Editor's note: The Information Office of China's State Council yesterday released a report on the United States' Human Rights Record, 2004.

The following is the full text.

In 2004 the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights in the United States. The scandal shocked humanity and was condemned by the international community.

It is quite ironic that on February 28 of this year, the State Department of the United States once again posed as the "world human rights police" and released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. As in previous years, the reports pointed fingers at the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions - including China - but kept silent on US misdeeds in this field.

Therefore, the world's people have to probe the human rights record behind the Statue of Liberty in the United States.

I. On Life, Liberty and Security of People

American society is characterized by rampant violent crimes, severe infringement of people's rights by law enforcement departments and lack of guarantee for people's rights to life, liberty and security of people.

Violent crimes pose a serious threat to people's lives. According to a report released by the Department of Justice of the United States on November 29, 2004, in 2003 residents aged 12 and above in the United States experienced about 24 million victimizations, and there occurred 1,381,259 murders, robberies and other violent crimes, averaging 475 cases per 100,000 people.

Among them there were 16,503 homicides, up 1.7 per cent over 2002, or nearly six cases for every 100,000 residents, and one of every 44 Americans aged above 12 was victimized.

The Associated Press reported on June 24, 2004, that the number of violent crimes in many US cities was on the rise. In 2003 Chicago alone recorded 598 homicides, 80 per cent of which involved the use of guns.

Washington D.C. reported 41,738 murders, robberies and other violent crimes in 2003, averaging 6,406 cases per 100,000 residents. In 2004 the District recorded 198 killings, or a homicide rate of 35 per 100,000 residents. Detroit, which has less than 1 million residents, recorded 18,724 criminal cases in 2003, including 366 murders and 814 rapes, which amounted to a homicide rate of 41 per 100,000 residents.

In 2003 the homicide rate in Baltimore was 43 per 100,000 residents. The Baltimore Sun reported on December 17, 2004 that the city reported 271 killings from January to early December in 2004. It was reported on September 8, 2004 that by September 4, 2004 there had been 368 homicides in the city, up 4.2 per cent year-on-year.

USA Today reported on July 16, 2004 that in an average week in the US workplace one employee is killed and at least 25 are seriously injured in violent assaults by current or former co-workers.

The Cincinnati Post reported on November 12, 2004 that homicides average 17 a week and there are nearly 5,500 violent assaults a day at US job sites.

The United States has the biggest number of gun owners and gun violence has affected lots of innocent lives. According to a survey released by the University of Chicago in 2001, 41.7 per cent of men and 28.5 per cent of women in the United States report having a gun in their homes, and 29.2 per cent of men and 10.2 per cent of women personally own a gun.

The Los Angeles Times reported on July 19, 2004 that since 2000 the number of firearms holders rose 28 per cent in California.

About 31,000 Americans are killed and 75,000 wounded by firearms each year, which means more than 80 people are shot dead each day.

In 2002 there were 30,242 firearms killings in the United States; 54 per cent of all suicides and 67 per cent of all homicides were related to the use of firearms. The Associated Press reported that 808 people were shot dead in the first half of 2004 in Detroit.

Police violence and infringement of human rights by law enforcement agencies also constitutes a serious problem.

At present, 5,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States use TASER - a kind of electric shock gun, which sends out 50,000 volts of impulse voltage after hitting the target. Since 1999, more than 80 people have died from TASER shootings, 60 per cent of which occurred between November 2003 and November 2004.

A survey found that in the 17 years from 1985 to 2002, Los Angeles recorded more than a 100-fold increase in police shooting at automobile drivers, killing at least 25 and injuring more than 30 of them. Of these cases, 90 per cent were due to misjudgment, according to The Los Angeles Times of February 29, 2004.

On July 21, 2004 Chinese citizen Zhao Yan was handcuffed and severely beaten while she was in the United States on a normal business trip. She suffered injuries to many parts of her body and serious mental harm.

The New York Times reported on April 19, 2004 a comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated, suggesting that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today.

The study identified 199 murder exonerations, 73 of them in capital cases. In more than half of the cases, the defendants had been in prison for more than 10 years.

The United States characterizes itself as "a paradise for free people," but the ratio of its citizens deprived of freedom has remained among the highest in the world. Statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last November showed that the nation made an estimated 13.6 million arrests in 2003. The national arrest rate was 4,695 per 100,000 people, 0.2 per cent up on that of the previous year, reported USA Today on November 8, 2004.

According to statistics from the Department of Justice, the number of inmates in the United States jumped from 320,000 in 1980 to 2 million in 2000, a six-fold increase. From 1995 to 2003, the number of inmates grew at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent in the country, where one out of every 142 people is behind bars.

The number of convicted offenders may total more than 6 million if parolees and probationers are also counted.

The Chicago Tribune reported on November 8 last year that the federal and state prison population amounted to 1.47 million last year, 2.1 per cent more than in 2003. The number of criminals rose by more than 5 per cent in 11 states, with the growth in North Dakota up by 11.4 per cent and in Minnesota by 10.3 per cent.

Most prisons in the United States are overcrowded, but still cannot meet the demand. The country has spent an average of US$7 billion a year building new jails in the past 10 years. California has seen only one college but 21 new prisons built since 1984.

