The following is an excerpt of the US Human Rights Record from 1999 to 2021 on violations of human rights in other countries:

1999
 
In 1999, countless cases of the United States' violation of human rights in other countries were reported. In March 1999, over 400 Canadians, representing more than 1,000 victims of contaminated blood transfusions received from prisoners in the United States, filed a class action suit in a US court for compensation.
 
Despite the fact that it was known as early as 1980 that blood transfusions from prisoners, many of whom are homosexual and/or drug addicts, might lead to AIDS, the United States continued to export the plasma to Canada, Japan, Europe and other countries. The practice has caused thousands of recipients to be infected with AIDS, hepatitis C and other diseases. Preliminary estimates show that the number of victims of the tainted plasma in North America and Caribbean Region exceeded 10,000.
 
On April 6, 1999, a Russian newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, reported that after the attack on Pearl Harbour, over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were arrested without charges and held in remote camps in desert areas.
 
The newspaper said the Japanese-Americans were still in prison at the end of World War II.
 
On June 22, 1999, Hong Kong-based newspaper the South China Morning Post reported that during the Viet Nam War, the United States sprayed 42 million litres of bio-chemicals in non-military zones in rural Viet Nam, an act which still affects 5 million Vietnamese and has left 600,000 seriously ill.
 
In early October 1999, American media such as the Associated Press and Newsweek magazine, citing eyewitness accounts from American veterans and survivors, reported that in July 1950, the early period of the Korean War, US troops massacred hundreds of Korean refugees, including women and children, with machine-guns in No Gun Ri.
 
According to a report released by Reuters on October 6, an apartheid-era germ and chemical warfare campaign against blacks in South Africa was based on a US Government biological and chemical programme. On October 25, British weekly magazine New Statesman quoted a new book about the United States and biological warfare by two Canadian scholars as reporting that after World War II, the United States secretly granted pardons to Japanese war criminals who participated in human biochemical weapons experiments in China. The United States used their experimental results to develop biochemical weapons that they later used against China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea during the Korean War.
 
US human rights violations have shown no signs of decreasing with the appearance of the new millennium. On January 13, Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, a US soldier with the Kosovo peacekeeping force, was arrested and transferred to the US army's central prison in Germany after he allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered a 12-year-old Kosovo girl.
 
Following the case of three US soldiers who gang-raped a Japanese girl in Okinawa in 1995, which triggered mass protests in Japan, an alleged rape attempt of a Japanese woman by a soldier of US Navy in a dance hall in Okinawa on January 14 is another example of human rights violations by US troops based in other countries.
 
The United States ranks first in military spending in the world, with the 1999 total reaching US$287.9 billion, about 150 per cent of the combined military expenditures of the European Union, Japan, Russia and China that year.
 
The US military budget for 2000 is expected to reach US$300 billion, exceeding the record high of US$291.1 billion in the mid-1980s, when the United States was conducting a "Star Wars" programme and a large-scale arms race against the Soviet Union.The United States was the world's biggest arms supplier for the eighth consecutive year, from 1991 to 1998.
 
With its powerful military strength, the United States uses its military might to indulge in aggressive wars, violating sovereignty and human rights of other countries. It used its military force overseas more than 40 times in the 1990s.
 
In 1999, ignoring the international norms and bypassing the United Nations Security Council, the US-led NATO forces launched 78 days of air strikes against the sovereign state of Yugoslavia, a war in the name of "avoiding humanitarian disaster," causing the biggest humanitarian catastrophe in Europe since the end of World War II.
 
During the war, US-led NATO air forces completed 32,000 sorties and dropped 21,000 tons of bombs on Yugoslavia, equivalent to four times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States during World War II.
 
The bombs used by US-led NATO in their aggression against Yugoslavia include cluster bombs, depleted uranium bombs and other weapons banned by international laws and newly developed but more destructive weapons such as electromagnetic pulse bombs and graphite bombs.
 
More than 2,000 innocent civilians were killed and 6,000 injured in Yugoslavia during the air strikes, which also left nearly 1 million people homeless and more than 2 million without any source of income.
 
The large-scale bombing paralyzed manufacturing facilities and infrastructure for daily life in Yugoslavia, bringing about a 33 per cent increase in unemployment and pushing 20 per cent of the population below the poverty line, leading to direct economic losses of US$600 billion and producing lasting and disastrous impact on the ecological environment of Yugoslavia and Europe as a whole.
 
Worse still, NATO went so far as to bomb the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese journalists and seriously damaging embassy buildings, in gross violation of Chinese sovereignty and human rights. The United States has also maintained a poor record in participating in and observing international conventions on human rights.
 
The United States is the only country other than Somalia that has not yet joined the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and one of the few countries that have not yet signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. It has been 23 years since the United States signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, but it still has not ratified the covenant.
 
The United States has refused to recognize the superiority of international laws over its domestic laws, and made numerous statements and rationalizations regarding international conventions on human rights according to its domestic laws.
 
As for the international conventions on human rights it has ratified or joined, the US federal government has simply let its states go their own ways and refused to meet obligations to implement them nationwide. It has even failed to hand in reports of implementation on time as required, and has ignored criticism and comments from other United Nations organizations.
 
The United States does not have a good human rights record of its own, but likes to play the role of the world's human rights judge. It makes unwarranted accusations about other countries' human rights records year after year.
 
The US Government needs to keep an eye on its own human rights problems, mind its own business and stop interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.
 
2000
 
The United States, assuming an air of self-importance and practicing power politics in the world, has done a great deal of damage by encroaching on human rights in other countries.
 
The United States has, over a long period of time, built many military bases over the world. Hundreds of thousands of US troops stationed in these bases have committed a series of crimes that violated the human rights of local residents. Such acts by the US troops have occurred frequently since 2000 and numerous scandals have been exposed.
 
In 1995 a Japanese schoolgirl was raped by three American soldiers stationed at Okinawa, sparking a massive protest by the Japanese people. Following this incident, a serviceman with the U. S. Marine Aircraft Group at Futemma Air Station was imprisoned for allegedly attempting to rape a Japanese woman in the city of Okinawa on January 14, 2000. That same month, three servicemen of the US Navy in southern Nagasaki sexually harassed two 15-year-old Japanese girls; on January 9 this year, a seaman of the US Navy sexually assaulted a 16-year-old Japanese girl in Okinawa.
 
On January 13, 2000, a US soldier on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo raped and killed an Albanian girl. The incident aroused strong indignation from Albanians in Kosovo. In July last year, Green Korea United, an environmental protection group of the Republic of Korea (ROK), revealed that the American military base in Seoul discharged embalming fluid used for its servicemen into the Han River. The group reported that since 1991 another US military base in ROK has discharged waste oil into a local river, which is the source of drinking water for 210,000 local people. The actions of the American troops seriously polluted the local environment and endangered the health of local people.
 
A Cuban newspaper reported on November 6, 2000, that an environmental group found more than 50 areas in some island countries such as Fiji and Kiribati that had been seriously polluted by dangerous refuse. All of the material has been traced back to US military interests or other interests of the US
 
The acting vice-minister of foreign affairs of Panama revealed on July 24, 2000, that during its nearly 100-year occupation of the Panama Canal, the US has stationed troops in the area, and numerous Panamanian women were used and cast away by American soldiers, leaving hundreds of thousands of fatherless children. When the US troops withdrew from the Panama Canal area at the end of 1999, they left behind 700 pregnant women in Panama and Colon provinces alone.
 
The United States butts into the internal affairs of other countries and cultivates its influence in secrecy, infringing upon human rights in other countries. The US Department of Defense launched a research institute for safety cooperation in the western hemisphere, while the predecessor of the institution is Escola Das Americas affiliated with the US Army Forces, which is famous for training Latin American and Caribbean troops to torture suspects, carry out secret executions and mail threatening letters to political dissidents. The school, described by international human rights organizations as a training base for "dictators, hangmen and assassins," trained 56,000 people during the period between 1946 when it was first established, and December of 2000 when it was closed.
 
The school also trained numerous personnel for various purposes. Many notorious human rights violators and ringleaders of criminal gangs are graduates of this school, and nearly all of the major massacre cases in the Latin America and Caribbean areas have connections with these graduates.
 
A terrorist organization formed by graduates of the Escola Das Americas slaughtered 767 innocent villagers in a remote area of Columbia in 1981. Among those murdered were people over age 90 and less than two months old.
 
Nearly 10 years have passed since the end of the Cold War. Peace and development are now the common aspirations of people the world over.
 
However, the United States, as the only remaining superpower, has yet to relinquish its Cold War mentality. It stations troops abroad, boosts military spending, sells ammunition to other countries and regions, and rattles its sabers around the world. The US has become a major threat to world peace and stability, and infringes upon the sovereignty and human rights of other countries.
 
A report released by the US Department of State and the US Congressional Research and Service Bureau said that the US military spending and ammunition exports rank first in the world: Its military expenses account for one-third of the world's total and exports of ammunitions amount to 36 percent of the global total. Its military spending budget for 2001 increased by US$12.6 billion compared with the US$200 billion for 2000.
 
Incomplete statistics show that the United States has waged wars in foreign countries and regions more than 40 times in the 1990s. The country uses cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells, which are banned by international law, and new weapons of mass destruction in foreign countries, killing and injuring local people and also wreaking havoc on the eco-environment in these places.
 
Reports say that US troops tested depleted uranium (DU) weapons in shooting ranges in Panama 30 years ago. The US army dropped 940,000 DU bombs in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. About 10,000 DU bombs were dropped by the US army during the 1994-1995 Bosnia-Herzegovina war. The US army also tested DU weapons in military maneuvers in Japan's Okinawa in 1995 and 1996. In 1999, the US army used more than 31,000 DU bombs in 112 locations in Yugoslavia. The number of cancer patients has increased by 30 percent in Yugoslavia due to DU radiation, and at least 10,000 civilians have died of radiation. About 40 out of some 80 babies born in two months in a Bulgarian town adjacent to Yugoslavia have suffered from physical deformities. A number of European soldiers and civilians once served in Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia including Kosovo have contracted "Balkan Syndrome," and at least 27 of them have died.
 
The UN Environmental Program has analyzed samples collected in Yugoslavia and confirmed that they contain radioactive substances, according to a spokesman for the UN secretary-general. Although it is well known that uranium is a sort of radioactive heavy metal, the United States refuses to admit that DU is harmful to human health, and prevents other countries and international organizations from investigating the matter. It even refuses to stop using DU bombs. Currently, the US troops stationed in Kosovo are still equipped with DU weapons.
 
In fact, the United States has long since had full knowledge of the harm brought by DU weapons. Before the breakout of the Gulf War in July 1990, a test panel affiliated with the US army pointed out in a report that the explosion of DU bombs would produce strong Alfa radiation that is cancer-inducing, and soldiers carrying out tasks in DU weapon-stricken areas must take preventive measures. However, in the same area, the local residents had not received any notice from the US army and they thus became victims of DU bombs.
 
The United States has always adopted a passive attitude towards international human rights conventions. Although the United States was a founding member of the UN, it did not accede to any key international human rights convention until 1988 when it joined the convention the Convention on The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. That is to say, the United States did not ratify the treaty until 40 years after it was signed. In addition, it did not ratified the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for 28 years and 15 years respectively after it signed them. The United States still has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, although it signed it 24 years ago. The United States is one of the only two countries in the world that have not acceded to the International Convention on Children's Rights, and one of several countries that have not joined the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
 
The United States has always opposed the right to development as a human right, and it is the only western country that has voted against the Declaration on the Right to Development. Although it is a founding member of the Organization of American States, it refuses to accede to the Human Rights Convention of America and other human rights conventions approved by the organization. As for the international conventions it has already signed, the United States has always ensured that the enforcement of the conventions is strictly limited to within the scope of the US constitution and laws, or let them only apply to the federation instead of states, by making reservations, declarations and allowances for them. In this way, the United States has reduced the international conventions into nothing but empty rhetoric.
 
