US Human Rights Record 2013 – The Emperor disrobed

It is time the world stood up against a tyrant that is destroying world peace and exposes not only the tyrant but the other nations working in association with the tyrant. It is only then can the world find true peace. Should the world continue to heed derogatory statements and reports issued by the US State Department on nations while the US blatantly violates every law in existence and the UN can only silently watch because its officials have degraded themselves by bowing at the feet of imperialists headed by the US? Planet earth has been abused enough, peoples rights have been violated, nations have been flogged by a handful of nations who are being steered by corporates and financiers who want to loot nations. Americans and the people of the world now need to rise against these tyrants so we may all live in peace without being manipulated.

Is it for a joke that the US drafts Resolutions against nations when its own crimes are nothing it can preach to nations and accountability of US has not been forthcoming for any of America’s violations?

When US denounces nations, ridicules them its record for 2013 is nothing America can be proud of

• 30 mass killings in 12 months with 137 people dead
• The Uniform Crime Report released by the FBI has registered 1.2million violent crimes (1,214,464) in 2012 of which
  • 14,827 were murders and non-negligent manslaughters,
  • 84,376 forcible rapes
  • 354,522 robberies
  • 760,739 aggravated assaults
• US tells nations to give people, media and journalists full independence and privacy. What does US do in America? US taps Americans, US has been spying on Americans and foreigners both at home and abroad, even EU leaders including German Chancellor Merkel were victim. So what does UN Secretary General and Navi Pillay have to say about violation of human rights. Well they don’t say anything against the US but they have enough of statements against all of America’s targeted nations – why is she silent on the solitary confinement of about 80,000 US prisoners for over 40 years?
• When US has all the money to hand out for various regime change programs and to buy over Bar Associations, create student unrest, purchase foreign politicians etc.. could this money not have been used to deal with unemployment in the US where lowest-income families have topped 21% and in the land where dreams are supposed to come true there is a homeless population that has climbed to 16%.
• When American envoys in foreign nations delivers speeches about the rights of children, they forget that back home there are child laborers in the agricultural sector. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 41,310 youth under 16 years were hired in farms. It is believed that 400,000 to 500,000 kids worked on farms in 2012.
• When US sheds crocodile tears about civilian deaths and calls for accountability mechanisms and gives knee-jerks to the UN heads to go after nations the US targets, they completely ignore the drone strikes taking place in Pakistan and Yemen. the US has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004 killing 926 civilians. Is there no international investigation mechanism for US killing of civilians, Ms. Navi Pillay or does the US have a carte blanche to kill?
• Let us also not forget that this country that goes preaching round the world has refused to sign key UN conventions – International Covenant of Economics, Social and Cultural Rights, Convention on the Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities to name a few.
• A FBI sex-trafficking sweep on 76 cities in July 2013 revealed 105 sexually exploited teenagers as young as 13 showing cases of sexual abuse against children as well. A report by the Chicago Tribune has revealed that 111 children lost their lives from abuse or neglect in Illonois only in 2012 a majority of them were just 1 year old. Annually the deaths of children from abuse is 1545.
• FBI figures for 2013 reveals that that there are 21,093,273 privately owned guns in the USA. As of  2013, there were about 300million guns in the US. Yet, on an average more than 100,000 Americans are being shot each year, 30,000 of deaths are by the gun. 11,000 Americans are killed by gun violence  (UK Telegraph/Dec 2013). Mass shootings led to 404 people shot and 207 people killed from 2009 to 2012 (Huffington Post/Oct 2013)
• If not for Edward Snowden, Americans or the world would not have known that the US was spying on people. People would not have known that US was using data of 9 internet companies including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo to track people’s private contacts and social activities. The Washington Post revealed that the US NSA had tapped directly into the central servers of these internet companies and extracted their emails, chats, audio and video data, documents, photos. The UK Guardian revealed that Verizon Business Network Services Inc provided the NSA all the telephony metadata within its system including telephone numbers, locations and call durations. The country that asks other nations to give full privacy to people had been secretly spying on people and continues to do so.
• The California Pelican Bay prison is said to have more than 400 prisoners kept in isolation for over a decade while others have been kept in solitary isolation for over 40 years. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendex urged the US to abolish the use of solitary confinement – we do not need to ask the likely outcome!
• The word America loves to dole out freely is ‘democracy’ but research shows American’s influence on policy is proportionate to their wealth with over 70% of Americans belonging to the lower wealth /income group having NO influence over US policy. In reality only 1/10th of 1% end up enjoying ‘democracy’ in America. They make the policies and they break the policies as they see fit. This is why less Americans are no registering to vote. In Los Angeles Mayoral election only 23% cast their ballot.
• Even US veterans are unemployed – 6.9% as of October 2013. 246,000 post 9/11 war veterans are looking for jobs.
• There are more than 47 million Americans living in poverty (2012 – US Census Bureau). Poverty rate is 15%. 6.4million aged 65years and older were poor (Reuters/2013). The gap between America’s rich and poor is the widest in history as revealed by the US Internal Revenue Service data of 2012 and highest since 1917.
• Data released by PEW says that the unions lost 400,00 members. It has become a trend to declare bankruptcy and become eligible for bankruptcy protection but people end up in the lurch.
• There are 57,737 homeless Americans in Los Angeles. The number of homeless in New York is more than 71% with over 60,000 people including 22,000 children homeless.
• 15.4% or 48 milion Americans are uninsured. 1.3million jobless Americans are receiving $300 per week.
• The country that did not allow blacks to sit next to whites, travel in buses or even sold land and property to blacks today preaches against racial discrimination while surveys reveal that racial discrimination remains very much alive.
  • 136 African Americans UNARMED CIVILIANS were killed by US policemen in 2012
  • UNARMED black youth – Jonathan Ferrel, sought help after a car accident but he was shot multiple times and killed by the police (New York 2013)
  • A Black lady was handcuffed and brutally beaten by 2 white cops for an unpaid fine (UK Daily Mail)
  • Racially biased stops/interrogations often occur in the US – a US district judge says at least 200,000 stops were made by New York police without reasonable suspicion.
  • Arrests of blacks for marijuana usage was more than whites though both were addicted
  • 2/3 women in state prisons incarcerated for drug offences were Hispanic or Black though whites were also drug users at the same rate.
  • Travyvon Martin was shot dead by George Zimmerman – several cities made protests
  • Racial and sex discrimination is rampant throughout US workplaces. From 2006-2010 payouts in Los Angeles Fire Department against harassment cases cost more than $17million.
• America loves to use the words ‘racist’ ‘communal’ ‘extremists’ for everyone else but America thinks that it is perfectly fine for America to say ‘kill everyone in China’ (ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Show) ‘Latino voters are greedy and lazy socialist, and that’s why they don’t vote for Republicans” (American Family Association/a leading religious rights group)
• America loves to look into the domestic affairs of sovereign nations and cries over the indigenous rights of people in other nations but back home the Rights of the real owners of American lands suffer abuse and violence. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of the Indigenous People’s highlighted high rates of violence against American indigenous women by non-indigenous men.
• In America women face serious employment discrimination. Women’s salary is far lower than men’s. Both women and children are subject to violent attacks even sexual. Females are strip-searched as the Indian diplomat found out recently. A women arrested for drunk-driving had several bones shattered in her face (Chicago Tribune/2013). Domestic violence is also a serious issue – 64,324 victims of violent attacks in just one-24hour period in 2012. Even US female soldiers are experiencing frequent sexual assaults. Military Times reveal that 6.1% of active duty women have experienced unwanted sexual contact. While 14% of military victims report their assaults 64% of convicted sexual perpetrators get discharged from the military.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/03/02/18751754.php