Jails have become one of the huge and most lucrative industries, with a combined staff of more than 530,000 - the second largest employer in the United States after General Motors.

Private prisons are more and more common. The country now has more than 100 private prisons in 27 states and 18 private prison companies. The value of goods and services created by inmates surged from US$400 million in 1980 to US$1.1 billion in 1994.

Abuse of prisoners and violence occur frequently in US jails and prisons, which are under disorderly management. The Los Angeles Times reported on August 15 last year that more than 40 state prison systems were once under some form of court order, for brutality, crowding, poor food and lack of medical care.

News Week of the United States also reported last May that in Pennsylvania, Arizona and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of others before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. Male inmates are often made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation. New inmates are frequently beaten and cursed at and sometimes made to crawl.

At a jail in New York City, some guards bump prisoners against the walls, pinch their arms and wrists, and force them to receive insulting checks when naked. Some male inmates are sometimes compelled to stand in the nude before a group of women guards. Some female inmates go in shackles to hospital for treatment and nursing after they get ill or pregnant, some give birth without a midwife, and some are locked to sickbeds with fetters after Caesarean operations.

More than 80,000 female prisoners in the United States are mothers, and the overall number of minor children of American female prisoners is estimated at 200,000. The country had more than 3,000 pregnant women in jails from 2000 to 2003 and 3,000 babies were born to prisoners during this period, according to Mexico's Milenio on February 21, 2004.

It is estimated that at least 40,000 prisoners are locked up in so-called "super jails," where the prisoner is confined to a very tiny cell, cannot see other people throughout the year, and has only one hour out for exercise every day.

Sexual harassment and encroachment are common in jails in the United States.

The New York Times reported last October that at least 13 per cent of inmates in the country are sexually assaulted in prison in the story "Ex-Inmate's Suit Offers View Into Sexual Slavery in Prisons" on October 12, 2004. In jails of seven central and western US states, 21 per cent of the inmates suffer sexual abuse at least once after being put in prison. The ratio is higher among women inmates, with nearly a quarter sexually assaulted by jail guards.

II. On Political Rights and Freedom

The United States claims to be "a paragon of democracy," but American democracy is manipulated by the rich and malpractices are common.

Elections in the United States are in fact a contest of money. The presidential and congressional elections last year cost nearly US$4 billion, some US$1 billion more than that spent in the 2000 elections. The 2004 presidential election has been listed as the most expensive campaign in the country's history at http://www.opensecrets.org/overview, with the cost jumping to US$1.7 billion from US$1 billion in 2000. To win the election, the Democratic Party and Republican Party had to try their utmost to raise funds.

The Washington Post reported on December 3 last year that the Democratic Party collected US$389.8 million in electoral funds and the Republican Party raised US$385.3 million, both hitting a record high, as reported in "Fundraising Records Broken by Both Major Political Parties" in the Washington Post of December 3, 2004.

Data released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on December 14, 2004 shows the average spending for Senate races was US$2,518,750 in 2004, with the highest reaching US$31,488,821; and the average spending for House races was US$511,043, see http://www.opensecrets.org/overview - with the highest reaching US$9,043,293, see http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topraces.asp?cycle=2004.

The Republican Party, the Democratic Party and their periphery organizations spent a total of US$1.2 billion on TV commercials, making this presidential election the most expensive in history. The TV commercials were broadcast 750,000 times, twice the airings of the election in 2000. In the October 1 to 13 period in 2004, the Republican Party spent US$14.5 million on advertising, and the Democratic Party's advertising spending amounted to US$24 million in the first 20 days of October 2004.

In the elections, political parties and interest groups not only donated money to their favourite candidates, but also directly spent funds on maximizing their influence upon the elections. In Maryland, some corporate bosses donated as much as US$130,000. In return, the candidates after being elected would serve the interests of big political donators. The Baltimore Sun called this "Buying Power" on April 5, 2004.

Due to the fact that local judges in 38 states need to be elected, quite a number of candidates began campaign advertising and looking for big donators. Some interest groups also got themselves involved in the judge election campaign.

The US election system has quite a few flaws. The newly adopted Help America Vote Act of 2004 requires voters to offer a series of documents such as a permanent residence or identification in registering, which in reality disenfranchises thousands of homeless people. The United States is the only country in the world that rules out ex-inmates' right to vote, which disenfranchises 5 million ex-inmates and 13 per cent of the male black vote, according to Milenio on October 22, 2004.

Many problems were reported in the 2004 US presidential election, including counting errors, machine malfunctions, registration confusion, legal uncertainty and lack of respect for voters. According to a report carried by USA Today on December 28, 2004, due to counting errors, a review of election results in 10 counties nationwide by the Scripps Howard News Service found more than 12,000 ballots were not counted in the presidential race, almost one in every 10 ballots cast in those counties. Due to machine malfunctions, 92,000 ballots failed to record a vote for president in Ohio alone. Registration confusion made four-fifths of the states go into the election without computerized statewide voter databases, as reported in "Election Day Leftovers," USA Today, December 28, 2004.