Actions speak louder than words, and the public champions justice. The promotion of human rights is the common task of all nations in the world. The United States not only closes its eyes to its own serious human rights problems, but also releases the "Human Rights Report" annually to condemn other countries' human rights records. All these realities have exposed the true face of the United States, showing it to be a defender of power politics rather than human rights.
 
China would like to offer this advice to the US government: abandon your old ways and make a new start, take effective measures to improve the human rights record in your own country, take steps to promote international cooperation in human rights, and stop ordering other countries on the pretext of safeguarding human rights.
 
2001
 
The United States ranks first in the world in terms of military spending and arms export. Its military expenditure accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world total, more than the combined military expenditure of the nine countries ranking next to it. Its arms exports account for 36 percent of the world total. US defense budget for the 2003 fiscal year announced by the US Defense Department on February 4, 2002 totaled 379 billion US dollars, up 48 billion US dollars, or 15 percent, over the previous year and representing the highest growth rate in the past two decades.

The United States ranks first in the world in wantonly infringing upon the sovereignty of, and human rights in, other countries. Since the 1990s, the United States has used force overseas on more than 40 occasions. On April 1, 2001, a US military reconnaissance plane flew above waters off China's coast in violation of flight rules, causing the crash of a Chinese aircraft and the death of its pilot. It presumptuously entered China's territorial airspace without permission from the Chinese side and landed on a Chinese military airfield, seriously encroaching upon China's sovereignty and human rights. After the incident, the United States made all sorts of excuses to defend itself, refusing to make a public apology for the serious consequences of its intruding aircraft and trying to shirk its responsibilities. This aroused great indignation and strong protests from the Chinese people.
 
The United States has built many military bases all over the world, where it has stationed hundreds of thousands of troops, violating human rights everywhere in the world. Before the September 11 incident, the United States had stationed its troops in more than 140 countries. Today, the United States has expanded its so-called security interests to almost every corner of the world. In recent years, US troops stationed in Japan have frequently committed crimes. In 1995, three American soldiers raped a Japanese schoolgirl in Okinawa, sparking massive protests by the Japanese people and arousing the alert of world public opinion. In fact, scandals like this happen almost every year. On January 11, 2001, an American soldier was arrested for molesting a local schoolgirl in Okinawa. On January 19, the Okinawa parliament adopted a resolution of protest against frequent criminal activities by American soldiers, calling for reduction of US troops in Japan. However, in an e-mail message to his subordinates, the US commander in Okinawa insulted the Okinawa magistrate and parliament. On June 29, another soldier of the US air force sexually assaulted a Japanese girl in Kyatan of Okinawa.
 
The NATO headed by the United States dropped a large number of depleted uranium bombs during the Kosovo war, subjecting peace- keeping soldiers as well as the local people to serious danger. The US side claimed that one of the reasons for the withdrawal of US troops from Kosovo is that "it would not let radiation hurt our boys." Latest reports say that the United States knew the dangers of depleted uranium bombs and where they were dropped, and that, when dividing up peacekeeping zones, it allocated the most seriously contaminated areas to allied forces. After the US army entered Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, it gave a boost to the sex industry in the two places. Over the past year, Bosnia-Herzegovina uncovered dozens of women trafficking cases, many of which were associated with the US army. Most of the US soldiers were involved in prostitution and some of them were even involved in selling women. In September 2000, the US Army published a report of more than 600 pages, detailing all kinds of bad behaviors committed by the No.82 air-borne division of its First Army during their peace-keeping mission in Kosovo, admitting that the general atmosphere of the US army in Kosovo is very inhumane.
 
Available data indicate that in the Gulf War the United States dropped more than 940,000 depleted uranium bombs with a total weight of 320 tons onto Iraqi land, causing serious destruction to the environment of Iraq and the health of its people. The Ministry of Health of Iraq pointed out in a report that the number of cancer patients in Iraq increased dramatically after the Gulf War, from 6,555 in 1989 and 4,341 in 1991 to 10,931 in 1997. In the ten years since the end of the Gulf War, the incidence rate of leukemia, malicious tumors and other difficult and complicated cases in areas hit by depleted uranium bombs in southern Iraq was 3.6 times higher than the national average and the proportion of women with miscarriage was ten times as high as in the past. On February 22, 2002, Emad Sa'doon, a medical expert with Basra University in southern Iraq, disclosed to the media that after many years of research the medical group led by him found that in the 1989-1999 period, the number of patients with blood cancer doubled and the number of women with breast cancer increased 102 percent.
 
The United States always flaunts the banner of "freedom of the press". Yet according to an Agence France-Presse report on February 21, 2002, the annual report of International Journalism Institute published on the same day pointed out that the way in which the US government dealt with the media during the Afghan War and its attempt at suppressing freedom of speech by independent media were "the most amazing in 2001."
 
In the United States, close to 100 companies manufacture and export considerable quantities of instruments of torture that are banned in international trade. They have set up sales networks overseas. In its February 26, 2001 report, Amnesty International said some 80 American companies were involved in the manufacture, marketing and export of instruments of torture, including electric- shock tools, shackles and handcuffs with saw-teeth. Many instruments of torture and police tools are high-tech products, which can cause serious harms to the human body. For instance, handcuffs,which would tear apart the flesh of the tortured if the victim slightly exerts himself, are very cruel, and so is a high- pressure rope for tying up a person. Although categorically prohibited by US law, the Commerce Department of the United States has given official export licenses for exporting such tools. According to statistics, American companies have secured export licenses and sold tools of torture overseas valued at 97 million U. S. dollars since 1997 under the category of "crime control equipment." It is inconceivable that, while the US State Department is talking about human rights, the US Department of Commerce has given export licenses for products determined as instruments of torture in statutes of the US government, said Dr. William Schulz, who conducted the investigation.
 
The United States has also conducted irradiation experiments with the dead bodies of babies from overseas. The Daily Telegraph and the Observer of the United Kingdom disclosed in June of 2001 that the United States has recently declassified some top-secret documents, which indicate that in the 1950s the United States carried out what was called "Project Sunshine" experiments. For these experiments, about 6,000 dead babies were obtained from overseas and cremated without permission of their parents. The ashes were sent to laboratories for irradiation studies.
 
The US government has until this day refused to sign the Basel Convention, which restricts the transfer of waste materials. It often transfers dangerous waste materials by different methods to developing countries, damaging the health of the people of other countries. The Associated Press reported on February 25, 2002 that, according to an estimate by environmental protection organizations, as much as 50 percent to 80 percent of the electronic wastes collected by the United States in the name of recycling have been shipped to a number of countries in Asia for waste treatment, causing serious environmental and health problems to the local people.
 
The United States has announced its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, refusing to bear the responsibilities of improving the environment for human survival and bringing about negative impacts on environmental protection efforts in the world.
 
The Third UN Conference Against Racism held in Durban of South African in September 2001 was an important gathering in the area of international human rights at the beginning of the new century. It attracted representatives from more than 190 countries, which reflected the burning desire of the international community to eliminate hatred accumulated over time and eradicate the remnants of racism through dialogue and cooperation. The United States, however, turned a deaf ear to the voices of the international community. Ignoring its international obligations, it asserted openly to boycott the conference before it was opened. Although the United States sent a low-level delegation to the conference as a result of prompting and persuasion by the United Nations, it took the lead in opposing discussing slave trade and colonial compensation, expressed opposition to putting Zionism on a par with racism, and walked out of the conference midway. Behaviors of the United States at the conference revealed its hypocrisy when it professes itself as "a world judge of human rights" and show how arrogant and isolated the hegemonic acts of the US government are.
 
For many years, the US government has year after year published reports on human rights conditions in other countries in disregard of the opposition of many countries in the world, cooking up charges, twisting facts and censoring all countries except itself. It also publishes a report every year to make a so-called appraisal of anti-drug trafficking campaigns of 24 countries including all Latin American countries. The United States deals with any country it deems "inefficient in cracking down on drug trafficking" with condemnation, sanctions, interference in the latter's internal affairs, or outright invasion.
 
In 2001, without support from the majority of member countries, the United States was voted out of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and the International Narcotics Committee. This shows, from one aspect, that it is extremely unpopular for the United States to push double standards and unilateralism on such issues as human rights, crackdowns on drug trafficking, arms control and environmental protection. We urge the United States to change its ways, give up its hegemonic practice of creating confrontation and interfering in the internal affairs of others by exploiting the human rights issue, go with the tide of the times characterized by cooperation and dialogue in the area of human rights, and do more useful things for the progress and development of the human society.
 
2002
 
The United States is following unilateralism in international affairs and has frequently committed blunt violations of human rights in other countries.
 
Regardless of the strong call for no war from the international community, the United States, together with a few other countries, launched a war against Iraq on March 20, 2003. The war, which has openly violated the purpose and principles of the UN Charter, has caused casualties of innocent Iraqi civilians and serious humanitarian disasters.
 
During its air attacks against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2002, the U.S. troops dropped nearly a quarter-million cluster bomblets and raided a number of non-military targets, causing heavy civilian casualties. The Time newsweekly disclosed civilians killed in the Afghan war had exceeded 3,000.
 
The cluster bombs also left an estimated 12,400 explosive duds that continue to take civilian lives to this day (Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use By the United States in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch, Dec. 18, 2002). In 2001 the U.S. bombing of Mudoh village reduced the local population to 100 from 250 and leveled all buildings in the village to the ground. A similar attack on Kakrakai village in central Afghanistan on July 1, 2002 left at least 54 civilians dead and more than 100 others injured (Newsweek, July 22, 2002).
 
The rights and interests of prisoners of war (POWs) were also violated. According to CNN (Cable News Network), a total of 12,000Taliban fighters were reported to have been captured since the U.S.launched its military action in Afghanistan, but only 3,500 to 4,000 of them survived. It was found that these POWs were locked into unventilated steel shipping containers after their capture, and many of them died of sweltering heat, suffocation or extreme thirst en route to the prison. Numerous mass graves in which the bodies of the dead POWs were dumped have been found in Afghanistan.
 
There are also evidence of U.S. troops' involvement in the shipping of the POWs. In November 2001, some 1,000 Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters who had surrendered in the northern Afghan city of Konduz died on their way to the prison after they were packed tightly into unventilated container trucks (Washington, Aug. 18, 2002, AFP).
 
According to media reports, in 2002 the United States was holding more than 600 detainees from 42 countries, mostly captured during the Afghan war, in its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, the detainees were denied "prisoner of war" status by the U.S. government and therefore faced uncertainty of their futures.
 
It was unclear for how long they would remain in custody or what kind of treatment they would receive. These detainees were allegedly confined for 24 hours a day to small cells and were not allowed to meet their families or lawyers. Former Al-Qaeda memberswere also subject to torture or other forms of maltreatment.
 
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed overseas, and such troops have committed crimes and human rights abuses wherever they stay. Each year U.S. troops stationed in the Republic of Korea (ROK) are caught responsible for more than 400 traffic accidents, but only less than 10 cases would go for trial in ROK courts.
 
On June 13, 2002, two U.S. soldiers driving an armored vehicle crushed two 14-year-old South Korean girls to death, but both offenders were acquitted by a U.S. military tribunal in November. On Sept. 2, three other U.S. soldiers in Kyonggi-do, ROK, started a tussle on a road, and they deliberately smashed a taxi car parked on the roadside and beat up its Korean driver.
 
