ISTANBUL
China has claimed that the human rights situation in the US was in “extreme decline” last year.
“Human rights legislation and justice have seen an extreme retrogression, further undermining the basic rights and freedoms of the American people,” read "The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2022," released by Beijing.
China’s State Council Information Office released the report late Tuesday, dividing it into six parts, which stated that last year was a “landmark setback for US human rights.”
The country that calls itself a “human rights defender,” said the report, referring to the US, is rampant with “chronic diseases such as money politics, racial discrimination, gun and police violence, and wealth polarization.”
It blamed “greatly relaxed gun control” as a reason for the high death toll from gun violence in the US.
“The United States leads the world in gun ownership, gun homicide and mass shootings, with more than 80,000 people killed or injured by gun violence in 2022, the third consecutive year on record that the United States experiences more than 600 mass shootings,” said the report, calling gun violence an “American disease.”
‘Dark money manipulates US elections’
The report said midterm elections in the US have “become the most expensive ones in the United States, and American-style democracy has lost its popular support.”
It claimed that the cumulative spending for the 2022 midterm elections exceeded $16.7 billion.
“Political donations from billionaires accounted for 15% of the federal total, up from 11% in the 2020 election cycle. Dark money donations manipulate US elections furtively, and political polarization and social fragmentation make it difficult for the country to reach a democratic consensus,” the report said.
The report pointed out that racism was on the rise and ethnic minorities suffered “widespread discrimination.”
“Hate crimes based on racial bias in the United States increased dramatically between 2020 and 2022,” it said, adding that 81% of Asian Americans, “say violence against Asian communities is surging.”
“African Americans are 2.78 times more likely to be killed by police than whites. The sufferings caused by genocide and cultural assimilation taken by the US government against Indians and other aborigines in history still persist today,” it said.
Life expectancy on decline
The report said life expectancy in the US “has plummeted” by 2.7 years to 76.1 years from 2019 to 2021, the lowest since 1996, and “deaths from drug abuse continue to climb.”
“Interest groups and politicians trade power for money, allowing drug and substance abuse to flourish. The number of Americans dying from drug and substance abuse has increased dramatically in recent years, to more than 100,000 per year. Substance abuse has become one of America's most devastating public health crises,” it said.
Amid a “worrying” living environment for children, the Chinese report on the US human rights situation mentioned the loss of constitutional protections for abortion by women.
The conditions in juvenile detention centers are harsh, according to the report.
It called out Washington of using sanctions that are still in force on more than 20 countries, “resulting in the inability of those targeted to provide basic food and medicine for their people.”
“US abuse of force and unilateral sanctions has created humanitarian disasters,” the report said, adding that the US has carried out military operations in 85 countries in the name of “anti-terrorism” since the beginning of the 21st century.
It has “directly claimed at least 929,000 civilian lives and displaced 38 million people.”
The report said the US is refusing to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which was established in 2002 and once held up to about 780 people, “most of whom were detained without trial and were subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment.”
“The camp is an ugly chapter of unrelenting human rights violations by the United States,” it added.
“Immigration issue has become a tool of partisan fight, and immigration farces have been staged on a large scale, making immigrants face extreme xenophobia and cruel treatment. There was record high of nearly 2.4 million migrant arrests at the nation's border in 2022, and the death toll of immigrants at its southern border reached 856, the deadliest in a single year,” said the report.
“The United States, founded on colonialism, racist slavery and inequality in labor, possession and distribution, has further fallen into a quagmire of system failure, governance deficits, racial divide and social unrest in recent years under the interaction of its polarized economic distribution pattern, racial conflict dominated social pattern and capital interest groups controlled political pattern,” the report said.