The Democratic Party brought 35 lawsuits against the Republican Party in at least 17 states, charging the latter with threatening and blocking voters from registering or voting, especially minority ethnic groups. In Florida, the cases of black people being removed from voter registration lists or their votes being denied were 10 times higher than people of other races. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported on September 22, 2004, that during the period of election, people often distributed leaflets to black voters to intimidate them by saying that anyone who defaulted electricity bills, apartment bills or parking fines would be arrested outside the polling booths. Some others pretended to be plain clothes police officers outside polling booths and demanded voters show identification. However, black people who were able to present photo identification numbered fewer than one fifth of white people, therefore, many of them were rejected.

In the meantime, fabrications of disputable pictures and statements were put in the agenda of political manoeuvres. Campaign advertisements and political debates were full of distorted facts, false information and lies.

According to statistics from the Annenberg Public Policy Centre of the University of Pennsylvania, campaign advertisements for the 2004 US presidential election had a large proportion of false information that was enough to mislead voters, far beyond 50 per cent more than in 1996. In the Republican camp, at least 75 per cent contained untrue information and personal attacks. The website of the centre - http://www.FactCheck.org - listed at least 100 items of such information.

The US freedom of the press is filled with hypocrisy. Power and intimidation hang over the halo of press freedom. The New York Times published a commentary on March 30, 2004, saying that the US Government's reliance on slandering had reached an unprecedented level in contemporary American political history, and the government prepared to abuse power at any moment to threaten potential critics.

A collected works, Zensor USA, revealed that whenever the faults of government dignitaries or big companies were touched, the strong American press censorship system would snap at the journalists who insisted on investigation and made them the last sacrificial lamb - see "Das Schweigen der Journalisten", Handelsblatt, Germany, on March 17, 2004. The FBI kept watch on a leader of a freedom of speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley for a decade. Although no record showed he violated federal laws, the FBI hired someone to keep monitoring his daily activities and collect personal information without permission from the courts, as reported in Sing Tao Daily, October 11, 2004.

On July 16, 2004, the US State Department made a regulation, in violation of the norms of most other countries, that foreign reporters should leave the country while waiting for the valid period of their visas to be extended. The annual report of the Native American Journalists' Association criticized the US administration for the move, which severely infringes upon press freedom, according to the Associated Press story from Antigua and Guatemala on October 24, 2004.

Someone from the American Society of Newspaper Editors said that the US administration's measures reflected its dislike for foreign news media in Milenio, June 20, 2004. In Iraq, the United States on the one hand alleged that it had brought democracy to the Iraqi people, on the other hand suppressed public opinion. On March 28, 2004, US troops closed down a Shiite newspaper in Baghdad, which triggered a demonstration by thousands of Iraqi people.

On September 27, the Association of American University Presses, Association of American Publishers and other organizations jointly lodged a complaint to the district court of Manhattan, New York, charging the Office of Foreign Assets Control under the Department of the Treasury with deliberately preventing literary works of Iranian, Cuban and Sudanese writers from entering the United States and turning the economic sanctions against the three countries into a "censorship system" to stop free dissemination of information and ideology, as reported by Xinhua, September 30, 2004.

In another case, eight reporters, including Jim Taricani of the TV station in Providence, Rhode Island with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Judith Miller of New York Times, and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, were declared guilty for they declined to disclose their confidential sources of news. The New York Times pointed out on November 10, 2004 that through these cases, it was found out that press freedom suffered rampant infringement.

In addition, in recent years, over a dozen foreign journalists have been detained in airports in the United States, including in Los Angeles. In March 2003, a Danish press photographer was expelled from the country after a DNA test. A Swiss journalist was rejected from entry to an airport in Washington D.C. The airport staff took pictures of and fingerprints from the journalist by force. Meanwhile, he was not permitted to contact the Swiss Embassy in the United States.

In May, two groups of French journalists, altogether six members, were not allowed to enter US territory. They simply came to the United States to cover an exhibition. Two Dutch journalists got into trouble when they were covering a film awards ceremony. In October and December, one British reporter and one Austrian journalist were held up at US airports respectively. In early May, 2004, a British female journalist, who was sent by the Guardian to Los Angeles to cover some events, was detained at the airport and faced interrogation and a body search, and then was handcuffed and taken to the downtown police station. There, she was detained for 26 hours before being sent back to Britain.

III. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The United States refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights and has a negative attitude towards the economic, social and cultural rights of labourers. Poverty, hunger and homelessness have haunted the world's richest country.

The number of people living in poverty has been on a steady rise. According to a report by the Sun on July 6, 2004, from 1970 to 2000, adjusted for inflation, the bottom 90 per cent's average income stagnated while the top 10 per cent experienced an average yearly income increase of nearly 90 per cent.

Upper-middle and upper-class families that constitute the top 10 per cent of the income distribution are prospering while many among the remaining 90 per cent struggle to maintain their standard of living. Worsening income disparities have formed two Americas, as the Baltimore Sun reported on July 6, 2004.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2004, a study in the fall of 2003 by Arthur Kennickell of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System showed that the nation's wealthiest 1 per cent owned 53 per cent of all the stocks held by families or individuals, and 64 per cent of the bonds. They control more than a third of the nation's wealth, according to "US Led a Resurgence Last Year Among Millionaires World-Wide" in the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2004. In Washington D.C., the top 20 per cent of the city's households have 31 times the average income of the 20 per cent at the bottom - "D.C. Gap in Wealth Growing," the Washington Post, July 22, 2004.

