年，美国最大公司的高管的收入是普通工人的100倍，2000年高475倍（脚注8）。根据2000年8月《美国杂志商业周刊》的评估，首席执行官的收入是1990年员工的84倍，1995年的140次和1999年的416次。自1992年以来，硅谷的第五家家庭中最富裕的家庭增加了29％，而山谷中最贫困的最五分之一的家庭收入在1990年代的大部分时间里都下降了，目前最贫穷的收入只是反弹 to the same level in 1992, with the employees at the lowest rank now earning on average 10 percent less than a decade age (Footnote 9).
A great number of Americans suffer from poverty and hunger. According to the statistics of the US Government, over 32 million citizens, or 12.7 percent of the total population of the country, live under the poverty line. The incidence of poverty is higher than in the 1970s, and higher than in most other industrialized countries (Footnote 10). An investigation by the US Department of Agriculture in March 2000 showed that 9.7 percent of American families did not have enough food, and at least 10 percent of families in 18 states and Washington D.C. often suffered from hunger and malnutrition. In 1998, 37 million American families did not have enough food. In New Mexico, the poorest state in the United States, 15.1 percent of the families were under threat of hunger.
The number of homeless Americans has continued to increase. A study in the mid-1990s showed that 12 million US citizens were or had been at some time homeless. According to a survey of 26 large cities conducted by the Conference of Mayors, the urgent demand for housing increased in two-thirds of the cities in 1999 over previous years. The number of homeless Americans was larger than any time in the past (Footnote 11). A report in The New York Times of 9 July 2000 said that housing in New York was in the shortest supply of recent decades. More than 130,000 families in the city were waiting for public housing at that time, and homeless shelters sometimes had to receive 5,000 families and 7,000 individuals for a night.
工人的权利受到严重侵犯。与其他发达国家相比，美国劳动者的工作时间最长，而社会保障福利和权利最糟糕。根据2000年3月美国新闻和世界报道的一份报告，美国公民的平均工作时间每年为1,957小时，比其他发达国家更长。在曼哈顿，大约有75％的大学教育人士每周超过40小时的年龄在25至32岁之间的工作。1977年，只有55％的人工作相同的时间。一本新出版的书在美国说，一些女性收银员和生产线的工人必须穿防护内衣，因为不允许他们花时间去厕所。国际自由工会的联合会于1999年7月向世界贸易组织提交了一份报告，称组织和罢工的权利在美国劳动法中不能保证。当雇主决定分手或防止建立工会时，劳动者没有法律补偿。美国只有13％的工人加入了工会。在该州和地方政府的1400万工作人员中，超过700万拥有集体谈判的权利，更不用说罢工权了（脚注12）。 Millions of workers, including farm laborers, domestic workers, and low-level supervisors, were explicitly excluded from protection under the law guaranteeing the right of workers to organize. In the 1950s, employers retaliated against hundreds of workers for exercising their right for association, according to statistics. By the 1990s, the number of workers subject to serious retaliation climbed to more than 20,000 (Footnote 13).
Worker's rights and social security cannot be fully guaranteed for US workers. A study by the US Department of Energy in 2000 showed that the incidence of cancer among workers in nuclear weapons production was much higher than workers in other industries due to exposure to harmful radiation and chemical substances. Since the end of World War II, 22 forms of cancer have been diagnosed among the 600,000 workers in 14 nuclear plants in California, Washington and other states; this incidence rate was several times that found in ordinary factories. The US Government had treaded lightly on this issue until it was exposed by media in recent years. Under public pressure, the US Government had to "acknowledge the mistake" (Footnote 14). About 30 million US citizens had no social security eight years ago, and the figure has increased to 46 million currently. The British newspaper Financial Times reported on 25 October 2000 that 12.3 percent of US citizens had no medical insurance 20 years ago, and the rate has increased to 15.8 percent now, or one out of every six Americans.
