White Paper on the Human Rights Situation in the US in 2016
Institute of International Studies of the DPRK
Styling itself an “international human rights judge,” the US, the most heinous criminal state against humanity, resorts to arbitrary intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, picking a quarrel with their human rights situations.
What are the standards of human rights the US is applying?
Based on the Yankee values, the fundamentals of which are extreme egoism, mammonism and misanthropy, they are geared to serving the interests of a handful of the privileged class; they have nothing to do with the dignity of the absolute majority of the working people.
That the US is turning white into black in its approach to the “human rights” situations in other countries while leaving in the dark its own human rights situation, which evokes indignation from the world, is a deliberate distortion of genuine human rights and an unpardonable challenge to international justice and conscience.
In order to disclose the pitiable human rights situation in the US, where all sorts of injustice,
rightlessness and social evils cut a wide swathe, through the human rights violations committed in the country last year, the Institute of International Studies of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea publishes this White Paper.
1. The Anti-Popular Nature of the US Political System Seen through Elections
2016 was a year of presidential election in the US.
Election is, in general, a process whereby members of a social community choose persons who can represent their opinions and interests. The standard by which fairness of an election is judged is the support of the widest range of the social community.
Paragraph 3 of Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates, “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections….”
However, what is decisive in the elections in the US is not the political knowledge or capabilities of candidates, but it is money.
If one has money, he can become an influential man and win “mass support” even though he is good-for-nothing.
This is why presidential candidates, irrespective of the ticket he is running with, waste no energy and time in gathering funds by all means, and billionaires, in their turn, pour their money to have their spokesmen in the Oval Office.
In October 2016 WikiLeaks made public over 19 000 e-mails between the major figures in the National Committee of the Democratic Party, exposing the inside story of fundraising by the Democrats.
An e-mail they sent to an influential supporter in Tennessee proposed that if he made an additional donation of USD 33 400, he may be invited to a party hosted by the president.
It was also disclosed that the supporters who had donated USD 467 600 ~ 1 250 000 in the period after January 2015 were granted various privileges including checking into a deluxe hotel in Philadelphia, where the Democratic convention was to be held.
Such evil practices were not confined to the Democrats.
As a result, the US presidential election in 2016 was recorded as squandering the largest sum of money in history.
According to the statistical data, about USD 5 billion was consumed in the presidential election in 2008 and USD 6 billion in 2012, whereas in the last presidential election it amounted to USD 10 billion.
Advertisement for the presidential candidates cost USD 4.4 billion, and the earnings by websites, radio stations and newspapers for political advertisement amounted to USD 1.2 billion, USD 916 million and USD 882 million, respectively.
Irrespective of who he or she is, a politician thus bought by billionaires has to frame “laws” and execute policies in favour of the powerful supporters.
Former President Jimmy Carter lamented, saying: An unlimited range of bribe has become an important factor in the nomination of a presidential candidate and his or her election; the US political system has already been reduced to an instrument for making a compensation to the major political supporters.
The fact resulting from such money-centred election is that no party other than the Republican and Democratic parties that represent the interests of the ruling classes can take part in the election.
This is tantamount to institutionally ruling out the possibility of a progressive party representing the interests of the broad sections of the masses entering the political circles.
The electorate has no other option than to choose one of the two established political parties, and their disillusion with elections is growing more and more as the days go by.
This is illustrated by the fact that the turnout for the last presidential and general elections was 60% and 30-40%, respectively.
According to a joint opinion poll by The New York Times and NBC, 85% of the voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the US election system last year.
People from various social strata staged demonstrations in 30 cities including Washington DC in protest against the money-centred political system.
In April last year members of the Spring of Democracy held a march on foot for 240km, from Philadelphia to Washington DC, shouting “No money for politics!” and “Don’t buy our future with money!” They demanded putting an end to the rotten election system and effecting a free and fair election.
The election in the US, in which an astronomical sum of money is squandered for the presidential office when the majority of the people are living in dire poverty, has no relations whatsoever with the interests and opinions of the “people,” which the ruling classes are wont to refer to.
This is just a concentrated expression of the nature of the US political system against the people, against human rights, the system that exists only for the sake of the political careerists and privileged classes.
It is too clear that this political system is incapable of ensuring elementary rights to life and to existence for the working people, let alone their dignity and political rights due to social beings.
2. A Human Rights Desert Where Even Elementary Human Rights Are Not Provided
American Dream, this is what frequently trips off the tongue of the US politicians when they are soliciting votes or making a speech.