Earlier reports said six American soldiers stationed in the ROK were charged with sexual harassment, assault and scuffle after drinking.
 
The U.S. troops in Okinawa, Japan has long been notorious for its constant involvement in criminal cases such as arson and rape. Investigation shows that after World War II U.S. soldiers have committed more than 300 sex crimes in Okinawa, with over 130 rape cases reported since 1972.
 
In the wee hours of Jan. 7, 2002, Frederick Thompson, a U.S. Navy marine stationed in Okinawa, was arrested by local police on charges of trespassing on private property after he broke into the apartment of a 24-year-old woman. On Dec. 3 the same year, the police department of Okinawa prefecture issued an arrest warrant against Major Michael Brown of the U.S. Marine Corps, who was accused of attempted rape and damaging of private articles, but the U.S. side refused to hand him over to the police department. (Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 15, 2002)
 
According to a news report in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo of April 1, 2002, there are more than 52,000 illegitimate children inthe Philippines fathered by U.S. marines stationed in this Southeast Asian country before 1991. Recently tens of Filipino teenage girls, some of them not yet 13, were sent to Mindanao in southern Philippines, to entertain U.S. marines stationed there.
2003
 
In recent years, the United States has been practicing unilateralism in the international arena, indulging itself in military aggression around the world, brutal violation of sovereign rights of other nations. Its image has been tarnished bynumerous misdeeds of human rights infringement in other countries.
 
The United States tops the world in terms of military expenditure, and is the largest exporter of arms. Its military spendings for the 2004 fiscal year reaches 400.5 billion US dollars, exceeding the total amount of defense budgets of all other countries in the world in summation. The New York Times reported on September 25, 2003, that the United States export of conventional arms accounted for 45.5 percent of the world's arms trade volume in 2002, ranking the first in the world. And according to a Capitol report, the United States sold 8.6 billion US dollars worth of conventional arms to the developing nations, or 48.6 percent of all the arms procured by the developing world in 2002.
 
The United States has been active in sabre-rattling and launching wars. It is the No. One in terms of gross violation of other countries' sovereign rights and other people's human rights.The United States has resorted to the use of force against other countries 40 times since 1990s. Well-known US journalist and writer William Blum said in his recent book "Rouge State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" that since 1945, the United Stateshas attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, suppressed over 30 national movements, in which millions of peoplehave lost their precious lives and many more people been plunged into misery and despair.
 
In March 2003, without authorization by the United Nations, the United States unilaterally waged a large-scale war on Iraq based on its claim that the Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In its wanton and indiscriminate bombing of Iraq, many bombsof the US army were dropped on residential areas, shopping malls and civilian vehicles.
 
According to an article carried by Britain's Independent newspaper in January 2004 titled "George W. Bush and the real state of the Union," in the war on Iraq by then, more than 16,000 Iraqis had been killed, of which 10,000 were civilians (see the edition of Britain's Independent on Jan. 20, 2004). On April 2, 2003, the US armed forces attacked a Baghdad maternity hospital installed by the Red Crescent, a local market and other adjacent buildings for civilian use, claiming a lot of human lives and injured at least 25 people. Five cars were bombed and drivers were burned to death inside their cars (see the edition of San Diego Union-Tribune, U.S. on Aug. 5, 2003).
 
Based on a report by Britain's Independent newspaper on Feb. 8,2004, more than 13,000 civilians, many of them women and children,have been killed so far by the US army and its allied forces in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the wake of Sept. 11 incident in 2001, "making the continuing conflicts the most deadly wars for non-combatants waged by the West since the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago." Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former US President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, said "it is a serious matter when the world's Number One superpower undertakes awar claiming a causus belli that turns out to have been false." (Washington Post on Feb. 2, 2004).
 
Depleted uranium (DU) shells and cluster bombs were used recklessly during wars in violation of international laws. In December 2003, the Human Rights Watch disclosed in a report that the 13,000 cluster bombs US troops used in Iraq contained nearly 2 million bomblets, which have caused causalities of over 1,000 people. The "dub" cluster bombs that did not blast on the spot continued to menace the lives of innocent people. The US troops also used large quantities of depleted uranium shells during theirmilitary operations in Iraq. The quantity and residue of pollutants from these bombs far exceeded those of the Gulf War in 1991. Through a spokesman for the Central Command, the Pentagon acknowledged that ammunition containing depleted uranium was used during the Iraq war. Indeed, Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project, former professor of environmental science and onetime US army colonel, said after the Iraq War that the willful use of DU bombs to contaminate any other nation and b ring harms to the people and their environment is a crime against humanity (see Spain's Uprising newspaper on June 2, 2003).
 
Another investigation report said that in the Iraqi capital Baghdad alone, numerous places were found to have the amount of radioactive materials that exceeded the normal level by 1,000 times. The US troops also used "Mark-77" napalm, a kind of bomb banned by the United Nations, in Iraq, which negatively impacted on environment there. On July 7, 2003, Dato'Param Cumaraswamy of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, openly voiced his shock at the fact that the US Government did not abide by international human rights rules and humanism in its counter-terrorism military actions. (United Nations Rights Expert "Alarmed" over United States Implementation of Military Order, United Nations Press Release, July 7, 2003, www.un.org)
 
The United States put behind bars 3,000 Taliban and Al-Qaida inmates in Afghanistan, 680 alleged die-hard Al-Qaida elements from 40-odd countries in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and an undefined number of prisoners in the US army base on Diego Garcia island on the India Ocean leased from Britain. All these prisoners locked upby the U.S. were not indicted officially (Britain's Independent newspaper on June 26, 2004). The New York Times quoted a high-ranking official from the US Department of Defense on February 13,2003 as saying that the United States planned to jail most of the prisoners currently in Guantanamo for a long time or indefinitely.The US Government said the detainees in Guantanamo were not "prisoners of war" and therefore not subjected to the protection ofthe Geneva Conventions.
 
"The main concern for us is the US authorities ... have effectively placed them beyond the law," said Amanda Williamson, spokeswoman for the Washington office of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross. (Overseas Chinese newspaper in U.S., Oct. 11, 2003). A report entitled People the Law Forgot, carried on the British Guardian in Dec. 2003, depictedthe plight of the 600-odd foreigners detained by the US in Guantanamo Bay. These people had been detained in Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, where they were tortured both mentally and physically (Britain's Guardian newspaper on Dec. 3, 2003). The detainees were given only one minute a week for taking shower and only through a hunger strike did they win the weekly five-minute shower time and the weekly ten-minute break for physical exercises.At a clandestine interrogation center of the US troops in Bagram of Afghanistan, prisoners were even more tortured. They were forced to stand or kneel down for hours in varied awkward positions while wearing hoods over their heads or colored glasses.Exposed to strong light 24 hours a day, they could not go to sleep(Britain's Independent newspaper on June 26, 2003).
 
The U.S. is the nation with the most troops stationed overseas,about 364,000 troops in over 130 countries and regions. The violations of human rights against local people frequently occurred. In 2003, the US military authority received 88 reports about "misbehavior" of its overseas troops. On May 25, 2003, a soldier of the US Marine Corps in Okinawa of Japan wounded and raped a 19-year-old Japanese girl. The soldier was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. In the past dozen years, such cases occurred frequently in Okinawa and up to 100 US soldiers have been reported of committing crimes. On February 7, 2004, Australian police detained three soldiers of the US Marine Corps suspected of committing sexual harassment of two Australian women.In September 2003, three officers and soldiers from the US Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier robbed and seriously wounded a taxi driver in Kanagawa-Ken of Japan. The three officers and soldiers were sentenced to four years in prison. In October 2002, a female engineer in Baghdad of Iraq was handcuffed and made to stand in the scorching sun for one hour because she refused to be snuffed at by police dogs as she was taking a copy of Alcoran with her. The case sparked large-scale protest and demonstration in Iraq.
 
For a long time, the US State Department has been publishing "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" every year. It presumes to be the "Judge of Human Rights in the World" and, regardless of the differences and disparities among different countries in politics, economy, history, culture and social development and strong opposition from other countries, denounces other countries unreasonably for their human rights status in compliance with its own ideology, value and human rights model. Meanwhile, it has turned a blind eye to its own human rights problems. This fully exposed the dual standards of the U.S. on human rights and its hegemonism. The human rights record of the U.S. is absolutely not in accord with its position as a world power,which constitutes a strong irony against its self-granted title ofa big power in human rights. The United States should take its ownhuman rights problems seriously, reflect on its erroneous positionand behavior on human rights, and stop its unpopular interference with other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of promoting human rights. (End) 
 
2004
 
In 2004, US army service people were reported to have abused and insulted Iraqi POWs, which stunned the whole world. The US forces were blamed for their fierce and dirty treatments for theseIraqi POWs. They made the POWs naked by force, masking their headswith underwear (even women's underwear), locking up their necks with a belt, towing them over the ground, letting military dogs bite them, beating them with a whip, shocking them with electric batons, needling them sometimes, and putting chemical fluids containing phosphorus on their wounds. They even forced some of the these POWs to play "human-body pyramid" while staying naked, in the presence of US soldiers who were standing on the roof and mocking at them. They sometimes sodomized these POWs with lamp pipes 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 like the Newsweek and the Washington Post,as early as several years ago, in US forces' prisons in Afghanistan, interrogators used various kinds of torture tools foracquiring confession, 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 kind of mode for arresting people even before the Iraq war. "Torture ispart of the process."
 
Over 100 former Iraqi high-ranking government and military officials were put under special custody by the US military. They stayed 23 hours a day in dark, small and tightly closed concrete-made wards, where they were allowed to leave the wards twice a day,with 20 minutes available for taking a bath or going to the toilet.
 
On Nov. 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 latest report by AP, on Feb. 18, 2005, in November 2003, CIA people hanged dead one of the so-called "ghost"prisoner in the Abu Ghraib Prison by fierce means, with his two hands cuffed behind his back. When he was released with 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 Filed Army, 39 people were killed, 20 of these cases were confirmed as murder. There were also severe child abuses conducted by the US forces.
 
At least 107 children were imprisoned in seven prisons including the Abu Ghraib Prison run by the US forces in Afghanistan. They were not allowed to get in contact with their families. Their term in prison was undetermined. It was not clear when they were going to be brought 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 fierce is that US soldiers used military dogs to frighten these juvenile prisoners to see whose dog could scare them to lose control on excretion. US forces had violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, by detaining two Palestinian diplomats to Iraq in a prison ward of the Abu Ghraib Prison, together with 90 other men. They spent one year in the prison, suffering from very poor living conditions.
 
The ICRC believed that abuse of detained Iraqis in the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison was not a single case. It was a systematic behavior. According to some White House documents that were made public on June 22, 2004, the Department of Defense approved to use harsh means to interrogate prisoners in Guantanamo,Cuba.
 
The US Secretary of Defense said in the 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 a POW. A draft memorandum of the Department of Defense also claimed that US laws and international conventions, including the Geneva Convention, which strictly ban the use of torture, do not apply to US President as the General Commander of the US Army. A memorandum of the US Department of Justice makes it even more clearly 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 they should exceed the Geneva Convention, technically.
 
Media found that the US soldiers' behaviors in humiliating Iraqiprisoners as showed photos were typically what they were trained for. US Brigadier General Yanis Karpinski told the press that her boss once said to her that "prisoners are dogs." If they were madeto think that they were a bit better than dogs, they could get outof control.
 
