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Human Rights Record of the US in 2004 (full text)
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-03-03 11:10 Moreover, every year over 4.5 million kids in the United Stateswere molested
in kindergartens and schools, which amounted to one in every ten (AP, Jul. 14,
2004).
Violent crimes occurred frequently. Studies show nearly 20 percent of US
juveniles lived in families that possessed guns. In Washington D.C. 24 people
younger than 18 were killed in 2004, twice as many as in 2003 (The Washington
Post, Jan. 1, 2005). In Baltimore, 29 juveniles were killed from Jan. 1 to Sept.
27 in 2004. In 2003 35 were killed (The Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2004).
A report released by the US Justice Department on November 29, 2004 said
about 9 percent of school kids aged 9 to 12 admitted being threatened with
injury or having suffered an injury from a weapon while at school in 2003.
More and more schoolers were reluctant to go to school because of security
concerns. Child abuses and neglects were widely reported in the United States.
The Sun newspaper reported on May 18, 2004 that in 2002, a total of 900,000
children in the United States were abused, of whom nearly 1,400 died.
Every year, 1.98 out of every 100,000 American children were killed by their
parents or guardians. In Maryland, the rate was ashigh as 2.4 per 100,000. (Md
Child Abuse Deaths Exceed National Average, The Sun, May 18, 2004). The Houston
Chronicle newspaper reported on Oct. 2, 2004 that in Texas, each staff of local
government departments responsible for protecting children's rights handled 50
child abuse cases every month.
Two thirds of juvenile detention facilities in the United States lock up
mentally ill youth; every day, about 2,000 youth were incarcerated simply
because community mental health services were unavailable. In 33 states,
juvenile detention centers held youth with mental illness without any specific
charges against them
(http://demonstrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/200408171941-41051.pdf).
The USA Today reported on July 8, 2004 that between Jan. 1 and June 30 of
2003, 15,000 youth detained in US youth detention centers were awaiting mental
health services, while children at the age of 10 or younger were locked up in
117 youth detention centers. The detention centers totally ignored human rights
and personal safety with excessive use of drugs and force, and failed to take
care of inmates with mental problems in a proper way. Theyeven locked up
prisoners in cages. There were reports about scandals involving correctional
authorities in California, where two juvenile inmates hanged themselves after
they were badly beaten by jail police (San Jose Mercury News and Singtao Daily,
March 18, 2004).
VI. On the Infringement of Human Rights of Foreign Nationals
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.
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