Since November 2003, the average income of most American families has been on the decline. The earnings of many medium and low-income families cannot keep up with price rises. They can barely handle the situation. According to the statistics released by the US Census Bureau in 2004, the number of Americans in poverty has been climbing for three years. It rose by 1.3 million year-on-year in 2003 to 35.9 million. The poverty rate in 2003 hit 12.5 per cent, or one in eight people, the highest since 1998. See "Census: Poverty Rose By Million" in USA Today on August 27, 2004, and "More Americans Were Uninsured and Poor in 2003, Census Finds", New York Times, August 27, 2004.

The homeless population continues to rise nationwide. On December 15, 2004, an annual survey released at the US Conference of Mayors showed that the number of people seeking emergency food aid increased by 14 per cent year-on-year while the number of people seeking emergency shelter aid increased by 6 per cent - http://www.Usmayors.org.

It is estimated that the homeless population reached 3.5 million in the United States. But the US Federal budget has stopped providing funding to build new affordable housing, which forced many local governments to cut public housing projects. The city of San Diego has a homeless population of 8,000, but the government could only provide 3,000 temporary beds. Those without lodging tickets are illegally living on the streets. They would be summoned or detained. In January 2004, an investigator with the US Commission on Human Rights denounced the US for large-scale infringements on human rights on this matter.

The health insurance crisis has become prominent. A report by the Washington Post on September 28, 2004 said health insurance costs posted their fourth straight year of double-digit increases in 2004.

Over the past four years, health insurance costs have leaped 59 per cent - about five times faster than both wage growth and inflation. Around 14.3 million Americans put a quarter of their income into health expenses - "Higher Costs, Less Care", the Washington Post, reported on September 28, 2004.

Currently, family health insurance plans cost more than US$10,000 each year. Many families cannot afford it. Fewer workers have coverage - 61 per cent in 2004, compared with 65 per cent in 2001, as reported in "Health Plan Costs Jump 11%", the Washington Post, September 10, 2004.

Compared with 2003, the number of people without health insurance increased by 1.4 million to 45 million, or 15.6 per cent of the country's population - "Census: Poverty Rose by Million", USA Today, August 27, 2004. In Texas, about a quarter of all workers do not have health insurance. In California, around 6 million people do not have health insurance, and the welfare system with an annual cost of US$60 billion is about to collapse, as reported by the Los Angeles Times on May 6, 2004.

Meanwhile, medical accidents occurred one after another, becoming the third killer following heart disease and cancer. According to a report by the Boston Globe on July 27, 2004, one out of every 25 in-patients is the victim of a medical accident. From 2000 to 2002, 195,000 people died because of medical accidents each year. The actual figure may be twice that.

IV. On Racial Discrimination

Racial discrimination is deeply rooted in the United States, permeating every aspect of society.

Ethnic minorities are generally poor, with living conditions much worse than those of white people. According to a report by the Guardian of the UK on October 9, 2004, the average net assets of a white family totalled US$88,000 in 2002, 11 times that of a family of Latin American ancestry, or nearly 15 times that of a family of African ancestry. Nearly one third of the African ancestry families and 26 per cent of the Latin American ancestry families have negative net assets.

Seventy-four per cent of white families have their own houses, while only 47 per cent of families of African or Latin American ancestry have their own houses. The market value of houses bought by black families is only 65 per cent of those bought by white people. Black people's incidence of mortgage loans refusal for house purchases or furniture is twice that of white people. Some black families do not even think of buying their own home. The death rate from illness, accident and murder among black people is twice that of white people.

The rate of being a murder victim for black people is five times that of white people. The rate of being affected by AIDS for black people is 10 times that of white people, while the rate of being diagnosed with diabetes for black people is twice that of white people. See "The State Of Black America 2004," issued by the National Urban League on March 24, 2004, at http://www.nuL.org/pdf/ sobaexec.pdf.

Statistics show that the number of black people living in poverty is three times that of white people. The average life expectancy of a black person is six years shorter than that for a white person.

People of minority ethnic groups are discriminated against in employment and occupation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the United States received 29,000 complaints in 2003 of racial bias in the workplace, as reported in "Racism in the 21st Century," in USA Today on May 5, 2004.

Statistics provided by the United States Department of Labour also suggest that by November 2004, the unemployment rate for black and white people was 10.8 per cent and 4.7 per cent respectively - http://bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf. In New York City, one in every two black men between the ages of 16 and 64 was not working in 2003, according to "Nearly Half of Black Men Found Jobless," New York Times, February 28, 2004.

Black people not only have fewer job opportunities, but also earn less than white people. Even with the same job, a black man only earns 70 per cent of the amount a white man does. Regions such as California, where immigrants make up a large proportion of the local population, are almost like death traps. Mexican labourers who come to work in the United States have a mortality rate as high as 80 per cent.

Teenagers from at least 38 countries work like slaves, according to EFE San Francisco, September 26, 2004. Out of 45 million people who are unable to afford Medicare in the United States, 7 million are African-Americans, accounting for about one fifth of the total African-Americans in the States. The proportion is 77 per cent higher than that for white people, as reported at http://www. johnkerry.com/communities/african-americans/gw_record.html.

