On 24th March 2021, China published its annual report on U.S. human rights, meanwhile the U.S. continuously unites many forces to misinterpret social situations and the living standards in China while covering its messes. The report in 2020 is divided into six parts to present the severe human rights violations that happened in the U.S. last year.
Incompetent Pandemic Containment Leads to Tragic Outcome
Johns Hopkins University showed that as of the end of February 2021, with a population of less than 5 percent of the world’s total, the United States accounted for more than 25 percent of all the confirmed cases and nearly 20 percent of the deaths.
Disease modelers with the Columbia University estimated that, if the United States had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1st 2020, about 83 percent of the nation’s pandemic-related deaths would have been avoided.
Though a number of health officials, including the Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and medical experts warned of the possibility of a pandemic in the United States, the American leader not only left it to cities and states to solve national problems with testing and hospital supplies by themselves but also gave wrong treatment suggestions to the public. Vulnerable citizens fell victim to the government’s incompetent response to COVID-19. The Guardian website reported on last March 21th that in the wake of the epidemic, it’s the wealthy and powerful first get coronavirus tests, while low-paid workers, most of whom have no paid sick leave and can’t do their work from home, put themselves at greater risk of contracting the virus in order to earn a living.
American Democracy Disorder Triggers Political Chaos
According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, dark money groups poured more than 750 million U.S.-Dollars into 2020 elections through ad spending and record-breaking contributions to political committees such as super political action committees. The influence of money in American electoral politics essentially makes it a money-led election, causing the public to have low rates of faith in politics.
According to a November 13th 2020 report by Pew Research Center, there has been an increasingly stark disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on the economy, racial justice, climate change, law enforcement, international engagement, and a long list of other issues. The 2020 presidential election exacerbated these deep-seated divides. A month before the election, about 90 percent in both camps worried that a victory by the other would lead to “lasting harm” to the United States. The election did not resolve the political differences in the United States but heated the social confrontation. On Januar 6th 2021, tens of thousands of protesters who refused to accept the election defeat staged a “Save America” rally in Washington, D.C.
Ethnic Minorities Devastated by Racial Discrimination
In the United States, racism exists in a comprehensive, systematic and continuous manner. Davis Vanguard reported on December 4th 2020 that people of color account for a disproportionate 43 percent of executions in the U.S. since 1976, and 55 percent of defendants currently awaiting execution are people of color.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of the United Nations and other institutions pointed out that the white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan overtly use racist slogans, chants and salutes to promote white supremacy and incite racial discrimination and hatred.
Many indigenous peoples live in low-income communities, and suffer from higher rates of cancer and heart diseases due to toxic radioactive environments, causing an abnormally high rate of birth defects. Since the pandemic began, the incidents of Asian Americans being humiliated and even assaulted in public have been found everywhere, and some American politicians have misled the public on purpose. Political figures increasingly use divisive language in attempts to marginalize racial, ethnic and religious minorities, which amounts to inciting and fueling violence, intolerance and bigotry.
Continuous Social Unrest Threatens Public Safety
According to the FBI’s Preliminary Uniform Crime Report released in September 2020, in the first half of 2020, the number of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses increased 14.8 percent year on year, with cities with populations of 250,000 to 500,000 reporting an increase of 26 percent. During the same period, the number of arson offenses increased 19 percent year on year, while such offenses rose 52 percent in cities with populations of 1 million and over.
According to data from Gun Violence Archive, more than 41,500 people died by gun violence in 2020 nationwide, an average of more than 110 a day, which is a record. There had been 592 mass shootings nationwide, an average of more than 1.6 a day.
George Floyd’s death from police brutality sparked unrest, leading to protests in support of Black Lives Matter throughout the United States with protesters blocking the streets and building barricades to confront the police. A large number of police stations, public institutions and shopping malls were looted. In the face of visceral public grievances, the then U.S. administration leader added fuel to the fire by deploying a large number of National Guard soldiers across the country and calling for shooting. There were at least 117 cases of journalists being arrested or detained while on the job covering anti-racism protests in the United States in 2020, a 1,200-percent increase from the figure in 2019.
Growing Polarization Between Rich and Poor Aggravates Social Inequality
The COVID-19 epidemic plunged the United States into the worst economic downturn since World War II. The website of Forbes reported on December 11th, 2020 that over the past months of the pandemic, the collective net worth of America’s 614 billionaires has increased by 931 billion U.S.-Dollars. America’s poverty rate jumped to 11.7 percent in November 2020, up from 9.3 percent in June, according to researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame.
More than 50 million people – one in six Americans, including one in four children – could experience food insecurity in 2020, according to an analysis report updated in October 2020 by Feeding America. America has no universal health insurance because of political polarization and the number of people enjoying health insurance has shrunk sharply due to the epidemic. From March to May 2020, an estimated 27 million Americans have lost health insurance coverage in the pandemic.
Trampling on International Rules Results in Humanitarian Disasters
At a time when global unity is needed to fight the pandemic, the American government brazenly announced its withdrawal from the WHO. During this pandemic, the U.S. government still imposed unilateral sanctions on countries such as Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria, which made it difficult for the sanctioned countries to obtain needed anti-pandemic medical supplies.
According to a report of CNN on September 30th 2020, in the 2020 fiscal year, 21 people died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, which was more than double the number of deaths in the fiscal year 2019 and marked the highest annual death toll since 2005. According to a report on the website of the Los Angeles Times on November 18th 2020, the U.S. government had expelled at least 8,800 unaccompanied immigrant children despite serious protection risks during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Plus, the United States, as the largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, promised to bear a great share of emission reduction. However, the United States ran counter to the trend of the times and officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement on November 4th 2020, becoming the only country among the nearly 200 contracting parties to quit the treaty. On June 11th 2020, the U.S. government authorized economic sanctions and travel restrictions against workers of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and their family members for investigating American troops and intelligence officials for possible war crimes in Afghanistan and elsewhere. President Trump also pardoned four Blackwater contractors who were found to have committed a massacre at Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007, causing 14 unarmed civilians dead and at least 17 people wounded.
(Source: The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, Nytimes, Vox, abcnews, usatoday, nbcnews, ice, ohchr, latimes, chicagotribune, BBC, LAist, the times of India, time magazine, the nation, the guardian)
