People's Republic of China publishes White Paper Criticizing US Human Rights Record 2013

[grahamhgreen]

Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013

State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China

Foreword

The State Department of the United States, which posed as "the world judge of human rights," made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks on the human rights situation in almost 200 countries and regions again in its just-released Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013. However, the U.S. carefully concealed and avoided mentioning its own human rights problems. In fact, there were still serious human rights problems in the U.S in 2013, with the situation in many fields even deteriorating.

-- The U.S. engaged in a tapping program, code-named PRISM, exercising long-term and vast surveillance both at home and abroad. The program is a blatant violation of international law and seriously infringes on human rights.

-- The use of solitary confinement is prevalent in the U.S.. About 80,000 U.S. prisoners are in solitary confinement in the country. Some have even been held in solitary confinement for over 40 years.

-- The U.S. still faces grave employment situation with its unemployment rate remained high. Rates of unemployment for the lowest-income families have topped 21 percent. The homeless population in the U.S. kept swelling and it had climbed 16 percent from 2011 to 2013.

-- There are a large amount of child laborers in the agricultural sector in the U.S. and their physical and mental health was seriously harmed.

-- Frequent drone strikes by the U.S. in countries including Pakistan and Yemen have caused heavy civilian casualties. The U.S. has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, causing deaths of up to 926 civilians.

-- The U.S. remains a country which has not ratified or participated in a series of core UN conventions on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The U.S. government took liberty in monitoring its citizens, which shocked the world. Tortures in the U.S. prisons raised concerns. Elections and the checks-and-balances systems were plagued by malpractices and inefficiency, impairing civil interests.

The U.S. government exercises massive and unrestrained information tapping on its own citizens. Edward Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, revealed a tapping program carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA), code-named PRISM. Under the program, the U.S. intelligence, by virtue of data provided by nine Internet companies, including the Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo, and other major telecom providers, tracked citizens' private contacts and social activities recklessly (www.washingtonpost.com, June 7, 2013).

The website of The Washington Post revealed on June 7, 2013, that the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were tapping directly into the central servers of some Internet companies, and users' data, extracting their emails, chats, audio and video data, documents and photos in real time, and putting certain targets and their contacts under full surveillance.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/28/c_133150579.htm

In my view, we should clean up our own act before we start shooting off our pop gun around the world in feigned indignation at the abuse of others.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. See? Then when the U.S. walks in, wishing to be respected, what do we find?

That we aren't exactly clean.

[Blue_Tires]

8. Nobody is as clean and pure as fresh-fallen snow

but you realize there is a biblical amount of record-breaking irony in China calling us out, right?

I've seen nations with stones, but these are some huge fuckin' boulders China is rolling with...

[grahamhgreen]

10. You mean commie China, where Corporate America sends all our jobs to exploit cheap labor and pollute

their environment?

Yeah, these guys are all about the same!

[Sarah Ibarruri]

13. I do. I agree on the irony part re China. There's also irony on the U.S. calling *anyone* out.

Our mistreatment of people here is not to be dismissed, and our regime-changes in other countries must not be ignored.

[Blue_Tires]

15. Exactly...So let China clean up their own goddamned house before calling someone out

and here, the U.S. needs clean up our own goddamned house before calling someone out

along with Israel cleaning up their own goddamned house before calling someone out

and Russia cleaning up their own goddamned house before calling someone out

and on down the line....

[Sarah Ibarruri]

16. We'd have to set the example first, and we never clean up before calling others out nt

[NuclearDem]

2. This coming from the PRC?

No, the US is hardly the paragon of human rights, but this list coming from the PRC? Pot and kettle.

[HappyMe]

4. No kidding.

I don't think the PRC has much business wagging their finger at us.

[grahamhgreen]

11. Come on. They're our #1 trading partner where Corporate America ships all our jobs!

We love them, right???

[HappyMe]

12. Hell no.

People who have to put suicide nets out to keep employees from killing themselves don't have any room to talk about human rights.

[grahamhgreen]

17. That would be the workers at OUR OWN FACTORIES!!!!

[JI7]

3. this is China trying to take attention off themselves, but i don't mind foreign criticism of the US

but in this case they don't really care about any of it.

[Rex]

6. +1

Total lip service by China.

[Blue_Tires]

5. You need to put "Not the Onion" in your title

and wake me up when China puts the mirror up to themselves

[grahamhgreen]

18. Don't kill the messenger. It is past time for us to clean up our act!!!

[sibelian]

7. LOL!

This is clearly some sort of international "Biggest hypocrite" competition.

They're catching up...

[jsr]

9. I'll take the report from Worker's Paradise under advisement

[RobertEarl]

14. China?

You mean that country with over a billion people living in relative peace with each other?

The country that is not an empire, with military bases in 70 countries?

A country that was attacked and occupied in WW2, and yet has not reacted and tried to occupy its worst antagonist - Japan? Rather lives in peace with Japan and except for Tibet is friends with its neighbors?

Still, China has its problems. Its technological development has not been matched by its understanding there are limits to how much pollution the environment can balance. They are headed for big problems.

Their economy is built now on growth. That growth can not continue without natural resources which are constrained and controlled by other countries and from great distance. It is not sustainable.

China has a point.... the US is centered upon limiting humans unless they produce some monetarily valuable commerce, and in so doing does think of individuals as an enemy of the system. Just look around you: if you don't play by all the rules you can easily be incarcerated. It is society based on detention of unfavorables.