Meanwhile, the US government has tried for the third successiveyear to extend the term of a resolution of the UN Security Councilthat soldiers could be exempted of lawsuit by 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 (Reuters' story on June 17,2004).
 
Former US President Jimmy Carter also criticized that the US policies formulated by the high-ranking officials are a kind of retrogression, which has damaged the principles of democracy and rule of law and lacked respect for fundamental human rights.
 
To avoid international scrutiny, the United States keeps under wraps half of its 20-odd detention centers worldwide which are holding terrorist suspects. And at least seven US-controlled clandestine prisons, one of which dubbed "inferno," in Afghanistan,have not been kept within the bounds of law. (Prensa Latina, Aug. 16, 2004)
 
In a report by the Human Rights First on 24 US secret interrogation centers, these secret facilities are believed to "make inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely but virtually inevitable." (British newspaper the Times, Sept. 11, 2004)
 
Moreover, an executive jet is being used by the 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. The suspects are frequently bound, gagged and sedated before being put on board theplane (British newspaper the Times, Nov. 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 No. 1 military power in the world, andits military spending has kept shooting up. Its fiscal 2005 defense budget hit a historical high of 422 billion US dollars, anincrease of 21 billion dollars over fiscal 2004. As the biggest arms dealer in the world, the United States has made a fortune outof war. Its transactions of conventional weapons exceeded 14.5 billion dollars in 2003, up 900 million dollars year-on-year and accounting for 56.7 percent of the total sales worldwide. The IraqWar has been "a helping straw" to the US economic development.
 
The United States frequently commits wanton slaughters during external invasions and military attacks. Spain's Uprising newspaper on May, 12, 2004 published a list of human rights infringement incidents committed by the US troops, quoting two bloodthirsty sayings of two American generals, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead" by General Philip Sheridan and "we should bomb Vietnam back to the stone age" by air force general Curtis LeMay. We can still smell a similar bloodiness in 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, have been killed and another 13,720 injured in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces between April 15 and Sept. 19 in 2004.
 
A survey on Iraqi civilian deaths, based on the natural death rate before the war, estimates that the US-led invasion might haveled to 100,000 more deaths in the country, with most victims beingwomen and children.
 
Jointly designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya Universityin 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 the violence-caused deaths. (Associated Press, Oct. 28, 2004)
 
On Jan. 3, 2004, four US soldiers stationed in Iraq pushed two Iraqi civilians into the Tigris River, making 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 Nov. 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. And he has witnessed the blasphemy and gradual rotting of many corpses, and a lot of wounded civilians were deserted without any medical treatment. (British newspaper The Independent, May 23, 2004)
 
In addition, the US troops often plunder Iraqi households when tracking down anti-US militants since the invasion. The American forces has so far committed at least thousands of robberies and 90percent of the Iraqis that have been rummaged are innocent.
 
The United States has been hindering the work of the United Nation's human rights mechanism. And it either took no notice of or used delaying tactics 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 to the 59th UN General Assembly, to show their strong concern over the US human rights infringement, prisoner abuse, media control, and loopholes in its election system.
 
It is the common goal and obligation for all countries in the world to promote and safeguard human rights. No country in the world can claim itself as perfect and has no room for improvement in the human rights area. And no country should exclude itself from the international human rights development process, or view itself as the incarnation of human rights which can reign over other countries and give orders to the others. Even the United States shall be no exception.
 
Despite tons of problems in its own human rights, the United States continues to stick to its belligerent stance, wantonly trample on the sovereignty of other countries, and constantly stage tragedies of human rights infringement 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 behavior 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 ofthe international community. 
 
2005
 
Pursuing unilateralism on the international arena, the U.S. government grossly violates the sovereignty and human rights of other countries in contempt of universally-recognized international norms.
 
The U.S. government frequently commits wanton slaughters of innocents in its war efforts and military operations in other countries. The USA Today newspaper on Dec. 13, 2005 quoted a 2004 study published in the medical journal The Lancet as saying that it was estimated that about 100,000 Iraqis, mostly women and children, had died in the Iraqi war launched by the U.S. government in 2003. The year 2005 also witnessed frequent overseas military operations targeting at civilians by the U.S. forces, causing quite a number of deaths and injuries. On July 4, 2005, the U.S. forces killed 17 civilians, including women and children, in their air strikes in Konarha Province of Afghanistan. On Aug. 12, a U.S. military armored patrol vehicle fired at people coming out of a mosque in a town in the suburbs of the Iraqi city of Ramdi, killing 15 Iraqis, including eight children, and injuring 17 others. On Aug. 30, U.S. jet fighters launched several sorties of air raids against an area near the western Iraqi border town of Qaim, causing at least 56 deaths, including elderlies and children. On Nov. 21, U.S. troops fired at a civilian vehicle in northern Baghdad, killing a family of five, including three children. On Jan. 14, 2006, U.S. military aircraft struck a Pakistani village bordering Afghanistan, killing at least 18 civilians and triggering widespread anti-U.S. demonstrations in Pakistan.
 
In 2005, news of prisoner abuse by the U.S. forces again hit headlines, following their 2004 prisoner abuse scandal that stunned the world. To extract information, the U.S. forces in Iraq employed various kinds of torture in their interrogations. They abused the Iraqi detainees systematically, including sleep deprivation, tying them to the wall, hitting them with baseball bats, denying their access to water and food, forcing them to listen to extremely loud music in completely dark places for days running, unleashing dogs to bite them for amusement and even scaring them by putting them in the same cage with lions (reports from The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Washington Weekly and other news media). A report by The Human Rights Watch in September 2005 said that U.S. soldiers regarded prisoner abuse as "amusement" and a way "to relieve stress." Due to the unbearable abuse, many detainees maimed themselves, went on hunger strikes and even rioted. According to a report issued by the South Command of the U.S. military, there occurred 350 self-maiming cases in the prison of Guantanamo, Cuba, in 2003, with 23 prisoners seeking to hang themselves in one week of August. In August 2005, 131 prisoners in Guantanamo went on a hunger strike to protest inhuman treatment. In April the same year, a riot broke out in Camp Bucca prison in south Iraq due to the U.S. warden's refusal to treat a sick prisoner. The United States has time and again rejected the requests of the UN Commission for Human Rights special mechanism to visit Guantanamo to investigate the incidents of prisoner abuse. And after yielding to pressure, the U.S. side made it a rule that the UN delegation should not have any contacts with the detainees there, incurring international condemnation.
 
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States wantonly apprehended terrorism suspects worldwide, flaunting the banner of "anti-terrorism." An AP story on Nov. 16, 2005 said that since the start of the anti-terrorism war in 2001, the United States had detained more than 83,000 foreign nationals, with 82,400 of them under the custody of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. And 700 captives were shipped to Guantanamo. Over the past four years, the U.S. has not brought any indictment against them or brought them to court hearing. By March 2005, 108 people had died in custody. Up to date, there are still 14,500 foreign nationals under U.S. custody.
 
In 2005, the scandal of the "secret prisons" set up overseas by the U.S. government was revealed, causing an international uproar. The New York Times carried an article titled Secrets and Shame on Nov. 3, 2005, criticizing the overseas secret prison network concealed by the CIA. According to The Washington Post, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA set up covert prisons, only known to a handful of officials in the White House, Justice Department and the Congress, in Thailand, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and some Eastern European countries, detaining about 100 people believed to be terrorism suspects by the United States. Kept in dark and underground cells, the prisoners in the "black sites" have no legal rights and no one outside the CIA can talk with or even see them. Even officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross are forbidden to have any contacts with the captives.
 
To obtain intelligence from the captives, the CIA employed various kinds of torture, such as forcefully grabbing the shirt front of the prisoner and shaking him, slapping and belly slapping. Prisoners were forced to stand, handcuffed and feet shackled, for more than 40 hours, and they were also left to stand naked in a cell kept at around 10 degrees Centigrade and constantly doused with cold water. The torture also included binding a prisoner to a board with plastic or paper wrapped over his face and water poured over him (the British newspaper The Independent, Dec.4, 2005).
 
In November 2002, a CIA officer ordered guards of the Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan to strip naked a detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death (The Washington Post newspaper).
 
The CIA frequently transfers terrorism suspects to other countries for torture and interrogation aboard a secret aircraft. The British, German and French media reported that the CIA plane carrying terrorism suspects had landed in a British military airfield at least 210 times, and crossed German airspace or landed in German airports at least 473 times. The CIA aircraft which took off and landed near Paris also landed and took off in the Guantanamo naval base for six times.
 
The U.S. government's violations of internationally-recognized norms and human rights incurred strong international condemnation. At a press conference, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louis Arbour sharply criticized the United States for infringing human rights by setting up secret prisons and transferring terrorism suspects without going through legal procedures under the pretext of fighting terrorism, noting that such acts were eroding the global ban on torture. On Dec. 20, 2005, the European Union, through a local court in Milan, Italy, issued warrants for the arrest of 22 CIA agents suspected of kidnapping in Italy. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter described the prisoner abuse by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo as "embarrassing," and going against the rudimentary American commitment to peace, social justice, civil liberties and human rights.
 
The facts listed above show a poor human rights record of the United States, which forms not only a sharp contrast with its image of a self-claimed "advocate of human rights," but also disaccord with its level of economic and social development and international status. The U.S. government ought to first clean up its own record of human rights before qualifying itself to comment on human rights situations in other countries, let alone arrogantly telling them what to do.
 
To respect for and protect human rights is a necessity and indicator of human civilization, and to promote human rights is the common responsibility of all countries and a major theme of international cooperation. No country in the world can claim to have a perfect state of human rights, nor can any country stay outside the course of human rights development. The issue of human rights should become a theme of social development in all countries and of international cooperation, rather than a slogan for exporting ideologies or even a tool of diplomacy to fix others out of one's own political needs.
 
For years, the U.S. government has ignored and deliberately concealed serious violations of human rights in its own country for fear of criticism. Yet it has issued annual reports making unwarranted charges on human rights practices of other countries, an act that fully exposes its hypocrisy and double standard on human rights issues, which has naturally met with strong resistance and opposition from other countries. We urge the U.S. government to look squarely at its own human rights problems, reflect what it has done in the human rights field and take concrete measures to improve its own human rights status. The U.S. government should stop provoking international confrontation on the issue of human rights, and make a fresh start to contribute more to international human rights cooperation and to the healthy development of international human rights cause.
 
2006
 
Relying on its strong military power, the United States have trespassed on the sovereignty of other countries and violated human rights in other countries.
 
A large number of innocent Iraqi civilians have died in the war launched by the United States in 2003. On October 11, 2006, The Washington Post reported that a survey of Bloomberg School of Public Health under Johns Hopkins University estimated that more than 655,000 Iraqis have died in Iraq since war started in March 2003, meaning about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country. The estimate was produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households in 47 neighborhood clusters throughout Iraq. On November 19, 2005, a U.S. marine unit searched an Iraqi community door to door and slaughtered 24 Iraqi civilians after a marine was killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. Those who died included a 76-year-old disabled man, a 3-year-old child, and seven women (Haditha 'Massacre' - One Year on, BBC News, November 19, 2006). According to another report by British newspaper The Sunday Times (March 26, 2006), a family of 11 were shot dead by U.S. troops on March 15, 2006; among the dead were five children aged from six months to five years, and four women. On March 12, 2006, four U.S. soldiers raped 14-year-old girl Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and then killed her, her parents and her 5-year-old sister ( [UK] The Independent website August 7, 2006). On May 31, 2006, U.S. forces killed two Iraqi women, one of them about to give birth, when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad. On June 5, 2006, CNN reported that U.S. squad took a 52-year-old disabled Iraqi to a roadside hole and shot him before planting a shovel and an AK-47 to make it appear that he was an insurgent planting a bomb. On December 8, 2006, U.S.-led forces killed 20 suspected insurgents during a raid targeting fighters from the group al-Qaeda in Iraq northwest of Baghdad. Amir Alwan, mayor of Ishaqi, said 10 men, four women and 10 children in his village were killed (The Washington Post, December 9, 2006). The Associated Press reported that on May 9, 2006 four U.S. soldiers murdered three suspected insurgents (Iraqi civilians). during a raid called "Objective Murray" in Salah ad-Dinof Iraq. Raymond L.Girouard, a soldier of the four, said they were under orders to "kill all military age males," which is also the ROE (rule of engagement). of "Objective Murray."
 