The education situation in the United States is surprisingly poor. According to a report in USA Today on 29 November 2000, illiteracy is still a serious problem in such a highly developed country. One in five high school graduates cannot read his or her diploma; 85 percent of unwed mothers are illiterate; 70 percent of Americans arrested are illiterate; 21 million Americans cannot read. A child protection foundation has confirmed that 71 percent of fourth graders are not at the education level they ought to be. College tuition and room and board expenses have grown faster than the increase of middle class families' income. The dropout rate among college students has risen to 37 percent (Footnote 15). Statistics from the US Census Bureau show that the income of middle class families increased only 10 percent from 1989 to 1999, while the college tuition increased 51 percent during the same period. The average college tuition in 1999 was 8,086 US dollars, accounting for 62 percent of the income of low-income families. The average tuition fee of private colleges was 21,339 US dollars in 1999, up 34 percent over 1989, accounting for 162 percent of the income of poor families, but only making up for four percent of the income of rich families. More than 30 million low-income families even could not afford to send their children to community colleges.
iv。严重的性别歧视和对儿童的不良治疗
Gender discrimination is widespread in almost every aspect of US society. American women have not yet enjoyed equal constitutional rights compared to men. Women in the United States not only have weak voice in politics, but also are clearly discriminated in terms of employment, job status and wages. The labor protection standards for women are below the international norms, and sexual violence, sexual harassment and domestic violence against women are also rampant in the United States.
路透社于2000年3月22日报道说，多达1100名妇女加入了一项集体诉讼性别歧视诉讼，该诉讼是由五名妇女在1978年发起的，对美国信息机构和美国声音发起了48项指控，涉及工作歧视，因为她们是由于性别歧视的。申请技术员，编辑，专家和播音员的职位。经过调查，法院发现，被告的人力资源部门甚至通过欺骗性手段有意忽略了女性候选人，例如修改测试结果并事先选择。该案涉及成千上万的原告，持续了22年。律师在此案中工作了65,000个工作时间。直到2000年，美国政府才被迫接受庭外和解，并在法院维持了48项指控中的46项指控中的46美元后支付了5.08亿美元的赔偿。从该案中可以看出美国的性别歧视的广度和深度，这涉及自1964年以来的民权法案以来的最高赔偿。2000年11月，美国研究所研究妇女政策的一份报告表明，女性平均薪水比男性同事平均低26％，但对同等工作的薪水不同等（脚注16）。
The number of female prisoners has been increasing markedly in the United States, and they often are the victims of various abuses. Since 1980, the number of prisoners in the United States has tripled, while that of the female prisoners has quadrupled. A report released by the US Government in December 1999 showed that accusations against jail officers of sexual abuse and other negligent behavior are widespread and criminal prosecution of prison guards for abuse of power has been on the rise. The following major cases have been reported since December 1999:
-- Eleven guards and one officer at a county jail run by a private correction company were accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment by 16 female inmates;
Quite a number of women and children have been smuggled to the United States who are subject to slavery and torture. According to a report released by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in November 1999, as many as 50,000 women and children were smuggled from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe to the United States every year under false pretense. They are often forced to become prostitutes or ill-treated workers and servants, the youngest of whom are aged nine. Despite as many as 100,000 women and children were smuggled to the country in recent two years, only 250 of whom are listed as the victims of relevant cases. In 1999, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service conducted an investigation in 26 cities and found smuggled women in 250 brothels. No rights whatsoever were guaranteed for these women (Footnote 17). Human trafficking and the sexual slave trade has become the third largest illegal trade in terms of business volume in the United States, following drugs and arms smuggling. An incomplete statistics showed that criminal rings in the United States earn 7 billion US dollars from human trafficking annually (Footnote 18).- 新墨西哥州的一名狱警因犯有性侵犯的指控违反民权法而被定罪；
-- A prison officer in New York was sentenced to three years imprisonment with probation for raping two female inmates;
-- A prison officer in Ohio was sentenced to four years of imprisonment for conviction of sexual assault of three female inmates;
-- Some female inmates at a prison in New York disclosed that a number of female inmates were raped and even some of them gave birth to babies in their cells. The majority of the female prisoners who have been sexually assaulted cannot get access to adequate legal protection. The state of Michigan even stipulates explicitly that prisoners are not protected by civil rights laws.
