America’s Human Rights Record Is Waning

The harrowing accounts and chilling examples highlighted in recent reports by the Human Rights Watch and others are a disturbing read for any conscious human being.

News ID: 446677

Date: 21 August 2019 - 11:25

RNA - And however much the US administration officials would like to be in denial, their one-dimensional human rights policy is still a dead giveaway, a narrative that tells of an abusive system that knows about these things and chooses to do nothing.

Predominantly, these reports put the Land of the Free in negative light for “infringement on citizens' civil rights, prevalence of money politics, rising income inequality, worsening racial discrimination, and growing threats against children, women and immigrants, as well as human rights violations caused by the unilateral America First policies.”

It’s a sad statement, as well, that the US, which withdrew last year from the United Nations Human Rights Council, methodically continues to grab the top trophy in rampant gun violence and abuse of power by public officers. Data from the Gun Violence Archive showed the United States reported 57,103 incidents of gun violence in 2018, resulting in 14,717 deaths, 28,172 injuries, including casualties of 3,502 juveniles.

And that's just to scratch the surface of the explosive subject of federal gun laws. It reveals that the pattern of systematic abuse at the hands of the American government under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution has been, and still is, a textbook case of human rights violations designed and implemented at the highest levels of government.

Let's be utterly clear about what has happened to human rights in American hands: There are genuine reasons why each and every year tens of thousands of black Americans, Latinos, students and activists take to the streets across country, rallying and chanting and refusing to back down and go home. The US - where school shootings are an almost weekly news story and the preeminent fear of American teenagers - has succumbed to the exact patterns of abusive state action that these campaigners want to outlaw forever.
No less important, though hardly commented upon, is this fact, too: The ruling elites are blatant in their intentions of maintaining white supremacy and privilege. The political class in Washington makes a mockery of civil rights as well as domestic and international justice. Their crocodile tears for slain youths by white police officers and “concern” in both racial discrimination and the abuse of power by public officers is a ruse. The authorities seek no social justice and equality to the millions of disadvantaged Americans and victims of police homicide. They seek no justice to those men of color and immigrants who get killed every day for imagined fears by bigoted police officers.

And in case you are wondering, it’s not just the Human Rights Watch that says US human rights record is now officially in the dust. The US Senate Intelligence Committee’s periodic report (partly classified) is equally a disturbing read – although it fails to call on Washington to comply with international treaties:

The Committee cites deep concern about heavy-handed and discriminatory policing practices, treatment of juveniles in criminal justice system, serious problems with immigration enforcement policies, sexual assault of inmates, and shackling of pregnant women.

The Committee reveals that the US never investigates cases of unlawful detention, killing, torture, rape and ill treatment.

It’s been pouring out in all its variety to remind us that all is not well for the United States. Many human rights organizations have also delivered withering verdicts on America’s increasingly degraded record on human rights – on both domestic and international levels.

The United Nations Committee Against Torture offers worse news. It catalogues greater violations and raises graver concerns, including torture, racial oppression, systematic human rights violations, police brutality, and failure to close secret immigrant detention centers and military prisons.

According to Fars News Agancy, the UN Committee fittingly condemns the self-styled “human rights defenders” of the White House for failing to comply with international anti-torture treaties, citing indefinite detention without trial, force-feeding of prisoners, holding asylum seekers, mothers and children in detention facilities, widespread use of solitary confinement, excessive use of force and brutality by police, shootings of unarmed people of color, and cruel and inhumane executions.

Under the circumstances, expect no shock, no horror, no self-reflection whatsoever. It won’t make the news, much less the headlines on Capitol Hill. Assumedly, the greatest crew of rights-violation aiders and abettors at the White House will never bother to comply with the International Human Rights Law, or make political sacrifices to promote and protect human rights on domestic, regional and international levels.

It’s rather immature to think that a country that spends 80 billion dollars a year to incarcerate some 2.4 million people will ever give people a sense of engagement and empowerment. It will never go that far to acknowledge its abysmal record on human rights. It will do such things again and again and again.

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