The United States has a flagrant record of violating the Geneva Convention in systematically abusing prisoners during the Iraqi War and the War in Afghanistan. A report released in News Night of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), originally provided by the U.S.-based Human Rights First, showed that since August 2002, 98 prisoners had died in American-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the dead, 34 died of premeditated murder, 11 deaths were suspicious, and eight to 12 were tortured to death (AFP, February 21, 2006). A Human Rights Watch report in July 2006 said torture and other abuses against detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq were authorized and routine. Detainees were routinely subject to severe beating, painful stress positions, severe sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold and hot temperatures. Soldiers were told that many abusive techniques were authorized by the military chain of command and Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detainees at their facility. Detainees at Camp Nama, a U.S. detention center at the Baghdad airport---in violation of international law---not registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross, were regularly stripped naked and subject to beatings. Some detainees were used for target practice. In May 2006 human rights group Amnesty International condemned the detention of some 14,000 prisoners in Iraq without charge or trial. On February 15, 2006, Australia's SBS TV aired more than 10 pictures and video clips taken at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison; the images included: a man's throat was cut off, left forearm of a man was left with burns and shrapnel wounds, a blood-stained interrogation room, and a seemingly insane man's body covered with his own feces. U.S. army's criminal investigation division gathered materials included 1,325 photographs and 93 video clips of suspected abuse of detainees, 546 photographs of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, all recorded between October 18 and December 30, 2003 ( [UK] Guardian, February 17, 2006). Another report carried by The New York Times in December 2006 says a man named Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor, was detained by American soldiers and put into detention center Camp Cropper for 97 days. The man said American guards arrived at his cell periodically, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation. When he was returned to his cell, he was fatigued but unable to sleep, for the fluorescent lights were never turned off and at most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He was not allowed to use telephone and denied the right to a lawyer at detention hearings. The New York Times reported on March 18, 2006 that an elite Special Operations forces unit Task Force 6-26 converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room. In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts.
 
According to another report by British newspaper The Independent, 460 people were confined in the Guantanamo prison camp, including dozens of adolescent prisoners, with more than 60 under 18 and the youngest only 14. A young man named Mohammed el-Gharani was allegedly accused of member of al-Qaeda and conspiracy in the 1998 al-Qaeda London terrorist conspiracy when he was only 12. In 2001, he was arrested at the age of 14 ([UK] The Independent, Children of Guantanamo Bay, May 28, 2006). According to a report by The Washington Post, on May 30, 2006, 75 prisoners in Guantanamo went on a hunger strike against U.S. soldiers' maltreatment. On June 10, 2006, three prisoners hung themselves with bed sheets and clothing (The Associated Press, June 11, 2006). Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi's family said his organs including the brain, liver, kidney and heart were all taken away when the corpse arrived. Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi's cousin said that might be done to conceal the truth behind his brother's death. Another Saudi Arabian prisoner's father thought his son's death was not suicide but intentional hanging as he found bruises on his son's body. The Amnesty International described it as another "indictment" of the worsening U.S. human rights record. Human rights experts with the United Nations have condemned the United States for long-term arbitrary detention of suspects and abuses of detainees as serious violations of international law and relevant international conventions.
 
The U.S. Military Commissions Act signed into law on October 17, 2006 allows more severe means be used to interrogate terrorist suspects. Martin Scheinin, UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedom, issued a statement noting that a number of provisions of the Act contradict the universal and fundamental principles of fair trial standards and due process enshrined in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and relevant provisions of the International Convention on Civil Rights and Political Rights (UN Expert on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism Concerned That Military Commissions Act is Now Law in United States, Press Release, United Nations, October 27, 2006).
 
The United Nations and all peace- and justice-loving countries and people have unanimously condemned the U.S. act of disregarding internationally recognized human rights principles and trespassing on other countries' sovereignty and human rights. In July 2006, at its 87th session the UN Human Rights Committee expressed its concern over U.S. infringements on human rights overseas. The committee also expressed concerned and raised recommendations on U.S. security measures, detaining people secretly and in secret places for long periods, abuses of prisoners, and non-compliance with international conventions in the war on terror. On June 14, 2006 five independent UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights issued a joint statement calling on the United States to immediately close the Guantanamo Bay detention center (UN rights experts call for immediate closure of US Guantanamo centre after suicides, UN News Center, June 14, 2006, http://www.un.org/).
 
America's international image has been greatly hurt by its government's violation of human rights flaunting the banner of "safeguarding human rights." A poll by the BBC World Service released on January 23, 2007 showed that the image of the United States has deteriorated around the world in the past year. During the poll 26,381 people were questioned in 25 countries. Some 73 percent of the total disapproved of the U.S. government's handling of the military campaign in Iraq, with 49 percent of respondents saying Washington was playing a mainly negative role internationally. An average of only 29 percent of some 18,000 people surveyed in 18 countries over the last three months believed that the United States is having a mainly positive influence internationally, down 7 percent from the previous poll conducted a year earlier.
 
Though the poll did not directly address their reasons, GlobeScan President Doug Miller told AFP by phone, the negative views appeared to be driven by U.S. intervention in the Middle East and the "disconnect" between its declared values and actions, such as in Guantanamo Bay (AFP, London, January 23, 2007).
 
To "name and shame" other countries in annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices is a world strategy of the U.S. government to wage the Cold War in the second half of the last century and typical of Cold War mentality. To interfere in other countries' internal affairs and provoke international confrontations on human rights issues not only violates universally recognized international law principles such as equality of sovereignty and non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, but also goes against the trend of our times, which promotes peace, development and cooperation, and encourages dialogue instead of confrontation in the field of human rights. The United States has lorded it over other countries by condemning other countries' human rights practices while ignoring its own problems, which exposes its double standard and hegemonism on the human rights issue. We urge the U.S. government to acknowledge its own human rights problems and stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of human rights.
 
2007
 
The United States has a notorious record of trampling on the sovereignty of and violating human rights in other countries.
 
The invasion of Iraq by American troops has produced the biggest human rights tragedy and the greatest humanitarian disaster in modern world. It was reported that since the invasion in 2003, 660,000 Iraqis have died, of which 99 percent were civilians. That translates into a daily toll of 450. According to the Los Angeles Times, the number of civilian deaths in Iraq has exceeded one million. A report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) revealed that about one million Iraqis were homeless, half of whom were children. There were 75,000 children living in refugee camps or makeshift shelters. About 760,000 pupils could not go to school. According to media report, guards of Blackwater, a security service company with State Department background, shot dead 17 Iraqis for no reason on September 16, 2007, and it was given immunity by the State Department (The China Press, October 31, 2007). Investigation by the Iraqi government found that Blackwater guards had killed 21 Iraqis and injured 27 others before that. State Department investigation showed that Blackwater was involved in 56 shooting cases in Iraq in 2007. A U.S. Congress report said the company was involved in nearly 200 shooting cases in Iraq since 2005, and 84 percent of them were random shooting. The Associated Press reported that an Apache gunship opened fired on October 23, 2007 at a group of people suspected of planting roadside bombs near Samarra in north Baghdad, killing at least 11 people, including 6 Iraqi civilians. But local police and eyewitnesses said the number of civilians killed was 14 (The Associated Press, Baghdad, October 23, 2007). Commanders of the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment made a baiting program to kill more insurgents, in which weapons were dropped as a bait, and if someone picked them up, the snipers would shot them. Many Iraqi civilians were killed in this way (Los Angeles Times, October 5, 2007; Washington Post, September 24, 2007).
 
U.S. troops have killed many innocent civilians in the anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported on May 3, 2007 that as many as 51 civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers in one week (Karzai Says Civilian Toll is No Longer Acceptable, The Washington Post, May 3, 2007). An Afghan human rights group said in a report that U.S. marine unit fired indiscriminately at pedestrians, people in cars, buses and taxis along a 10-mile stretch of road in Nangahar province on March 4, 2007, killing 12 civilians, including one infant and three elders (New York Times, April 15, 2007).
 
The United States has many secret jails across the world, where prisoners were treated inhumanely. "Secret prison" and "torturing prisoners" have become synonymous with America. In May 2007, the UN special rapporteur on the protection of human right while countering terrorism said after his visit to the a United States that the latter has detained 700 people in Afghanistan and 18,000 in Iraq for reasons related to the fight against terrorism. The special rapporteur expressed his concern over the conditions of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and other secret detention facilities, the lack of justice protection and access to fair trial for terrorist suspects, as well as the rendition of suspects. He also expressed his disappointment that the U.S. government had refused to allow him to visit Guantanamo Bay and other places of secret detention (Preliminary Findings on Visit to United States by Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, May 29, 2007, www.unog.ch). In addition to Guantanamo Bay where prisoners were subject to gruesome tortures, the United States also ran secret facilities in Jordan and Ethiopia, where detainees were brutally treated. Washington Post reported on December 1, 2007 that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been running a secret jail on the outskirts of Jordan capital Amman since 2000, where many non-Jordanian terrorism suspects had been detained and interrogated with severe abuse (Jordan's Spy Agency: Holding Cell for the CIA, Washington Post, December 1, 2007). According to media reports, CIA detained hundreds of AL-Qaeda suspects in a secret location in Ethiopia. The detainees came from 19 countries and included women and children as young as seven months. They were illegally deported to Ethiopia where they were held in horrific conditions in crowded jails, with a dozen detainees sharing a single 10 feet by 10 feet cell. There was little food, and abuse and torture were commonplace (The Daily Telegraph, April 5, 2007; The Associated Press, Nairobi, April 5, 2007). The Washington Times reported on December 14, 2007 that CIA often tortured detained terrorist suspects by using waterboarding and mock execution (House Approves Ban on CIA Waterboarding, The Washington Times, December 14, 2007). The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) described in a report how waterboarding is done: the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. The New York Times said in a report on December 7, 2007 that CIA in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al-Qaeda operatives in 2002 in the agency's custody (CIA Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations, The New York Times, December 7, 2007). It was widely believed that CIA was trying to destroy evidences of the existence of its secret detention program. Women prisoners were often subject to humiliation in Iraq. Reports said many of them became victims of Iraqi police and the occupying forces. Iraqis said there had never been so many rapes and atrocities against women in any war since the Middle Ages as witnessed in the Iraqi war (Rebellion, May 5, 2007).
 
The United States has always adopted double standards on human rights issues. It frequently exerts pressure on other countries to invite the UN special rapporteur to exam and report on the status of their human rights status, but itself has never done so. The United States requests others to obey the UN norms that allow special rapporteurs to visit any place and talk with any one without interference or surveillance, but itself has rejected such norms and has turned down the request for a joint visit to the military base at Guantanamo Bay from several special rapporteurs.
 