美国的儿童生活在令人担忧的条件下，他们通常是暴力行为的主要受害者，平均每年有5,000名儿童被致命地枪杀。14岁以下的枪击受害者的比例是其他25个工业化国家的21倍。约有150万儿童（占该国总数的2％）在州或联邦监狱中有一个或两个父母。美国是对少年死刑的五个国家之一，在世界上被判处死刑的少年数量最多。该国的25个州对少年判处死刑，其中四个州将死刑年龄最低，在17岁时，其他21个州将16年定为底线，或者根本没有年龄限制。自1990年以来，在美国已经处决了14名少年罪犯，在2000年的前七个月中，有4名少年罪犯被处死，比过去七年中其他国家的数字更多。到2000年10月，有83名少年罪犯在犯罪时未满18岁，他们正等待被处决。美国司法部司法统计局于2000年2月27日发布了一份报告，表明从1985年到1997年，成年监狱中18岁以下的囚犯从3,400增加了一倍，达到7,400；90％的少年罪犯是高中辍学者（脚注19）。迄今为止，在少年拘留所被监禁了100,000多名儿童，其中许多儿童受到了残酷的治疗。
美国许多儿童受到贫困的严重威胁。根据联合国儿童基金会进行的一项调查，美国儿童的贫困率在经济合作与发展组织的29名成员中排名第二。1998年，美国儿童的贫困率达到18.7％，比1979年高2.5个百分点。迄今为止，多达1300万儿童生活在贫困中，比1979年的数字高300万。路透社于2000年1月20日报道美国有15.2％的家庭中有15.2％的儿童正在饿死，而在16.3％的家庭中，年龄低于六岁的儿童没有足够的食物。医疗保险没有涵盖大约一百万不持有美国公民身份的移民儿童。该国有超过一百万的儿童在街上生活在危险的位置，其中40％的儿童不到五岁，有20％的儿童遭受了饥饿感，有20％的医疗保险覆盖了，有10％的谋杀案，枪击事件，强奸和暴力事件，有25％的人经历了家庭暴力。
In the United States, at least 290,000 children were working in factories, mines and farms where working conditions were bad and dangerous. Children working on farms often had to work 20 hours a day and run the risk of pesticide poisoning, injury and permanent disability. They account for 8 percent of the country's total child workers, while the job-related deaths among them made up 40 percent of the country's total occupational death toll. Among these child farm laborers, merely 55 percent have graduated from high schools. It was estimated that there were one million cases of human rights violations against these child farm workers in the United States every year; yet the US Labor Department listed only 104 such cases in 1998.
V. Racial Discrimination Remains, Minorities Ill-Treated
Racial discrimination in the United States has a long history and is well known throughout the world; it still stands as one of the most serious social problems in the United States today. Even a US report on the implementation of the International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination submitted to an UN organization in September 2000 admitted that racism, racial discrimination, de facto apartheid, and inequality for the minorities exist as one of the most serious and daunting challenges facing the United States.
美国一直是少数民族en called "the Third World in the First World" and are on the brink of being forgotten. De facto apartheid is evident everywhere in America. The Washington Post reported on 3 February 2000 that even in large US cities, few residential areas were actually racially integrated. In about one-third of the black people communities, over 90 percent of the residents were black people. In the 1990s, the actual earnings of high-income families increased by 15 percent on average in the United States, but the rich-poor gap between whites and minorities almost remained unchanged. A survey made by the US Federal Reserve in March 2000 indicated that in 1998, the average net wealth of a middle-income family of Latin Americans, African Americans, or other minorities stood at 16,400 US dollars, equal to just 17.28 percent of that of a middle-income white family. The percentage was basically unchanged compared with 1992's 17.23 percent. In 1998, 72.2 percent of the white families owned their own homes while the proportions for African American and Latin American families were only 46.6 percent and 44.9 percent respectively. Nearly two million aboriginals were living on streets of big cities in the United States and 40 percent of them often went without food for up to three days a week. They were the poorest people in the world's richest country. The Christian Science Monitor reported on 15 May 2000 that immigrant families account for over one-fifth of the US poverty-stricken population and one-fourth of the total number of poor children. Among the immigrants in the United States, over nine million, or 43 percent of the total, do not have medical insurance and half of them work on a full-time job. Over 20 percent of the black people and 32 percent of the Latin Americans were not covered by medical insurance, whereas only 12 percent of the white people do not have medical insurance, according to a research report released last year by the Journal of American Medical Association (Footnote 21). The report also indicated that 41 percent of non-Latin American white youths could receive higher education while the rate for Latin Americans white youths was only 22 percent (Footnote 22).
The discrimination against minorities is deeply rooted in America. The unemployment rate among the black people was double that of whites. An investigation made in 1996 indicated that about 90 percent of the chief executives or managers of US companies had never given any black people the same status and responsibilities. Computer giant Microsoft had a staff of over 20,000 in the United States in 1999; only 557 of them were African Americans. The number accounted for about 2.6 percent of the company's total employees. The company had 5,155 mid-level administrative personnel and only 82 people, or 1.6 percent, were African Americans. A report in USA Today in 2000 said that charges of sexual harassment on immigrated workers for racial reasons had witnessed a fast increase, up 10 times from 1986 to 1999. About 2,200 cases were reported and filed for record in the 1980s, while the figure rose to 15,150 in the 1990s.
