- On March 11, the US State Department issued its "2009
Human Rights Report: China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau),"
calling the People's Republic of China (PRC) "an authoritarian state
in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constitutionally is the paramount
source of power," practicing:
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- -- "cultural and religious repression;"
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- -- harassment of human rights activists;
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- -- harassment and disbarment of lawyers who defend them;
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- -- control of free expression, the Internet, and access
to it;
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- -- extrajudicial killings;
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- -- torture and coerced confessions of prisoners;
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- -- use of forced labor, including prison labor;
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- -- monitoring, harassing, detaining, arresting, and imprisoning
"journalists, writers, dissidents, activists, petitioners, and defense
lawyers and their families;"
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- -- denial of due process;
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- -- political control of courts and judges;
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- -- administrative detentions and prolonged illegal ones;
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- -- "tight restriction (on) freedom to assemble,
practice religion, and travel;"
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- -- failure "to protect refugees and asylum-seekers
adequately;"
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- -- forced repatriations of North Koreans;
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- -- pressure on other countries to repatriate Chinese
citizens;
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- -- monitoring and restricting local and international
NGOs;
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- -- "endemic corruption;
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- -- trafficking in persons;
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- -- discrimination against women, minorities, and persons
with disabilities;
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- -- forced abortion(s and) sterilization(s);"
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- -- no choice of independent union representation or legal
right to strike;
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- -- "arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life;"
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- -- harsh and degrading treatment in prisons;
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- -- arbitrary arrests and detentions;
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- -- "arbitrary interference with privacy, family,
home, or correspondence;" and more.
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- While China is no model human rights champion, America
is guilty of far worse crimes as well as all of the above abuses, yet rarely
do major media reports reveal them.
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- On March 13, two days after the State Department's report,
China's Information Office of the State Council published its own comprehensive
report, titled: "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009,"
correctly saying America:
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- "released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
for 2009....posing as 'the world judge of human rights' again. As in previous
years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation
in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind
eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own
territory (and those of other nations. China's report) is prepared to help
people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in
the United States."
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- Countering official American mythology, its Information
Office of the State Council presented an accurate account of what US propaganda
suppresses, revealing some of what's known but publicly concealed about:
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- -- the world's most lawless state;
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- -- a society in social crisis;
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- -- a domestic armed camp under police state laws that
suppress human rights and civil liberties, criminalize dissent, allow illegal
spying, control information, persecute political prisoners for political
advantage and deny them due process and judicial fairness;
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- -- torture as official US policy at home and abroad;
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- -- the operator of the world's largest global gulag;
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- -- systematic targeted killings;
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- -- permanent wars for unchallengeable dominance:
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- -- targeting peaceful nations;
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- -- committing ruthless state terror;
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- -- endangering world stability and peace;
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- -- illegally transferring public wealth to elitist private
hands;
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- -- stealing elections;
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- -- governing as a one-party state with two wings, each
as criminally ruthless and corrupted as the other, and;
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- -- as a result, is hated and feared globally and to a
growing degree at home.
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- In its report, the State Department presented detailed
charges (true or false), mostly without source substantiation.
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- China, however, covering six major topics, used data
from the US Justice Department (DOJ), FBI, other US agencies, state ones,
think tanks, and international and US media reports, revealing a far different
America than portrayed in the mainstream and bogus official reports.
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- (1) Life, Property and Personal Security
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- Criminality in America is rampant, high crime rates threatening
"lives, properties and personal security," including annually:
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- -- 4.9 million violent crimes;
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- -- 16.3 million property ones;
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- -- an epidemic of gun violence;
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- -- 30,000 gun-related deaths;
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- -- 14 million arrests (except traffic violations);
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- -- 15,000 murders (mostly against the poor);
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- -- thousands of violent school incidents; and more.
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- (2) Civil and Political Rights
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- "In the United States, civil and political rights
of citizens are severely restricted and violated by the government."
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- Citing Amnesty International (AI), the Chicago Defender,
a New York Police Department report, the Oregonian, the Washington Post,
Chicago Tribune and other sources, China reported nationwide instances
of police violence, including lawless killings, beatings, Taser gun abuse,
and more, including against children - concluding that "Abuse of power
is common among US law enforcers."
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- In his 1990 book "Protectors of Privilege,"
Frank Donner called Chicago (this writer's home) "The National Capital
of Police Repression," mostly against poor blacks and Latinos. He
documented:
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- "wide-open, no-holds-barred style surveillance.