This word, which first appeared in American Epic written by Adams in 1931, means that if everyone works to the best of one’s ability one can buy one’s own flat and car, give education to one’s children and live better than the preceding generation.
The present realities in the US present a quite different picture.
The working people, who account for the absolute majority of the population, are deprived of the elementary rights to existence like food, clothes, housing, working, medical treatment and learning and the economic and social rights, let alone the dream for the future, and are living in the abyss of nightmare.
Paragraph 1 of Article 6, paragraph 2 of Article 12 and paragraph 1 of Article 13 of Chapter 3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stipulate the right of all people to have an opportunity to maintain their life through labour, the right to provide conditions for medical service and medical concern to all the people when they fall ill and the right of all the people to education.
In the US, in one week in October 2016, 265 000 persons joined the chronic contingent of the unemployed numbering 7.9 million; 18.8% of the total number of the unemployed was young people.
Last year the number of persons without shelter exceeded 560 000, and 322 000 persons in 17 northern counties in Florida are maintaining a bare existence with the help of “charitable organizations.”
According to the statistics made public by economists jointly in the end of 2016, the average annual income of the wealthy people accounting for 1% of the total population was 81 times that of those under the middle class, a considerable increase from 27 times 36 years ago.
Deprived of their right to learning, young people have lost hope for the future, and the degenerated ones are turning to crime.
Over the past 25 years school expenses skyrocketed, to 440%.
One academic year in a public university costs USD 10 000, whereas it is USD 50 000 for a private university; universities, which give education in medicine and other disciplines that require time and effort, demands USD 500 000.
About 6 million young people less than 24 years old do not think about going to school and 1.2 million high-school students give up further studies every year because of the exorbitant school expenses.
Even middle-class Americans, three out of four, owe debts to give education to their children, which they fail to clear off until the children enter university.
Russian newspaper Pravda exposed the astonishing fact that the debts owed by university students in the US amount to USD 1.3 trillion.
The skyrocketing school expenses have become another major factor in the aggravated social evil of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
42% of the people born to destitute families accounting for 20% of the total number of families in the US fail to free themselves from destitution even after they have become adults.
The situation of medical service in the US is a graphic testimony to the system’s anti-human nature.
It costs USD 500 to have a tooth pulled out, tens of thousands of dollars for appendectomy, USD 1 000 for a day in hospital for first aid, and USD 100 000-200 000 for an operation on the emergency case in the first-aid room.
The “health insurance” has become a legal tool for emptying the people’s purses.
According to The New York Times dated July 22, 2016, a swindler organization in Florida has squeezed USD 1 billion from two major health insurance companies over the past 14 years; it was the largest-ever fraud in history.
The funds drained by health insurance fraud from the year 2009 already exceeded USD 29.9 billion, and the Department of Justice made public that from the end of June 2016 management personnel of medical organs and doctors numbering 301 were prosecuted on suspicion of health insurance fraud.
Pessimism and despair of the future lead to all sorts of social evils–degeneration and crime–and the easiest victims are women and children.
Though it frequently calls for “equality for all,” the US has yet to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Though women occupy 57% of the workforce, their salary is 80% of that of their male counterparts, and it is 69% and 58% for the Afro-American and Hispanic women.
About 6 million women fall victim to violent crimes every year.
Sexual crimes number over 500 000 on average every year, more than 2 million women experience violation in their families, and about 20% of women fall prey to rape.
One out of five girl students suffer sexual violation. Sexual violation against women is rampant in the armed forces, and about 60 000 women are subjected to sexual harassment and violation in prison every year.
A UN human rights specialist disclosed in January this year that the mortality rate of the women of ethnic minorities and black women during delivery to children was 77%, or four times that of white women.
Human trafficking openly committed in the US is beyond human imagination.
A UPI dispatch on February 10 this year disclosed that the cases of human trafficking in 2016 increased by 35.7% compared to the previous year. According to the report, California took the first place with 1 323 cases, followed by Texas, 670, and then Florida, 550.
Polaris, a human trafficking watchdog, defined human trafficking as “a form of modern slavery that traffickers force the victims into commercial sex service or labour against their will through violence, deception and coercive means,” and recently exposed the true nature of the corrupt US society by publishing a report that human trafficking in 2016 increased by 35.7% compared to the previous year.