The Declaration of Independence said all men are created equal, so the gap between black and white people is simply an insult to the founding essence of the United States, according to the US News and World Report of March 29, 2004.

Apartheid runs rampant at schools in the United States. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court announced the court's decision over a case known as Brown versus Board of Education that the doctrine of "separate but equal" had no place in US public schools. Fifty years later, white children and black children in the United States still lead largely separate lives. One in eight southern black students attends a school that is 99 per cent black. About a third attend schools that are at least 90 per cent minority. In the Northeast, by contrast, more than half of blacks attend such schools, as reported in "Schools and Lives Are Still Separate," the Washington Post of May 17, 2004.

Racism recurs on campus at American universities. Fascist slogans and posters promoting the superiority of white people, along with threats by weapon or words were found on college campuses, including at the University of California at Berkeley. Protests were sparked off when Santa Rosa Junior College in California published anti-Semitic opinions in an article in its campus newspaper and the chat room of its website was dominated by white-supremacist surfers. At Dartmouth College, white girl students auctioned off black slaves in fund-raising activities. At the University of Southern Mississippi, hordes of white students assaulted four black students, chanting racist slogans after a football match. At Olivet College of Michigan State, where there are only 55 black students, 51 of the black students quit school after racial cases of violence or harassment, as reported by the China Press, a Chinese language newspaper published in New York, on April 17, 2004.

Racial prejudice has made social conflicts become acute, causing a rise in hate crimes. Racial prejudice, most often directed at black people, was behind more than half of the nation's 7,489 reported hate crime incidents in 2003, the FBI said on November 22, 2004. Race bias was behind 3,844 of all cases in 2003, the FBI claimed after examining hate crimes handled by 16 per cent of the law-enforcement organizations in the United States.

Reports of hate crimes motivated by anti-black bias totalled 2,548 in 2003, accounting for 51.4 per cent of the total, more than double the total hate crimes against all other racial groups. There were 3,150 black victims in these reports, according to annual FBI figures quoted by AP in Washington on January 26, 2004. With regard to race, among the 6,934 reported offenders, 62.3 per cent were white - http:/www.fbi.gov/pressrel/ presssrel04/pressel/12204.htm.

In a related development, because of the "lingering atmosphere of fear" stemming from the September 11 attacks and fallout from the Iraq War, there were 1,019 anti-Muslim incidents in the United States in 2003, representing a 69 per cent increase. There were 221 incidents in 2003 of anti-Muslim bias in California, triple that of a year ago, according to the Los Angeles Times of May 3.

Racial prejudice is ubiquitous in judicial fields. The proportion of ethnic minority people being sentenced or being imprisoned is notably higher than for whites. In accordance with a report published in November 2004 by the US Department of Justice, ethnic minorities accounted for more than 70 per cent of inmates in the United States. Twenty-nine per cent of black people have had the experience of being in jail. Black people make up 12.3 per cent of the population of the United States, but by the end of 2003, out of 1.4 million prisoners who are serving jail terms above one year at federal or state prisons, 44 per cent were black, or on average 3,231 in every 100,000 African-Americans were criminals. Latin-American inmates make up 19 per cent of the total, or 1,778 in every 100,000 Latin-Americans are inmates. Inmates of other ethnic minorities account for 21 per cent - http://wwww.ojp.usdoj. Gov/bjs/abstract/P03.htm. At the end of 2003, 12.8 per cent of black men aged 25 to 29 were in prison, as reported in the Chicago Tribune on November 8, 2004, compared to 1.6 per cent of white men in the same group - "A Growing Need for Reform," the Baltimore Sun of June 20, 2004.

Black people receive, on average, longer felony sentences than white people. A black person's average jail sentence is six months longer than a white person's for the same crime. Blacks who are arrested are three times more likely to be imprisoned than whites who are arrested. White felons are more likely to get probation than black felons.

After the September 11 incident, the United States has openly restricted the rights of citizens under the cloak of homeland security, and uses diverse means including wiretapping of phone conversations and secret investigations, checks on all secret files, and monitoring transfers of funds and cash flows to supervise the activities of its citizens, particularly people of ethnic minority groups, foreigners and immigrants, who are the main victims.

Statistics show that after the September 11 attacks, 32 million people were investigated for racial prejudice concern throughout the United States. Among the people being investigated out of racial prejudice concern, African-Americans made up 47 per cent, followed by people of Latino and Asian origins. White Americans only accounted for 3 per cent. On June 23, 2004, the Los Angeles Police Department and FBI authorities investigated the televised beating of a black suspect by white police in Los Angeles that has resurrected the explosive spectre of the 1991 Rodney King assault. Eight police officers have been removed from regular duties following the incident on June 23 in which three of them were seen tackling the suspected car thief, one beating him repeatedly with a metal torch, as AFP in Los Angeles reported on June 24, 2004.

In the meantime, the anti-immigrant trend has become increasingly serious in the States. The US Department of Homeland Security announced in November 2004 that 157,281 immigrants were repatriated in one year, up 8 per cent from a year ago, a record high. The number of foreigners arrested without any documents also went up by 112 per cent, according to Argentina's La Nacion, November 21, 2004.