Chicago-style official vigilantism guerrilla warfare against substantial
sectors of the city's population," calling it "flamboyantly illegal
institutionalized aggression." Unfortunately, what Chicago experiences,
happens nationwide, in large and small cities and rural communities, making
America repressively harsh against its least advantaged, most vulnerable
people.
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- It shows up in poor neighborhoods and a shameful gulag,
China citing Department of Justice (DOJ) and other data revealing some
of the following statistics and more of its own, including as many as 2.4
million imprisoned Americans at yearend 2008 (by far, the world's largest
prison population plus thousands of others abroad). They include inmates
in federal and state facilities, local jails, Indian, juvenile, and military
ones, US territories, and numbers held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE).
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- In addition, another 7.3 million are under correctional
supervision, and 13 million pass through US jails annually. Half of them
are for non-violent offenses. Half of those are drug-related. In 1980,
40,000 drug offenders were in prison. Today, it's over 500,000, the result
of the "war on drugs," that's part of the war on civil liberties
and human rights.
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- China says "the basic rights of (US) prisoners"
aren't protected, evidenced by rampant sexual abuse and thousands of rapes
annually in federal confinement. "Chaotic management of (US) prisons
also (causes) widespread diseases among inmates," including thousands
of confirmed HIV/AIDs cases.
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- Other civil rights abuses include lawless surveillance,
police state laws like the Patriot Act, subordinating free expression to
the national interest, clashing with peaceful street demonstrators, and
numerous other examples of growing despotism.
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- (3) Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
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- America is plagued by growing poverty, unemployment,
homelessness, and hunger. Its peoples' "economic, social and cultural
rights cannot be guaranteed." Business and personal bankruptcies,
bank failures, home foreclosures, and human depravation are the highest
in decades.
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- In addition, worker rights "were seriously violated,"
according to a New York Times 2009 study showing 68% of those surveyed
getting wage cuts, another 76% working overtime cheated out of pay, and
57% denied documents to assure legal, accurate compensation. Tens of millions
lack medical insurance or are underinsured, legislation passed to correct
this, in fact, a bogus deception that will make America's dysfunctional
health care system worse for a greater number of people.
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- (4) Racial Discrimination Against Blacks, Latinos, Muslims,
Immigrants of Color, and Native Americans
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- It rages out of control in areas of income, housing,
employment, education, judicial fairness, incarceration, life imprisonment,
the death penalty, drug-related arrests, and more. In addition, "Ethnic
hatred crimes are frequent."
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- (5) Rights of Women and Children
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- "The living conditions of women and children in
the United States are deteriorating and their rights are not properly guaranteed.
Women do not enjoy equal social and political status as men." It shows
up in employment opportunities, income levels, politics, the military,
academia, violence including sexual abuse, and perceptions of women as
sex objects, homemakers, and child bearers.
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- "American children suffer from hunger and cold,"
a US Department of Agriculture 2008 report showing one-fourth of them nationally
were poorly fed. Many face hunger and malnutrition, live in impoverished
households, lack proper medical care, experience violence and/or sexual
abuse, and many become homeless every year. Most are blacks and Indians.
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- Many others are unprotected farm workers, forced into
near bondage, living in impoverished misery along with their parents in
states like Florida, California, Texas, North Carolina and Washington.
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- America "is the only country in the world"
without a parole system for minors, and one of only two nations imposing
life without parole (LWOP) sentences. The other is Israel. Many charged
with minor crimes get no legal assistance. In prisons, officials turn a
blind eye to their abusive treatment.
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- (6) Human Rights Violations Against Other Nations
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- "The United States with its strong military power
has pursued hegemony in the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other
countries and trespassing their human rights."
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- As the world's largest arms dealer, it fuels global instability.
Its military spending tops all other nations combined. Its Iraq and Afghan
wars have greatly burdened the American people "and brought tremendous
casualties and property losses to" conflict states.
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- "Prisoner abuse is one of (America's) biggest human
rights scandals," well documented in 2009, including by the UN's Human
Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human
rights and fundamental freedoms. Clear evidence was presented regarding
illegal long-term secret detentions, special deportations, torture, other
forms of abuse and degrading treatment, and overall lawlessness suppressed
in mainstream US media reports.
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- China's is accurate and revealing. It could have included
more, but presents a disturbing account of the real America, not the fictional
one portrayed daily on TV screens, films, major publication accounts, what's
taught in schools or preached in houses of worship - a sanitized version
of what growing millions experience daily and what Blacks, the poor, Muslims,
Latino immigrants, and Native Americans have known all their lives as well
as America's global victims.
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- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the
Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays
at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs
are archived for easy listening.
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- http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/
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- http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/
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