A country that violates human rights both at home and abroad does not deserve an iota of respect or centre stage in any international public forum. We are talking about a country that has used the atomic bomb twice in the space of 3 days knowing what the outcome was when they released it on 6th August 1945 upon Hiroshima. This country has been sending unmanned drones, bombing nations to bring ‘democracy’ while a merry team of the same corporate and financiers run off with the wealth of nations leaving nothing for ordinary Americans or even the soldiers who have been used as guinea pigs by the Governments and their officials. We are talking about the US Government who have planned and plotted to secretly tap and violate the rights of their own people because they know what they are doing is wrong and they do not want to be caught and found out by the American masses. Today, the American people have found too late that they have fallen prey to bogus ‘terrorist’ claims and promises of greater security by the US state but instead under the pretext of securing the rights of the American people, the US Government has denied them these rights.

Finally the American people are realizing that they have been fooled. Is it too late? A handful of evil people get the dirty work done by others who are paid to carry out orders. It is time these parties realized the wrong they are committing and refuse to be party to the evil that is taking place around us. The UN heads are equally to blame for they have silently allowed a monster to dictate to the world’s nations, bully these nations and bring them to their knees by various covert and overt plots and plans that have been engineered and orchestrated simply using the power of money to buy over people. These illegal schemes and plots are well known but no one in power is willing to take the initiative to rally the people around to stop the charade. America has been upto every evil we can imagine though we must clearly distinguish between the American public and the American leaders and their coterie of ultra rich who are the real culprits of the evil that prevails. The ordinary masses are ignorant and have been fed lies by their own leaders.

It is now time that the UN General Assembly nations resolve to put a stop to the unethical practices that the US and a handful of other nations wanting to subjugate the world and dominate them are currently doing in what is a white supremacist imperial neocolonial agenda. The Third World needs to regroup, reassess, realign themselves to a new economic order, bridge the gaps between the rich and power. Hungary set an example by kicking out IMF and giving debt-free loans. The people have been flogged enough it is time that the Third World leaders stop being vassals of the mighty nations simply because they are using them to meet their own agendas. Leaders of the Third World owe it to their people to show true leadership and bring their people out of the miseries that presently engulfs them.

As for the US and its political leaders who are controlled by global MNCs, transnational corporate, global financiers the tables need to turn on them. For far too long they have ruined the world, the planet and the people 

IT IS TIME FOR NAVI PILLAY TO CALL FOR AN INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION FOR ALL OF AMERICA’S CRIMES WITH JUDGES FROM THE THIRD WORLD INCLUDED INTO THE PANEL.

Shenali D Waduge
SRI LANKA