Racial discrimination has also emerged as a very serious problem in the courts. A total of 98 percent of the judges in the United States were whites while most of the people receiving prison terms or the death sentence were blacks or other minorities. The black people account for 12 percent of the total US population. However, nearly half of the over two million prison inmates in the United States were black people, and another 16 percent were Latin Americans. The black people were eight times more likely to be in prison than the white men, with an incarceration rate of 3,408 per 100,000 black males compared to the rate of 417 per 100,000 white males. In 11 states, the incarceration rate of the black males was from 12 to 26 times greater than that of the white males. The US Department of Justice estimated that 9.4 percent of all black men at the age of 25-29 years were in prison in 1999, compared to one percent of white men in the same age group. Also in 1999, the juveniles belonging to minority groups constituted one-third of the juvenile population in the United States, but they comprised two-thirds of the young people confined in local detention and state correctional systems. One of every three young black people was confined in juvenile facilities or out on bail. An investigation funded by the Justice Department indicated that the number of young black inmates jailed on first offenses was six times higher than that of white youths. Among the violent crime cases, the number of incarcerated black youths was nine times that of the white youths. Fifteen percent of juveniles under 18 were black; while among the confined people of the same age group, 26 percent were black people. Among youths held in adult prison facilities, 58 percent were black (Footnote 23). The likelihood of conviction for youths of the minorities was much higher than that for similar crimes for white youths. In California, children of color were 6.2 times more likely than white youths to be tried in adult courts, and seven times more likely to be sentenced to prison as adults when they were tried. The number of black men sent to state prisons on drug charges was 13.4 times greater than that of white men. The number of black youths sent to correctional facilities for drug offenses was 48 times higher than that for white youths. In at least 15 states, the number of black people sent to prison on drug charges was 20 to 57 times more than white men. In seven states, 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders were black men. Although the majority of crack cocaine users were white, almost 90 percent of federal drug offenders convicted for the same crime were black.
In the 200-plus years since the United States was founded, a total of 18,000 people have been sentenced to death; only 38 of them were white, accounting for only 0.2 percent of the total. No white man has ever been sentenced to death for raping a black woman. Between 1977 and 1998, the black people comprised only 10 to 12 percent of the total US population. However, out of the 5,709 people sentenced to death, 41 percent were black. A report from the Department of Justice issued on 12 September 2000 acknowledged that in the past five years, lawyers proposed to sentence 183 offenders to death, 20 percent of them were whites, nearly half of them were blacks, around 30 percent were Latin Americans and the rest of were other minorities. Of all death penalty sentences upheld by the US federal courts since 1995, the number of colored people accounts for 74 percent. The number of the black and white murder victims was almost the same; however, since 1997, 82 percent of the total number executed were black people who had murdered white people.
vi。经常发动战争，急剧侵犯其他国家的人权
The United States, assuming an air of self-importance and practicing power politics in the world, has done a great deal of damage by encroaching on human rights in other countries.
The United States has, over a long period of time, built many military bases over the world. Several hundred thousand US troops are stationed in these bases and they have committed a series of crimes that violated the human rights of local residents. Such evil acts by the US troops have occurred frequently since 2000 and numerous scandals have been exposed. In 1995, a Japanese schoolgirl was raped by three American soldiers stationed in Okinawa, sparking a massive protest by the Japanese people. Following this incident, a serviceman of the US Navy at the Futenma Airbase was imprisoned for attempting to rape a Japanese woman in Okinawa City on 14 January 2000. That same month, three servicemen of the US Navy in southern Nagasaki sexually harassed two 15-year-old Japanese girls; on 9 January this year, a seaman of the US Navy sexually assaulted a 16-year-old Japanese girl in Okinawa City. On 13 January 2000, a US soldier on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo raped and killed an Albanian girl. The incident aroused strong indignation among Albanians in Kosovo. In July last year, Green Korea United, an environmental protection group of the Republic of Korea (ROK), revealed that the American military base in Seoul discharged untreated embalming fluid used for its servicemen into the Han River. The group reported that since 1991, another US military base in Kangwon Province has discharged waste oil into a local river, which is the source of drinking water for 210,000 local people. The actions of the American troops seriously polluted the local environment and endangered the health of local people. A Cuban newspaper Gelama [name as transliterated] reported on 6 November 2000 that the South Pacific Environmental Program found more than 50 areas in some island countries such as Fiji, Kiribati and Micronesia had been seriously polluted by dangerous refuse. All of the materials have been traced back to US military interests or other interests of the United States. The acting vice minister of foreign affairs of Panama revealed on 24 July 2000 that during its nearly 100-year occupation of the Panama Canal, the US stationed troops in the area, and numerous Panamanian women were abused and cast away by American soldiers, leaving hundreds of thousands of fatherless children. When the US troops withdrew from the Panama Canal area at the end of 1999, they left behind 700 abandoned pregnant women in Panama and Colon provinces alone.