Another report says that from last year in many American cities such as San Francisco, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, Saint Paul, Denver, Kansas and Portland, dozens of immigrants from Mexico or other countries are arrested each day and are forced to wear fetters like suspects. The practice of treating illegal immigrants like criminals has become a national trend. The limit in the definition of terrorists and illegal immigrants has become very blurry.

V. On The Rights of Women and Children

The plight of American women and children was disturbing. The rates of women and children physically or sexually victimized were high. According to FBI Crime Statistics, in 2003 the United States witnessed 93,233 cases of rape. Almost 63 in every 100,000 women fell victim. The statistics also showed that every two minutes one woman was sexually assaulted and every six minutes one woman was raped.

The number of women abused and treated at first aid centres exceeded 1 million every year. More than 1,500 women in the United States were killed every year by their husbands, lovers or roommates, as reported by Milenio on September 26, 2004. Nearly 78 per cent of American women were physically victimized at least once in their lifetime and 79 per cent were sexually abused at least once. A survey released in November 2004 by the US National Institute of Justice showed by the time they concluded four years of college education, 88 per cent of women had experiences of physical or sexual victimization and 64 per cent of them experienced both. In the past decade, charges handled by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against sexual harassment on women surged 22 per cent, according to the Sun of July 16, 2004.

Sex crimes in the US military were on the rise. According to the Washington Post of June 3, 2004, from 1999 to 2002 the number of lawsuits for sexual crimes in the US army that were formally filed grew from 658 to 783, up 19 per cent. The number of rape cases went up from 356 to 445, up 25 per cent. The number of such cases rose by 5 per cent between 2002 and 2003. The Guardian reported on October 25, 2004 that by the end of September 2004 the Miles Foundation had dealt with 242 cases filed between September 2002 and August 2003 concerning female US soldiers being raped or sexually harassed in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain or Afghanistan. In addition, there were 431 cases of female US soldiers being sexually harassed at other military bases.

Women's labour and social rights were violated. According to the Sun newspaper of July 16, 2004, the number of charges handled by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on sexual discrimination against women grew 12 per cent in the past decade. In 2004 two cases drew wide attention. They were a bias class lawsuit involving 1.6 million female employees at Wal-Mart, and another case involving 340 women employed by Morgan Stanley, as reported in the New York Times on July 13, 2004.

Men and women doing the same job were not paid the same wage. Statistics released by the US Labor Department in January 2004 showed a woman working full time had an average earning 81.1 per cent of that of a man. The Chicago Tribune said on August 27, 2004 that the rate of women in poverty went up quickly to 12.4 per cent of the entire female population.

Health care for American women was at a low level. The US Family Medical Leave Act guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave for childbirth to about half of all mothers, but nothing for the rest. A study of 168 countries conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health indicated that US workers have fewer rights to time off for family matters than workers in most other countries, and rank near the bottom in pregnancy and sick leave. "The United States trails enormously far behind the rest of the world when it comes to legislation to protect the health and welfare of working families," said Jody Heymann, a Harvard associate professor who led the study - AP Boston, June 17, 2004.

Child poverty was also a serious problem. The Chicago Tribune reported on August 27, 2004, that the number of children in poverty climbed from 12.1 million in 2002 to 12.9 million in 2003, a year-on-year increase of 0.9 per cent. About 20 million children were from "low-income working families," with barely enough money to cover basic needs, as reported by AP Washington on October 12, 2004. In California, one in every six children did not have medical insurance. The Los Angeles Times said on May 6, 2004, that in the metropolitan area the number of homeless children found wandering the streets at night numbered 8,000, which had stretched the 2,500-bed government-run emergency shelter system well beyond capacity. Poverty deprived many children of the opportunity of obtaining higher education. In the 146 renowned institutions of higher learning, only 3 per cent of the students came from low-income families, while 74 per cent of them were from a high-income background.

Children were victims of sex crimes. Every year about 400,000 children in the US were forced to engage in prostitution or other sexual dealings on the streets. Home-deserting or homeless children were the most likely to fall victim to sexual abuse. Reports of children being sexually exploited, received by the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, soared from 4, 573 cases in 1998 to 81,987 cases in 2003 - USA Today, February 27, 2004.

In recent years scandals involving clergymen molesting children kept breaking. According to a study commissioned by American Catholic bishops, in 2004 a total of 756 catholic priests and lay employees were charged with child sexual harassment. It is believed that from 1950 to 2002 more than 10,600 boys and girls were sexually abused by nearly 4,400 clergymen, according to AFP, February 17, 2005.

Moreover, every year more than 4.5 million children in the United States were molested in kindergartens and schools, which amounts to one in every ten, as AP reported on July 14, 2004.

Violent crimes occurred frequently. Studies show nearly 20 per cent of US juveniles lived in homes that housed guns. In Washington DC 24 people under the age of 18 were killed in 2004, twice as many as in 2003, according to the Washington Post of January 1, 2005. In Baltimore, 29 juveniles were killed between January 1 and September 27, 2004. In 2003, 35 were killed - the Washington Post, September 28, 2004.

