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China's report on U.S. human rights violations aligns with the American experience
April 07,2023   By:CGTN

Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

April 7, 2023 -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China just released its "Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2022" on March 28, describing a litany of extraordinarily well-documented human rights violations by Washington. As a U.S. citizen myself, I have to say that this report largely aligns with the experience of Americans on the ground.

The report said that 2022 "witnessed a landmark setback for U.S. human rights," and cited a climate where "money politics, racial discrimination, gun and police violence, and wealth polarization are rampant." The contents of the report delve into the country's "dysfunctional civil rights protection system," a "hollowed-out American-style electoral democracy," "growing racial discrimination and inequality," "worsening subsistence crisis among U.S. underclass," "historic retrogression in women's and children's rights" and finally "wanton violation of other countries' human rights and trampling on justice."

I will not reiterate the points made here but I will point out my experience, what I hear from fellow U.S. citizens and residents, as well as information reported in the U.S. media that speaks to these points, which I should mention, are well-known facts.

First of all, in terms of our dysfunctional civil rights protection system, not only does the U.S. have surging violent crime – but the police are themselves violent and mostly despised by average Americans for their proclivity to escalating violence. To give an example, in July of last year, I spent a week in Cincinnati, Ohio with my Czech partner. On the very first weekend, we were just half an hour away from being in a mass shooting at the pizza parlor we were at – and that same evening there were seven other shootings in the neighborhood we stayed in. At the same time, the police are openly hostile to the communities they "serve" and are notorious for escalating situations and killing people in broad daylight.

As for our elections, the mere fact that in the last midterm elections, the 45 percent turnout of voters was considered high speaks for itself. People simply do not vote in elections because they know, as former British Member of Parliament and current Workers Party of Britain Leader George Galloway so eloquently put it, that we can pick from "two cheeks of the same backside." It is an open secret that elections are bought by the wealthy, rendering our country a functional plutocracy.

A memorial at a vigil honoring the victims of a shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, California, the U.S., January 23, 2023. /AP
A memorial at a vigil honoring the victims of a shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, California, the U.S., January 23, 2023. /AP

In terms of racial discrimination and inequality, this has plagued the U.S. since its inception. Black people were slaves for hundreds of years on the American continent and butted out of the most progressive legislation ever in our country, the New Deal, which allowed federal home loans – but only to white families, keeping generational wealth out of the hands of Black families to this day. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security recognizes white supremacist domestic terrorism as the country's greatest threat. 

As for the ongoing crisis for the U.S. underclass, there is much to say about this. Americans are in over their heads in debt, generally speaking, and it is estimated that 63 percent of the population lives paycheck-to-paycheck, meaning any minor financial disturbance will put them on the streets. Americans do not have free higher education or health care, which is driving unemployment/underemployment and declining life expectancy, respectively.

Moreover, a retrogression of women's and children's rights also plays a role in the declining life expectancy. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that maternal mortality in the country reached a high in 2021 to 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is a rate ten times higher than in many other high-income countries.

But while all of this violence and destitution is allowed to roam free and unabated in America, the country diverts immense resources to its military, which it uses to oppress and impoverish other countries, violate human rights and trample on international law. The number of civilians killed by Washington's adventurism may never be known, but estimates range from the tens of thousands to potentially up to a million (or more). And the U.S. operates a number of "black sites" around the globe where it extra-judicially imprisons and tortures people without trial, including at the famous Guantanamo Bay site.

We Americans are aware of this and that's why a growing number of us are protesting against the war machine. Or, in some cases, many are protesting by simply leaving the country, renouncing their citizenships and finding greener pastures, so to speak. The report from China's State Council Information Office aligns perfectly with our experience on the ground and speaks to the injustices committed by the U.S. government.

By: Bradley Blankenship