美国延伸其手到处to meddle in other countries' internal affairs, secretly fostered its own forces, and created incidents of violating human rights in other countries. On 17 January 2001, the US Defense Department set up a "research institute for security cooperation in the western hemisphere." The organization's predecessor was the "Escola Das Americas" of the US Army, which was notorious for teaching military personnel from Latin American and the Caribbean region skills of torturing suspects, secret executions, and sending terror letters to intimidate political dissidents, and was denounced by the International Human Rights Organization as a "training base for dictators, killers, and assassins." In the 54 years between its founding in 1946 to its closure in December 2000, the school officially trained 56,000 cadets. Through various forms of "short-term training" and "secret training," it gave training to innumerous people. Many notorious "human rights violators" and "drug trafficking gang chieftains" were graduates of this school. The several most terrible massacres in Latin America and the Caribbean region, including that in [Uraba] of Columbia, were all done by cadets of the "Escola Das Americas." In 1981, in an action carried out by the "[Atlakater] Battalion" trained by the "Escola Das Americas," 767 innocent villagers in [Elmozot] Village of Columbia were killed, including a 90 year old elder and an infant of less than two months old.
近10年来在冷战结束后,peace and development has become the trend of the times and the common wishes of the people. However, being the sole superpower in the contemporary world, the United States still stubbornly maintains its cold-war mentality, continues to station troops overseas, increase military expenditure, sell large quantities of armaments, and make a show of its military strength everywhere. It has become a major root cause of sabotaging the world's peace and stability and infringing upon other countries' sovereignty and human rights. A report jointly published by the US Department of State and the US Congressional Research and Service Bureau on 21 August 2000 showed that the United States' military expenditure and arms exports both held the top place in the world. Its military expenditure accounted for one-third of the world's total; and its arms exports accounted for 36 percent of the world's total. Its military budget in 2001 will increase by 12.6 billion US dollars on top of the 2000 figure of 200 billion US dollars. According to incomplete statistics, since the 1990s, the United States used force more than 40 times against other countries. In many actions, it used various new weapons with strong killing power and weapons prohibited by the international conventions, including cluster bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing innumerous casualties among civilians in many areas and causing a long-term disastrous impact on the ecological environment and human health in the victimized areas. Reportedly, more than 30 years ago, the United States tested depleted uranium bombs on its testing grounds in Panama; in 1991, in the Gulf War, the US forces dropped 940,000 depleted uranium bombs in Iraq (Footnote 24); in the Bosnia-Herzegovena war between 1994 and 1995, the US forces dropped more than 10,000 depleted uranium bombs; in 1995 and 1996, the US forces tested depleted uranium bombs in military exercises on Okinawa Island of Japan; in the Kosovo war in 1999, the US forces used 31,000 depleted uranium bombs against Yugoslavia when attacking 112 targets. Being affected by the radioactive materials from the depleted uranium bombs used by NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovena and Kosovo, the number of people suffering from cancer in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia increased by 30 percent (Footnote 25), and at least 10,000 residents of Kosovo died from being affected by nuclear radiation. In a small town of Bulgaria adjacent to Yugoslavia, in a period of two months, 40 out of the 80 new-born infants were deformed or had various physical defects. Soldiers and civilian officers from some European countries who were sent to perform military duties in Bosnia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, have contracted "Balkan symptom," and at least 27 people died of this disease (Footnote 26). A spokesman for the United Nations pointed out: The UN Environment Program confirmed that they found the existence of radioactive materials in the samples extracted from Yugoslavia. As all people know, uranium is a radioactive super-heavy metal, but the United States flatly denied that depleted uranium bombs may have harmful effects on the human health, and obstructed the investigations conducted by the relevant countries and international organizations. It also flatly refused to stop using depleted uranium bombs. In fact, the United States was long aware of the harmful effects produced by the explosion of depleted uranium bombs. Even before the breakout of the Gulf War in July 1990, a US military test team pointed out in a report that the explosion of depleted uranium bombs will give out extremely strong alpha ray which may cause cancer to human bodies, so effective preventive measures must be taken to protect soldiers performing military duties in areas being attacked with depleted uranium bombs. However, the residents of the same areas did not receive any warnings, and they were doomed to be victimized by the depleted uranium bombs.
