Human rights record of U.S. is appalling

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By Li Yunlong (People's Daily) 09:03, April 08, 2021

For many years, the U.S. has disguised itself as a representative for human rights and an incarnation of justice, and obviously regarded itself as the judge of human rights of all countries in the world. However, while the U.S. constantly accuses other countries of violating human rights, it never looks into the human rights issues back home.

Demonstrators take part in a "Black Lives Matter" protest commemorating Juneteenth in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States, June 19, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

The truth is the country has an ignoble record of human rights and serious violations of human rights. Such a country is in no way qualified to make carping comments on the human rights situations in other countries.

The U.S. government's incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to human rights tragedies.

Faced with an epidemic rarely seen in human history, the U.S. government had repeatedly ignored warnings of the pandemic given by the World Health Organization (WHO) and public health agencies in the U.S.

Certain U.S. politician deliberately downplayed the epidemic situation, claiming that the pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus was not a serious disease, the infection rate and mortality from the disease were very low, and that the disease was no worse than the seasonal flu and the virus would miraculously disappear.

Because the U.S. government failed to take effective measures, the country lost crucial weeks for pandemic prevention and control.

As the epidemic situation continued to get worse, the U.S. government, however, paid little regard for scientific public health principles and was not willing to control the virus through thorough testing, tracing and isolation. Instead, it fantasized about bringing the crisis to an end with magic new medicines.

Although the virus was spreading in a vast area in the U.S., then American leader and some state officials had been extremely reluctant to issue any decree to make wearing masks mandatory.

Even when the COVID-19 situation was out of control in the U.S. and the country’s number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and death toll from the disease rose to the highest in the world, the U.S. government was hasty to restart the economy due to political concerns. Several states rushed to reopen and caused the virus to shift to the South, West and eventually the rest of the United States.

The American people have paid a heavy price for the U.S. government's misconduct during the outbreak.

By March 31, 2021, the U.S. had registered more than 31 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with related deaths exceeding 560,000.

As of the end of February 2021, the U.S., with a population of less than 5 percent of the world's total, accounted for more than 25 percent of all the confirmed cases and nearly 20 percent of the deaths from the COVID-19.

During the pandemic, American people's right to life was in a terrible situation rarely seen in the world.

The rights of Native Americans have been seriously infringed. The U.S. government has carried out systematic ethnic cleansing and massacres of Indians in history, and truly conducted acts of genocide.

For nearly a century after the U.S. was founded, the government wantonly expelled and killed American Indians through the Westward Movement.

Before the arrival of Western settlers, there were tens of millions of natives living on the North America continent. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the population of American Indians in the U.S. had plummeted from five million in 1492 to 250,000.

The modern history of Native Americans is a history of colonization and genocide.

Today, Native Americans still live a life like second-class citizens and their rights have been trampled over.

Among Native Americans, 21.9 percent live below the poverty line, as compared to 9.6 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

The average life expectancy of American Indians is 5.5 years lower than that of all races in the U.S. The incidences of diabetes, chronic liver disease, and alcohol dependence of the racial group are 3.2 times, 4.6 times, and 6.6 times the U.S. average, respectively.

Many communities of Native Americans are very poor, and the unemployment rate in some Indian tribes is as high as 85 percent.

The report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living said that some of the most devastating effects of COVID-19 had been felt by racial and ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples. The hospitalization rate of Native Americans was five times that of non-Hispanic white Americans; and the death rate of Native Americans also far exceeded that of white Americans.

The human rights of African Americans in the U.S. have been crushed.