The United States has to date refused to acknowledge the right to development as part of the human rights. Although it signed the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1977, the United States has not yet ratified the convention. The United States claims that it attaches importance to the protection of the rights of women and children, but it has not yet ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women 27 years after signing on the convention. The United States is one of the seven U.N. members that have not ratified the convention. The United States has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child 12 years after signing on it, though 193 countries have already done so. Since March 2007, the Convention on Rights of Disabled Persons has been open for signature and many countries adopt active attitude towards the convention. By the end of December 2007, 118 countries had signed the convention and seven ratified it, but the U.S. has not yet signed nor ratified it.
 
To respect and safeguard human rights is an important achievement in the progressing of the human society and an important symbol of modern civilization. It is also a common goal of people of all countries and races and a key theme of the tide of progress in our time. All the countries have the obligation to make efforts to promote and protect human rights in their own territories, and to promote international cooperation in accordance with the norms of international relations. No country in the world should view itself as the incarnation of human rights, and use human rights as a tool to interfere in affairs of and exert pressure on other countries and realize its own strategic interests. The United States reigns over other countries and releases Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year. Its arrogant critique on the human rights of other countries are always accompanied by a deliberate ignoring of serious human rights problems on its own territory. This was not only inconsistent with universally recognized norms of international relations, but also exposed the double standards and downright hypocrisy of the United States on the human rights issue, and inevitably impaired its international image.
 
We hereby advise the U.S. government to face its own human rights problems and give up the unwise practices of applying double standards on human rights issues.
 
2008
 
The United States has a string of records of trampling on the sovereignty of and violating human rights in other countries.
 
The war in Iraq has led to the death of more than a million civilians, made the same number of people homeless and incurred huge economic losses. The Xe, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide and connected to the U.S. Department of State, and the DynCorp hired 6,000 private security guards in Iraq. Victims of activities of the two companies are frequently Iraqi civilians. A report issued by a supervision team under the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2007 said Xe employees had been involved in at least 196 shooting incidents in Iraq since 2005, which translates into 1.4 incidents a week. Xe employees fired first in 84 percent of these incidents. The United States established prisons across Iraq, where prisoners were routinely abused. Human Rights Watch said on April 27, 2008 that the U.S.-led Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF) was holding 24,514 detainees at the end of 2007 (UN: tell us to end illegal detention practices in Iraq, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/04/27). On average, detainees remain in custody for more than 300 days, and all Iraqi detainees are denied their basic rights (America's Iraqi prisoners, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/08/07). According to a Human Rights Watch report on May 19, 2008, the United States has detained some 2,400 children in Iraq, including those as young as 10, since 2003. U.S. forces were also holding 513 Iraqi children as "imperative threats to security". Children in Iraqi custody are at risk of physical abuse (US: Respect rights of child detainees in Iraq, http//www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/05/19).
 
The United States has maintained its economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba for nearly 50 years. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said the U.S. blockade has caused an accumulated directed economic loss of more than 93 billion U.S. dollars for Cuba. Seven out of 10 Cubans have spent their entire lives under the U.S. embargo (Overwhelming International Rejection of US Blockade of Cuba at UN, www.cubanews.ain.cu/2008/1029votacion_onu.htm). On October 29, 2008, the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba" with a vote of 185 for, three against, urging the United States to immediately end its unilateral embargo against Cuba. It is the 17th consecutive year that an overwhelming majority in the assembly have supported the measure. It is a demonstration of the international community expressing their strong dissatisfaction over the United States acting against the international law and U.N. Charter by viciously violating Cuban peoples' rights to live and develop.
 
The United States is the world's biggest seller of arms. Its arms sales greatly intensified instability across the world and severely violated human rights of foreign nationals. A report by the New American Foundation, U.S. arms sales reached 32 billion U.S. dollars in 2007, more than three times the level in 2001. The weapons were sold to more than 174 nations and regions (Study: US arms sales undermine global human rights, http://sfgate.com).
 
The United States is haunted by scandals of prisoner abuses. The Washington Post reported on September 25, 2008 that U.S. interrogators poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability, according to an internal memo declassified by the Department of Defense. The same newspaper reported on April 22, 2008 that U.S. interrogators used practices such as keeping detainees from sleeping, forced drugging, and coercing confession through torture during questioning detainees at the military prison in Guantanamo. The Human Rights Watch said in a February 6, 2008 report that about 185 of the 270 detainees are housed in facilities akin to "supermax" prisons in various "camps" at the detention center in Guantanamo even though they have not yet been convicted of a crime. These detainees have extremely limited contact with other human beings; spend 22 hours a day alone in small cells with little or no natural light or fresh air (News report finds treatment of detainees unnecessarily harsh, http//www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/06/10). The Associated Press reported that more than 20 detainees under the age of 18 have been brought to the prison camp in Guantanamo since 2002 to fall victim to mistreatment from U.S. army service people. In June 2008, Mohammed Jawad described his experience in May 2004 when he, less than 18 then, was brought to the detention center in Guantanamo and was denied his time for sleep. Jawad was moved from cell to cell 112 times in 14 days, usually left in one cell for less than three hours before being shackled and moved to another. He was moved more frequently between midnight and 2 a.m. to ensure maximum disruption of sleep (The war on teen terror, http:// www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/06/23).
 
The United States is inactive towards its international human rights obligations under the international treaties. The U.S. signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 31 years ago, the Covenant on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women 28 years ago, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child 14 years ago, but none of the above treaties has been approved yet. The Convention on Rights of Disabled Persons is the most important progress the United Nations has achieved in protecting the rights of disabled persons in the new century, and the convention is highly valued by different nations. So far, 136 countries have signed the convention, and 41 already approved it. But the United States has yet to endorse and sign the convention. The U.S. has refused a pledge to promote and protect the rights of indigenous people, and also failed to acknowledge their rights of self-governing, of land and of natural resources in the United Nations and in the international community. On September 13, 2007, the 61st session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of Aboriginal Rights by a vote of 143 in favor, while the United States was one of the only four countries that voted against it.
 
The United States has always obstinately followed double standards in dealing with international human rights affairs, and failed to fulfill its international human rights obligations. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants of the United Nations visited the United States in 2007. However, the original plans to visit the detention centers in Hutto, Texas and Monmouth, New Jersey were canceled with no satisfactory explanations from the U.S. government, although the plans had been sanctioned by the U.S. government in advance. In 2008, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants said in the U.S.-visit report that the United States detained 230,000 migrants every year, more than three times the number nine years ago. The U.S. deportation procedures lack proper procedures about "non-citizens", and non-citizens are rendered incapable of questioning whether they are detained lawfully, or whether for too long. The Special Rapporteur said the United States had failed to fulfill its international obligations, and also failed in adopting comprehensively coordinated national policies in light of explicit international obligations to prioritize the human rights of more than 37.5 million migrants living in the country.
 
The outbound humanitarian aids offered by the United States are dwarfed by its status as the richest country in the world. According to a report from the Development Assistance Research Associates, a non-profit organization based in Spain, the United States is listed one of the countries with the worst records in providing independent, righteous, and unbiased humanitarian aids to other countries. The report said the U.S. aids to other countries came frequently linked to its military or political ambitions.
 
Respect to and protection of human rights is an important indication of civilization and progress of human society. Every government shoulders a common responsibility in committing itself to improvement of human rights conditions in the country. For years, the United States has positioned itself over other countries and released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices annually to criticize human rights conditions in other countries, using it as a tool to interfere with and demonize other nations. In the meantime, the U.S. has turned a blind eye to its own violations of human rights. The U.S. practice of throwing stones at others while living in a glass house is a testimony to the double standards and hypocrisy of the United States in dealing with human rights issues, and has undermined its international image. We hereby advise the U.S. government to begin anew, face its own human rights problems with courage, and stop the wrong practice of applying double standards on human rights issues.
 
2009
 
The United States with its strong military power has pursued hegemony in the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and trespassing their human rights.
 
As the world's biggest arms seller, its deals have greatly fueled instability across the world. The United States also expanded its military spending, already the largest in the world, by 10 percent in 2008 to 607 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 42 percent of the world total (The AP, June 9, 2009).
 
According to a report by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. foreign arms sales in 2008 soared to 37.8 billion U.S. dollars from 25.4 billion a year earlier, up by nearly 50 percent, accounting for 68.4 percent of the global arms sales that were at its four-year low (Reuters, September 6, 2009). At the beginning of 2010, the U.S. government announced a 6.4-billion-U.S. dollar arms sales package to Taiwan despite strong protest from the Chinese government and people, which seriously damaged China's national security interests and aroused strong indignation among the Chinese people.
 
The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan have placed heavy burden on American people and brought tremendous casualties and property losses to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Iraq has led to the death of more than 1million Iraqi civilians, rendered an equal number of people homeless and incurred huge economic losses. In Afghanistan, incidents of the U.S. army killing innocent people still keep occurring. Five Afghan farmers were killed in a U.S. air strike when they were loading cucumbers into a van on August 5, 2009 (http://www.rawa.org). On June 8, the U.S. Department of Defense admitted that the U.S. raid on Taliban on May 5 caused death of Afghan civilians as the military failed to abide by due procedures. The Afghan authorities have identified 147 civilian victims, including women and children, while a U.S. officer put the death toll under 30 (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 9, 2009).
 
Prisoner abuse is one of the biggest human rights scandals of the United States. A report presented to the 10th meeting of Human Rights Council of the United Nations in 2009 by its Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism showed that the United States has pursued a comprehensive set of practices including special deportation, long-term and secret detentions and acts violating the United Nations Convention against Torture. The rapporteur also said, in a report submitted to the 64th General Assembly of the United Nations, that the United States and its private contractors tortured male Muslims detained in Iraq and other places by stacking the naked prisoners in pyramid formation, coercing the homosexual sexual behaviors and stripping them in stark nakedness (The Washington Post, April 7, 2009). The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has begun interrogation by torture since 2002. The U.S. government lawyers disclosed that since 2001, CIA has destroyed 92 videotapes relating to the interrogation to suspected terrorists, 12 of them including the use of torture (The Washington Post, March 3, 2009). The CIA interrogators used a handgun and an electric drill to frighten a captured al-Qaeda commander into giving up information (The Washington Post, August 22, 2009). The U.S. Justice Department memos revealed the CIA kept prisoners shackled in a standing position for as long as 180 hours, more than a dozen of them deprived of sleep for at least 48 hours, three for more than 96 hours, and one for the nearly eight-day maximum. Another seemed to endorse sleep deprivation for 11 days, stated on one memo (http://www.chron.com). The CIA interrogators used waterboarding 183 times against the accused 9/11 major plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and 83 times against suspected Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah (The New York Times, April 20, 2009). A freed Guantanamo prisoner said he experienced the "medieval" torture at Guantanamo Bay and in a secret CIA prison in Kabul (AFP, London, March 7, 2009). In June 2006, three Guantanamo Bay inmates could have been suffocated to death during interrogation on the same evening and their deaths passed off as suicides by hanging, revealed by a six-month joint investigation for Harpers Magazine and NBC News in 2009 (www.guardian.co.uk, January 18, 2010). A Somali named Mohamed Saleban Bare, jailed at Guantanamo Bay for eight years, told AFP the prison was "hell on earth" and some of his colleagues lost sight and limbs and others ended up mentally disturbed (AFP, Hargisa, Somali, December 21, 2009). A 31-year-old Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay who had been on a long hunger strike apparently committed suicide in 2009 after four prior suicide deaths beginning at 2002 (The New York Times, June 3, 2009). The U.S. government held more than 600 prisoners at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. A United Nations report singled out the Bagram detention facility for criticism, saying some ex-detainees allege being subjected to severe torture, even sexual abuse, and some prisoners put under detention for as long as five years. It also reported that some were held in cages containing 15 to 20 men and that two detainees died in questionable circumstances while in custody (IPS, New York, February 25, 2009). An investigation by U.S. Justice Department showed 2,000 Taliban surrendered combatants were suffocated to death by the U.S. army-controlled Afghan armed forces (http://www.yourpolicicsusa.com, July 16, 2009).
 