美国总是采用负attitude toward the international human rights covenant. It is one of the founding members of the United Nations, but it waited until 1988 to sign a major international human rights covenant for the first time, that is, the "Covenant on Preventing and Punishing the Crime of Genocide." From the signing to the ratification of this covenant and the "International Covenant on Eliminating All Forms of Racial Discrimination" and the "International Covenant on Civil Rights and Political Rights," the United States separately took prolonged periods of 40 years, 28 years, and 15 years. The United States has signed the "International Covenant on Economic, Social, Cultural Rights" for 24 years, but it has not yet ratified the accord so far. At present, the United States is one of the two countries in the world that has not joined the "International Covenant on Children's Rights," and is one of a very small number of countries that has not joined the "Covenant on Eliminating All Forms of Discrimination Against Women." Over a long period of time, the United States opposed to take the right to development as one item of human rights, and it is now the only Western country that is still voting against the "Declaration on the Right to Development." Although the United States is one of the founding members of the Organization of American States, it continued to refuse to join the "Human Rights Convention of America" and other human-rights-related treaties adopted by the organization. For other international human rights treaties it has joined, the United States always made reservation, statements, and understanding to ensure that their implementation would be strictly limited within the scope of the US Constitution and other laws, and could only be applied to the federal level and could not be applied to various states. As a result, the international covenants are a sheer sheet of meaningless paper in the United States.
俗话说，事实胜于雄辩，正义在人们的脑海中存在。促进人权是所有国家的普遍任务，但是美国只是对自己国家存在的严重人权问题视而不见，并一直使用国际事务中“人权”的高音词。年复一年，它发布了所谓的“人权报告”，以谴责其他国家。这只会作为虚假的“人权监护人”及其作为世界霸权寻求者的真实特征揭示其虚伪的特征。我们建议美国政府改变其方向，实际上采取措施来改善国内人权状况，做更多有利于人权领域的国际合作的事情，并停止自大教授其他人的人权问题。
Footnotes:
（1）《华盛顿邮报》的文章。2000年11月9日；来自纳什维尔的“路透社”。2000年11月18日；由东京的“ AP”派遣。2000年11月9日。
（2）从华盛顿派遣“ AP”。2000年11月9日。
（3）西班牙“世界邮报”的文章。2000年8月16日。
(4) Article by "US News and World Reports" weekly. 16 October 2000.
（5）“今日美国”的报告。2000年8月8日。
（6）人权观察的“ 2001年世界报告”。
(7) Article by "Christian Science Monitor" of the United States. 18 September 2000.
(8) Article by "New Statesmen" weekly issue of Britain. 3 July 2000.
(9) Article by "Business Week" issue of the United States. 27 March 2000.
(10) Article by "Granma" of Cuba. 17 November 2000.
(11) Article by "Far East Economic Review" issue No. 20. May 2000.
(12) Article of "Workers' World Party" of the United States. 13 April 2000.
(13) Article of "Washington Post" of the United States. 30 October 2000.
(14) Report by "The New York Times." 29 January 2000.
(15) Dispatch by "AFP" from Paris. 16 May 2000.
(16) Dispatch by "Reuters" from Washington. 14 November 2000.
(17) Report by "The New York Times" of the United States. 2 April 2000.
（18）美国杂志“观察”的文章。2000年12月4日。
(19) Article by "[Gerama]" of Cuba. 21 June 2000.
(20) "2001 World Report" by Human Rights Watch.
(21) Report by "Financial Times" of Britain. 25 October 2000.
(22) Article by "USA Today." 9 January 2001.
(23) Report by "Guardians" of Britain. 27 April 2000.
(24) Article by "Russian Post." 6 January 2001.
(25) Dispatch by "AFP" from London. 6 January 2001.
（26）来自巴黎的“法新社”。2001年1月10日。
[Description of Source: Beijing Xinhua Domestic Service in Chinese -- China's official news service (New China News Agency)]