A report released by the US Justice Department on November 29, 2004, said about 9 per cent of school kids aged 9 to 12 admitted being threatened with injury or having suffered an injury from a weapon while at school in 2003.

More and more school children were reluctant to go to school because of security concerns. Child abuse and neglect was widely reported in the United States. The Sun newspaper reported on May 18, 2004, that in 2002 a total of 900,000 children in the United States were abused, of whom nearly 1,400 died.

Every year, almost 2 out of every 100,000 American children are killed by their parents or guardians. In Maryland, the rate was as high as 2.4 per 100,000 - "Md Child Abuse Deaths Exceed National Average," the Sun, May 18, 2004. The Houston Chronicle reported on October 2, 2004, that in Texas each member of staff in local government departments responsible for protecting children's rights handled 50 child abuse cases every month.

Two thirds of juvenile detention facilities in the United States lock up mentally ill young people. Every day about 2,000 young people were incarcerated simply because community mental health services were unavailable. In 33 states, juvenile detention centres held young people with mental illnesses without any specific charges against them, as shown at http://demonstrates.reform.house.gov/Documents/200408171941- 41051.pdf.

USA Today reported on July 8, 2004 that between January 1 and June 30 of 2003, 15,000 young people detained in US youth detention centres were awaiting mental health services, while children aged 10 or younger were locked up in 117 youth detention centres. The detention centres totally ignored human rights and personal safety with excessive use of drugs and force, and failed to take care of inmates with mental problems. They even locked up prisoners in cages. There were reports of scandals involving correctional authorities in California, where two juvenile inmates hanged themselves after they were badly beaten by prison guards, as the San Jose Mercury News and Singtao Daily reported on March 18, 2004.

VI. On the Infringement of Human Rights of Foreign Nationals

In 2004, US army service personnel were reported to have abused and insulted Iraqi POWs, which stunned the whole world. The US forces were blamed for their fierce and dirty treatment of these Iraqi POWs. They made the POWs strip naked by force, masking their heads with underwear, locking up their necks with a belt, towing them around, letting military dogs bite them, beating them with a whip, shocking them with electric batons, needling them, and putting fluids containing phosphorus on their wounds. They even forced some of the these POWs to play "human-body pyramid" while naked in the presence of US soldiers who were standing on the roof and mocking them. They sometimes sodomized these POWs with lamps and brooms. Some Iraqi civilians were also fiercely abused.

The newspaper Pyramid pointed out that the true face of Americans was exposed through this incident. A spokesman of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said, sarcastically, that the US has made the whole world see what the hell a democratic, law-ruled nation is.

According to US media such as Newsweek and the Washington Post, as early as several years ago, in US forces' prisons in Afghanistan, interrogators used various kinds of torture tools for acquiring confessions, causing many deaths.

British newspaper the Observer reported on March 14, 2004, that according to a report by the ICRC, US soldiers had formed a style for arresting people before the Iraq War: "Torture is part of the process."

More than 100 former high-ranking Iraqi government and military officials were put under special custody by the US military. They stayed for 23 hours a day in dark, small and tightly closed concrete wards, where they were only allowed to leave twice a day, with 20 minutes available for taking a bath or going to the toilet.

On November 26, Iraqi Lieutenant General Abid Hamid Mahmud al Tikriti was put in a sleeping bag by force and died after he was physically tortured during an interrogation.

According to a recent report by AP on February 18, 2005, in November 2003, CIA officers hanged one of the so-called "ghost" prisoners of the Abu Ghraib Prison, with his hands cuffed behind his back. When he was released from his shackles and lowered, blood gushed from his mouth "as if a faucet had been turned on."

Among the 94 abuse cases confirmed and published by the Office of the US Inspector General for the Field Army, 39 people were killed, 20 of these cases were confirmed as murder. There were also severe child abuses conducted by US forces.

At least 107 children were imprisoned in seven prisons including Abu Ghraib. They were not allowed to contact their families. Their term in prison was undetermined. It was not clear when they were going to be brought before a court hearing. Some of these children had been abused. One low-ranking US officer who had served in the Abu Ghraib Prison testified that US soldiers abused some of these children in custody, and they had even assaulted young girls sexually.

What's more, US soldiers used military dogs to frighten these juvenile prisoners, trying to see whose dog could scare them into losing control of their bowels. US forces had violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by detaining two Palestinian envoys to Iraq in a prison ward of the Abu Ghraib Prison, together with 90 other men. They spent a year in the prison, suffering under very poor living conditions.

The ICRC believes that abuse of detained Iraqis in the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison was not a single case. It was a systematic process. According to some White House documents that were made public on June 22, 2004, the Department of Defence approved the use of such harsh means to interrogate prisoners in Guantanamo of Cuba.

The US Secretary of Defense said in public that the Geneva Convention does not mean that all the detainees, especially those who were so-called "non-fighting personnel," should be treated as POWs. A draft memorandum from the Department of Defense also claimed that US laws and international conventions, including the Geneva Convention, which strictly forbids the use of torture, do not apply to the US President as the General Commander of the US Army. A memorandum of the US Department of Justice makes it even more clear that the United States could use international laws to measure other countries on the issue of the treatment of POWs, while it is not necessary for Washington to abide by these laws. The interrogators were trained to find ways to torture prisoners physically, while this exceeds the Geneva Convention.