The United States has been building its military bases around the world, and cases of violation of local people's human rights are often seen. The United States is now maintaining 900 bases worldwide, with more than 190,000 military personnel and 115,000 relevant staff stationed. These bases are bringing serious damage and environmental contamination to the localities. Toxic substances caused by bomb explosions are taking their tolls on the local children. It has been reported that toward the end of the U.S. military bases' presence in Subic and Clark, as many as 3,000 cases of raping the local women had been filed against the U.S. servicemen, but all were dismissed (http://www.lexisnexis.com, May 17, 2009).
 
The United States has been maintaining its economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba for almost 50 years. The blockade has caused an accumulated direct economic loss of more than 93 billion U.S. dollars to Cuba. On October 28, 2009, the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on the "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba," with a recorded vote of 187 in favor to three against, and two abstentions. This marked the 18th consecutive year the assembly had overwhelmingly called on the United States to lift the blockade without delay (Overwhelming International Rejection of US Blockade of Cuba at UN, www.cubanews.ain.cu).
 
The United States is pushing its hegemony under the pretence of "Internet freedom." The United States monopolizes the strategic resources of the global Internet, and has been retaining a tight grip over the Internet ever since its first appearance. There are currently 13 root servers of Internet worldwide, and the United States is the place where the only main root server and nine out of the rest 12 root servers are located. All the root servers are managed by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is, by the authority of the U.S. government, responsible for the management of the global root server system, the domain name system and the Internet Protocol address. The United States has declined all the requests from other countries as well as international organizations including the United Nations to break the U.S. monopoly over the root servers and to decentralize its management power over the Internet. The United States has been intervening in other countries' domestic affairs in various ways taking advantage of its control over Internet resources. The United States has a special troop of hackers, which is made up of hacker proficients recruited from all over the world. When post-election unrest broke out in Iran in the summer of 2009, the defeated reformist camp and its advocators used Internet tools such as Twitter to spread their messages. The U.S. State Department asked the operator of Twitter to delay its scheduled maintenance to assist with the opposition in creating a favorable momentum of public opinion. In May 2009, one web company, prompted by the U.S. authorities, blocked its Messenger instant messaging service in five countries including Cuba.
 
2010
 
The United States has a notorious record of international human rights violations.
 
The U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused huge civilian casualties. A trove, released by the WikiLeaks website on October 22, 2010, reported up to 285,000 war casualties in Iraq from March 2003 through the end of 2009. The documents revealed that at least 109,000 people were killed in the Iraq war, and 63 percent of them were civilians (World Journal, October 23, 2010). In an attack in Baghdad in July 2007, an American helicopter shot and killed 12 people, among whom were a Reuters photographer and his driver (The New York Times, April 5, 2010). On February 20, 2011, a U.S. military operation in northeastern Afghanistan killed 65 innocent people, including 22 women and more than 30 children, causing the most serious civilian casualties in months (The Washington Post, February 20, 2011). According to a report in the Washington Post on October 15, 2010, Iraq' s Human Rights Ministry reported in 2009 that 85,694 Iraqis were killed from January 2004 to October 31, 2008. Iraq Body Count, an organization based in Britain, said that a total of 122,000 civilians had been killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq (Newsday, October 24, 2010).
 
The U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and other regions have also brought tremendous casualties to local people. According to a report by McClatchy Newspapers on March 2, 2010, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops had caused 535 Afghan civilian deaths and injuries in 2009. Among them 113 civilians were shot and killed, an increase of 43 percent over 2008. Since June 2009, air strikes by the U.S. military had killed at least 35 Afghan civilians. On January 8, 2010, an American missile strike in the northwestern region of Pakistan killed four people and injured three others (The San Francisco Chronicle, January 9, 2010). During an American Special Operation in Afghanistan on February 12, five innocent civilians were shot to death, and two of them were pregnant mothers (The New York Times, April 5, 2010, page A4). On April 12, American troops raked a passenger bus near Kandahar, killing five civilians and wounding 18 others (The New York Times, April 13, 2010). The Washington Post reported on September 18, 2010, that from January 2010, a "kill team" formed by five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, had committed at least three murders, where they randomly targeted and killed Afghan civilians, and dismembered the corpses and hoarded the human bones (The Washington Post, September 18, 2010).
 
The U.S. counter-terrorism missions have been haunted by prisoner abuse scandals. The United States held individuals captured during its "war on terror" indefinitely without charge or trial, according to a joint study report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council in May 2010 by the UN's Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The report said the United States established detention centers in Guantanamo Bay and many other places in the world, keeping detainees secretly. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established secret detention facilities to interrogate so-called "high-value detainees". The study said the U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stephen G. Bradbury had stated that the CIA had taken custody of 94 detainees, and had employed "enhanced techniques" to varying degrees, including stress positions, extreme temperature changes, sleep deprivation, and "waterboarding," in the interrogation of 28 of those detainees (UN document A/HRC/13/42). The United States makes arrests outside its border under the pretext of the "war on terror." According to a report of the Associated Press on December 9, 2010, documents released by the WikiLeaks website indicated that in 2003, some U.S. agents were involved in an abduction of a German citizen mistakenly believed to be a terrorist. The U.S. agents abducted him in Macedonia, and secretly detained him in a CIA-run prison in Afghanistan for five months. However, a top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin warned the German government not to issue international arrest warrants against the involved CIA agents.
 
The United States has seriously violated the right of subsistence and right of development of Cuban residents. On October 26, 2010, the 65th session of the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution entitled "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba," the 19th such resolution in a row. Only two countries, including the United States, voted against the resolution. The blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted in 1948.
 
The United States refuses to join several key international human rights conventions, failing to fulfill its international obligations. To date, the United States has ratified neither the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, nor the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. In 2006, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Up to now 96 countries have ratified the Convention. The United States, however, has not ratified it. So far, a total of 193 countries have joined the Convention on the Rights of the Child as states parties, but the United States is among the very few countries that have not ratified it.
 
On August 20, 2010, the U.S. government submitted its first report on domestic human rights situation to the UN Human Rights Council. During the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the record on November 5, the United States received a record 228 recommendations by about 60 country delegations for improving its human rights situation. These recommendations referred to, inter alia, ratifying key international human rights conventions, rights of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples, racial discriminations and Guantanamo prison. The United States, however, only accepted some 40 of them. On March 18, 2011, the UN Human Rights Council adopted the outcome of the UPR on the United States, and many countries condemned the United States for rejecting most of the recommendations. In the discussion on the United States, speakers from some country delegations expressed their regret and disappointment over the United States' refusal of a large number of the recommendations. They noted that the United States' commitment to the human rights area was far from satisfying, and they urged the United States to face up to its own human rights record and take concrete actions to tackle the existing human rights problems.
 
The above-mentioned facts illustrate that the United States has a dismal record on its own human rights and could not be justified to pose as the world's "human rights justice." However, it released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to accuse and blame other countries for their human rights practices. The United States ignores its own serious human rights problems, but has been keen on advocating the so-called "human rights diplomacy," to take human rights as a political instrument to defame other nations' image and seek its own strategic interests. These facts fully expose its hypocrisy by exercising double standards on human rights and its malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights.
 
We hereby advise the U.S. government to take concrete actions to improve its own human rights conditions, check and rectify its acts in the human rights field, and stop the hegemonistic deeds of using human rights issues to interfere in other countries' internal affairs.
 
2014
 
In the field of international human rights, the U.S. has long refused to approve some core human rights conventions of the United Nations and voted against some important UN human rights resolutions. More than that, the U.S. continued to go even further to violate human rights in other countries, including infringing on the privacy of citizens of other countries with the overseas monitoring project, killing large number of innocent civilians of other countries in drone strikes, and raping and killing locals by U.S. soldiers garrisoned overseas.
 
The Central Intelligence Agency abused torture. As of December 2014, 136 prisoners remained locked up in the Guantanamo Bay military prison (www.latimes.com, December 8, 2014). As disclosed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report released on December 9, the CIA paid a contractor 80 million U.S. dollars to come up with ways to torture people. To acquire intelligence from suspects of terrorism and extremism, the CIA used brutal methods, such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners' head against the wall, lashing, death threat and even the appalling "rectal rehydration" (www.intelligence.senate.gov, December 3, 2014). Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a prisoner held by the CIA in Afghanistan, was tortured with water-boarding for 183 times (www.foxnews.com, April 1, 2014). According to CIA records, many agents implementing waterboarding felt sick, wanted to vomit, and some wanted to cry and felt suffocated (www.intelligence.senate.gov, December 3, 2014). Some detainees also underwent sexual assault. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, held in Guantanamo for 12 years without evidence and court trial, published a diary he wrote in prison. According to the diary, published by German weekly Der Spiegel, Slahi suffered from a variety of tortures, including savage beating, starvation, prohibition of prayer and sexual abuse (www.spiegel.de, January 20, 2015). The Los Angeles Times said in an editorial that the report showed American post-9/11 shame, as well as stomach-turning details of torture. On April 9, 2014, the U.S. executed Mexican citizen Ramiro Hernandez Llanas without granting him access to consular assistance, a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. On April 11, 2014, the spokesperson for the UN high commission for human rights slammed the U.S. saying that its execution of foreign nationals while depriving them of the rights of obtaining consular assistance constituted an act of arbitrary deprivation of life, which violated the international law, including the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights approved by the U.S.
 
Massive overseas surveillance program violated other countries' sovereignty and civil rights. Ever since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the PRISM data mining program of the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013, more surveillance programs of the U.S. authorities were revealed, and in larger scales. The NSA intercepted phone conversations of 35 world leaders, including Secretary-General of the United Nations, German chancellor and Brazilian president (www.theguardian.com, October 25, 2013). According to a Washington Post report on January 2, 2014, the NSA had a quantum computer development project, coded as "Penetrating Hard Targets," for the purpose of cracking common passwords on the Internet, and stealing encrypted information of government organs, enterprises and banks around the world (www.washingtonpost.com, January 2, 2014). In another project, code-named "Quantum," the NSA installed micro circuit boards or USB storage cards in nearly 100,000 computers around the world, through the channels of "spies, computer makes and unwitting users," obtained data from the computers via receiving radio waves emitted from these devices, and launched cyber attacks on target computers (www.washingtonpost.com, January 14, 2014 and www.huffingtonpost.com, January 14, 2014). Another program, codenamed "Dishfire," collected up to 200 million mobile phone text messages each day from around the globe, while program "Prefer" conducted automated analysis on these messages to acquire users' locations, networks and credit card transaction details (www.theguardian.com, January 6, 2014).
 
Frequent use of drones producing massive civilian casualties in other countries. Statistics showed that as of November 24, 2014, U.S. drones claimed the lives of 1,147 people in attacks against 41 persons, which meant the death of 28 civilians including women and children to kill every 'bad guy' the U.S. went after (www.theguardian.com, November 14, 2014). In Yemen, U.S. drone bombing and air strikes killed estimated 753 to 965 people, including at least 81 civilians, from the beginning of 2014 to mid April. (www.washingtonpost.com, September 11, 2014).
 