The media discovered that the US soldiers' behaviour in humiliating Iraqi prisoners, as shown in photos, was typically what they were trained to do. US Brigadier General Yanis Karpinski told the press that her boss once said to her that "prisoners are dogs." If they were made to think that they were a bit better than dogs, they could get out of control.

Meanwhile, the US Government has tried for the third successive year to extend the term of a resolution of the UN Security Council that soldiers could be exempted from lawsuits at the International Criminal Court, even if they break the relevant rules. In view of prisoner abuses in Iraq, this has been strongly criticized by the UN General Secretary, as detailed in a Reuters story on June 17, 2004.

Former US President Jimmy Carter also criticized US policies formulated by high-ranking officials, saying they are a kind of retrogression that has damaged the principles of democracy and the rule of law, and shown a total lack of respect for fundamental human rights.

To avoid international scrutiny, the United States keeps under wraps half of its 20-odd detention centres worldwide which are holding terrorist suspects. At least seven US-controlled clandestine prisons, one of which has been dubbed "Inferno" in Afghanistan, have not been kept within the bounds of law, as reported by Prensa Latina on August 16, 2004.

A report by the Human Rights First organization on 24 secret US interrogation centres, stated these secret facilities are believed to "make inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely but virtually inevitable," as reported by the London Times on September 11, 2004.

Moreover, an executive jet is being used by American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to other countries, in a bid to use torture and evade American laws. The plane is leased by the US Defense Department and the CIA from a private company in Massachusetts. Being accused of making so-called "torture flights," the jet has conducted more than 300 flights and has flown to 49 destinations outside the United States, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. Suspects are frequently bound, gagged and sedated before being put on board the plane the Times, November 14, 2004.

The United States has secretly shifted thousands of captives worldwide in the past three years, most of whom were not indicted officially.

The United States is the top military power in the world, and its military spending has kept shooting up. Its fiscal 2005 defense budget hit a historical high of US$422 billion, an increase of US$21 billion over fiscal 2004. As the biggest arms dealer in the world, the United States has made a fortune out of war. Its transactions for conventional weapons exceeded US$14.5 billion in 2003, up US$900 million year-on-year, and accounting for 56.7 per cent of total sales worldwide. The Iraq War has been a helping hand for US economic development.

The United States frequently commits wanton slaughter during invasions and military attacks. Spain's Uprising newspaper on May 12, 2004, published a list of human rights infringement incidents committed by US troops, quoting two bloodthirsty sayings of two American generals: "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead" - General Philip Sheridan - and "We should bomb Viet Nam back to the stone age" - Air Force General Curtis LeMay. We can still smell a similar bloodthirstiness over the Iraq War waged by the United States.

Statistics from the health department of the interim Iraqi government show 3,487 people, including 328 women and children, were killed and another 13,720 injured in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces between April 15 and September 19, 2004.

A survey of Iraqi civilian deaths, based on the natural death rate before the war, estimates that the US-led invasion might have led to 100,000 more deaths in the country, with most victims being women and children.

Jointly designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the survey also finds that the majority of the additional, unnatural deaths since the invasion were caused by violence, while air strikes from the coalition forces were the main factor to blame for violent deaths, as reported by AP on October 28, 2004.

On January 3, 2004, four US soldiers stationed in Iraq pushed two Iraqi civilians into the Tigris River, and one of them drowned.

On May 19, 2004, an American helicopter fired on a wedding party in a remote Iraqi village close to the Syrian border, killing 45 people, including 15 children and 10 women.

On November 20, 2004, seven people were killed in Ramadi in the Anbar province when US troops opened fire on a civilian bus.

According to a Staff Sergeant in the US Marines, his platoon killed 30 civilians in six weeks. He has witnessed the gradual rotting of corpses and seen a lot of wounded civilians left without medical treatment - British newspaper the Independent, May 23, 2004.

In addition, US troops have often plundered Iraqi households when tracking down anti-US militants since the invasion. The American forces have so far committed thousands of robberies.

The United States has been hindering the work of the United Nations' human rights organizations. It either took no notice of or delayed acting on the requests of relevant UN agencies to visit its Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

Some justice-upholding developing countries introduced draft resolutions on America's democracy and human rights situation at the 59th UN General Assembly, to show their strong concern over US human rights infringements, prisoner abuse, media control, and loopholes in its election system.

It is the common goal and obligation of all countries in the world to promote and safeguard human rights. No country in the world can claim it is perfect and has no room for improvement in the human rights area. No country should exclude itself from the international human rights development process, or view itself as having an approach to human rights which can reign over other countries and give orders. The United States should be no exception.

Despite many human rights problems of its own, the United States continues to stick to its belligerent stance, wantonly trampling on the sovereignty of other countries, and constantly staging tragedies of human rights infringements in the world.

Instead of indulging itself in publishing the "human rights country report" to censure other countries unreasonably, the United States should reflect on its erroneous behaviour on human rights and take its own human rights problems seriously.

The double standards of the United States on human rights and its exercise of hegemonism and power politics under the pretext of promoting human rights will certainly put itself in an isolated and passive position and beget opposition from all just members of the international community.

(China Daily 03/04/2005 page4)