Frequent violation of human rights by U.S. troops overseas. On July 25, 2014, two American soldiers based near the northern Italian town Vicenza, Gray Lamarcus and Ides McCough, were accused of raping and beating a six month pregnant Romanian woman (www.thedailybeast.com, July 25, 2014). On October 15, 2014, the Philippine police accused American marine Joseph Scott Pemberton of murdering a transgender (www.cbsnews.com, October 15, 2014).
 
Take its own way on international human rights law. To date, the U.S. still denies that the right of development is a human right. In September 2014, when a draft resolution on the right of development was tabled for a vote at the 27th session of the Human Rights Council, the U.S. once again was the only nation to vote against it (www.ohchr.org, adopted resolution A/HRC/RES/27/2). Though the U.S. signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1977, it has not ratified it so far. Though the U.S. claimed it valued the rights of women and children, yet 34 years after it signed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, it has not ratified the treaty. It has neither ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child 19 years after signing it. Besides, the U.S. remained inactive on foreign debts and human rights to evade its responsibility. It voted against the draft resolution of "the effects of foreign debt on the enjoyment of all human rights" at meetings of the UN Human Rights Council in March and September in 2014 respectively (UN document A/HRC/RES/25/16).
 
2015
 
In 2015, the United States continued to trample on human rights in other countries, causing tremendous civilian casualties. Its overseas monitoring projects infringed on the privacy of citizens of other countries while torture scandals at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp continued. Up to date, the United States has not ratified some core human rights conventions of the United Nations and voted against some important human rights resolutions.
 
Air strikes caused a large number of civilian casualties. According to Airwars, a project aimed at tracking air strikes in the Middle East, the United States had repeatedly organized coalition forces to launch air strikes against military forces in Iraq and Syria since August 8, 2014. As of December 6, 2015, the United States launched 3,965 air strikes in Iraq and 2,823 in Syria, causing an estimated number of civilian deaths between 1,695 and 2,239 (www.airwars.org). The Syrian government called U.S.-led coalition air strikes an "act of aggression" (www.independent.co.uk, December 7, 2015). On October 3, 2015, a hospital run by aid group "Doctors Without Borders" in the city of Kunduz in Afghanistan was under a bombing that continued for half an hour. Many patients who were unable to move were killed on site, while some staff of the aid group were shot at from the air while fleeing the hospital. A total of 42 people were killed in the air strike, with some bodies charred beyond recognition (www.sputniknews.com, December 12, 2015; www.abcnews.go.com, October 5, 2015).
 
A frequent use of drones claimed many innocent lives. According to an October 15, 2015 report run by Daily Mail website, when carrying out drone assassinations, the U.S. military used "phone data alone" -- a limited way of guaranteeing a kill. During Operation Haymaker, a campaign in northeastern Afghanistan which ran between January 2012 and February 2013, some 219 people were killed by drones but just 35 were the intended targets. During another five-month stretch of the operation, a staggering 90 percent of those killed were not the intended target. Despite this all the deaths were labeled EKIA, or "enemy killed in action." (www.dailymail.co.uk, October 15, 2015). A report posted on April 24, 2015 by The Washington Post on its website said a study, which documented 415 strikes in Pakistan and Yemen since the September 11, 2001 attacks, put the total number of killed civilians between 423 and 962 (www.washingtonpost.com, April 24, 2015). The abuse of drone strikes not only drew widespread criticism from international community, but also incurred strong doubt from U.S. scholars. The Washington Post posted an article on March 20, 2015, introducing to its readers two books on drones - Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, by Andrew Cockburn, and A Theory of the Drones, by Gregoire Chamayou. Cockburn sees America's killer drone policy as "the culmination of a historical pattern of lies, deception and greed in the deployment of lethal military force around the world" and as "a continuation of previous U.S. assassination policy." Failing miserably to achieve the country's stated goal of enhanced security, the policy simultaneously undermined the democratic process, Cockburn writes, noting that "assassination by robot is bound to inspire rather than curtail extremism." According to Chamayou and Cockburn, killer drone exposes the trend toward a new -- and "inhumane form of warfare." "With drone warfare, there is no victory, just perpetual elimination." (www.washingtonpost.com, March 20, 2015).
 
Abuse of cruel torture trampled on human rights. A report by the U.S. Senate on the study of the Central Intelligence Agency's detention and interrogation program found that the CIA's use of brutal interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners' heads into walls, lashing and death threat, were in serious violation of U.S. law (www.intelligence.senate.gov). While according to some witnesses, the CIA torture went far beyond the Senate report had disclosed. Majid Khan, a Guantanamo Bay detainee-turned government cooperating witness, said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals, twice videotaped him naked and repeatedly touched his "private parts". At one point, Khan said, his feet and lower legs were placed in tall boot-like metal cuffs that dug into his flesh and immobilized his legs. The guards also stripped him naked, hung him from a wooden beam for three days and provided him with water but no food. All the above torture details that Khan had undergone were not included in the Senate report (www.theguardian.com, June 2, 2015). On January 11, 2016, human rights experts, including the UN special rapporteurs on torture Juan E. Mendez; on human rights and counterterrorism, Ben Emmerson; on independence of the judiciary, Monica Pinto; Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Seong-Phil Hong; and the director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Michael Georg Link, together called on the U.S. Government to promptly close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, 14 years after the detention center became operational. The experts recalled in the letter that close to 100 detainees still languished in Guantanamo after years of arbitrary detention without trial (www.un.org, January 11, 2016).
 
The United States spied on leaders from other countries. The BBC reported on April 30, 2015 that the U.S. National Security Agency, by working with other secret services, has long monitored on European leaders (www.bbc.com, April 30, 2015). The Independent reported on June 24, 2015 that the United States had bugged the phones of three French presidents and many other senior French officials, for which a French government spokesman said was "unacceptable" (www.independent.co.uk, June 24, 2015). Facing criticism from its allies, the U.S. government continued to monitor some leaders in the name of "national security purpose" (www.theguardian.com, December 30, 2015).
 
Though the United States repeatedly vowed to defend "human rights," it still has not ratified core human rights conventions of the UN, including 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 United States is the only country that is yet to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States also takes an uncooperative attitude towards international human rights issues. It often kept stalling or turned a deaf ear to criticisms leveled by the UN Human Rights Council special sessions and High Commissioners for Human Rights. On September 28, 2015 when the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution related to development right, the United States, as always, voted against it (www.un.org).
 
2016
 
In 2016, the United States continued to trample on human rights in other countries, causing tremendous civilian casualties. Its overseas monitoring projects infringed on the privacy of citizens of other countries and the United States set up detention camp that illegally detained and tortured prisoners in many places on the globe.
 
Air strikes caused a large number of civilian casualties. According to Airwars, a project aimed at tracking air strikes in the Middle East, the United States had repeatedly organized coalition forces to launch air strikes against military forces in Iraq and Syria since August 8, 2014. As of December 19, 2016, the United States launched 7,258 air strikes in Iraq and 5,828 in Syria, causing 733 incidents with an estimated number of civilian deaths between 4,568 and 6,127 (www.airwars.org, December 19, 2016). According to a report by the website of Los Angeles Times on December 2, a U.S. airstrike killed at least 15 civilians in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province (www.latimes.com, December 2, 2016). Since 2009, the upper limit of the civilian death toll from U.S. drones stood at more than 800 people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia (www.theguardian.com, July 1, 2016).
 
The issue of illegal detention and torturing prisoners of other countries remained unsolved. The U.S. government promised to close Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2009, but as of December 4, 2016, there were 59 detainees at Guantanamo Bay (www.cnn.com, December 4, 2016). According to a report by the Washington Post on June 14, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on violating "Freedom of Information" and forced the CIA to release 50 declassified documents. A declassified report revealed in a CIA prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit, militant Gul Rahman was placed in an "extremely cold" cell, suffered from pouring water to his body, and was determined to have died of hypothermia while in detention (www.washingtonpost.com, June 16, 2016). In a document titled "Description of Physical Pressures," the CIA tortured detainees including a facial slap, use of diapers, "insects," and "mock burial." In November 2016, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor said in a report that the U.S. armed forces and the CIA may have committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan (www.csmonitor.com, November 15, 2016).
 
The United States continued overseas monitoring projects in a large scale. The U.S. intelligence agencies placed long-term monitoring of head and leaders of other states, diplomatic institutions and common people. Since National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden leaked the U.S. surveillance programs to the new media in June 2013, the United States continuously extended the scale to monitor head and leaders of other states, common people and related enterprises with updated technologies which draw sharp criticism. In 2016, the CIA invested in firms to mine Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media (theintercept.com, April 15, 2016). A windowless Manhattan skyscraper appeared to be a secrete location used for NSA surveillance program that targeted not only domestic communication but also the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and at least 38 countries (www.independent.co.uk, November 17, 2016). A spy base named Titanpointe in NSA building used equipment with companies such as AT&T and spied on phone calls, fax messages and internet data, intercepting satellite data including emails, chats, Skype calls, passwords, and internet browsing histories. The United States drew vast criticism from the international community.
 
2017
 
The US-led military operations in other countries have caused heavy civilian casualties. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp continued to detain and torture foreigners. The United States also made cyber warfare tools, hacking and spying foreign networks.
 
War of aggression on Syria caused a large number of civilian casualties. On June 19, 2017, The New York Times website reported that the U.S. administration had given the military “total authorization” to decide how, and how much, force would be used, while the American military had relaxed the oversight, investigation and accountability on civilian casualties, resulting in the civilian death toll ticking upward. The US-led coalition and Marines had bombed or shelled at least 12 schools, 15 mosques, 15 bridges as well as residential neighborhoods, hospitals, cultural relics and refugee camp. The coalition warplanes also launched a barrage of airstrikes targeting the boats, on which many families waited to cross a river to escape, reportedly massacring as many as 21 civilians(www.motherjones.com, August 6, 2017). The Muslim Times website reported on June 24, 2017 that the US military had attacked Syrian government forces “at least four times in recent months”, including a missile strike in April against a Syrian airfield. Myles Hoenig, an American political analyst, said the United States was violating the UN Charter by conducting a war of aggression against Syria(muslimtimes.co, June 24, 2017).
 
Foreigners have long been tortured and detained at the Guantanamo Bay. On December 13, 2017, The American Broadcasting Company website reported that the new U.S. administration had not released any prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay and not added any to the list of cleared men who can go home, or to a third country, for resettlement. The Al Jazeera website reported on September 22, 2017, that in a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the Commission), former Guantanamo detainee Djamel Ameziane prepared a written statement saying he was detained for 11 years, faced prolonged incommunicado detention, multiple forms of torture, and never received a judicial determination regarding the legality of his detention. According to a report of The USA Today website on December 13, 2017, the U.N. and human rights organizations had criticized U.S. authorities for creating a “legal black hole” allowing for the infinite detention of suspects without charge, and for holding many of the detainees for more than a decade. Nils Melzer, the United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur on torture, on December 13, 2017, urged the United States to end its torture of detainees held at the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility (www.usatoday.com, December 13, 2017).
 
Making cyber warfare tools. The US National Security Agency (NSA) operators had hacked into Pakistani mobile networks and had been spying on hundreds of IP addresses in the country, WikiLeaks claimed(economictimes.indiatimes.com, April 11, 2017). On May 14, 2017, the Zero Hedge website revealed that NSA created “Top Secret Arsenal” of tools that allowed anyone to "back door" into virtually any computer system. An unknown group of hackers used the same set of NSA-created tools to launch a global malware cyber attack by using ransomeware virus, holding at least 200,000 computer systems around the globe hostage (www.zerohedge.com, May 14, 2017).