In the 7 572 cases of human trafficking confirmed last year, women victims numbered 6 340, of whom 2 397 were minors. This illustrates the plight of women and minors.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates the international obligation to the provision of the right to rest to the children, to their labour safety and to the prevention of sexual exploitation and infringement against them. The US has not ratified this convention.
The number of children living in hunger and poverty is 16 million, and child abuse is lawful in 19 states. About 80% of the children who died of maltreatment were less than four years old.
Juvenile labour is lawful in the US, and about 800 000 children are forced to labour.
The US is the only country in the world, which imposes life imprisonment upon children without anyone to support them and in which 5 000 of the 50 000 juvenile inmates are in the prisons for adults.
Sexual crimes against minors are widely prevalent, and 100 000 are victims of human trafficking.
In June last year CNN reported astonishing news: a man in Pennsylvania, named Kaplan, had been detaining over 10 children, ranging from a six-month-old baby to a teenage girl, and among them were two children born of a girl, whom he had taken in custody and raped four years ago when she was 14 years old.
These show that the US is a matchless desert of human rights, a living hell, where the working masses cannot enjoy the elementary rights to survival, much less entertain a hope for the future.
3. The Largest Murderous Country in the World Rife with Gun Violence
The right to life is the most basic and precious of all the rights of man.
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.” And paragraph 1 of Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights points out, “All men have the inherent right to life. This right is protected by law. No one’s life shall be deprived of at will.”
In American society gun violence that disregards and stamps out man’s right to life has become an inherent “culture.”
The following provide a glimpse of the “culture.”
In the US anyone can obtain a rifle and carry it everywhere.
98% of Americans live in a 15-km radius around rifle shops. Nationwide, such shops total 23 000 and their annual sales top 200 000 pieces. Prices of various guns range from USD 200 to USD 1 000.
They include flame throwers worth USD 1 600 each. Private guns add up to 357 million.
According to recent statistics for a given state issued by Boston University, 1% increase in the rate of gun owners leads to more than 0.9% rise in the murder rate.
As for the heinous gun violence that is growing rampant in American society a French journalist said after a tour of the US: Foreigners staying on American soil are often advised never to be angered by traffic accident. Worldwide, such a reserved manner is considered cultured. In the US, however, this is the way to save your own life.
In particular, 2016 was a blood-soaked year ridden with cases of gun violence.
The first ten days of the year witnessed 120 shootings in Chicago, Illinois, which was three times as many as the year before and which killed 19 and injured 101 in all. April and May saw four similar incidents in a row, which left 14 dead and 78 injured. Over the whole course of last year 3 500 shootings occurred in this city, killing or injuring 4 331.
On February 7 there was a spate of shootings in California, Florida, Mississippi, New York and other states, causing extreme social unrest and fear.
On June 12 a nightclub shooting took place in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53–one of the most atrocious and sanguinary shootings in American history. That day saw 160 or so victims nationwide, which was a record-breaking number.
By the close of the year nine citizens fell victim to shootings in Washington, Los Angeles and North Carolina. In Chicago 27 shootings killed half of the victims on the eve of New Year’s Day.
The cancer of gun violence is rapidly spreading through educational institutions.
It is estimated that 100 000 students carry small arms to school for self-defence and a daily average of 160 000 are reluctant to go to school for fear of being shot or abused.
An unidentified criminal broke into a professor’s office at Delta State University, Mississippi, before shooting at the latter’s head. Another in his twenties stormed into a classroom of a university in Oregon and fired at random on students and their teacher, killing 13 and injuring over 20.
A similar incident in the parking lot of the dormitory at Arizona State University killed or injured four. Three fell victim to another firing in the compound of the University of Tennessee and two girls of a high school in this state were shot dead on the campus, causing it to close down.
2016 saw a jump in the murder rate in at least 21 cities, as compared to the previous year, and more than 57 000 cases of gun violence took place nationwide, claiming 14 000 lives and injuring 30 000.
Gun industries, instead of bearing the responsibility for these victims, are thriving at the cost of their blood.
For example, according to a Spanish newspaper, the profit gained by Smith & Wesson Co. of the US has increased ten-fold over the past seven years.
In September 2016 the National Rifle Association expended USD 7.7 million in advertising for the defence of gun ownership.
The privileged elite enjoy unlimited freedom and luxury, raking in huge profits from gun sales, whereas innocent civilians perish amid violent crime waves—this epitomizes gun culture in American society, a true feature of the worst human rights violator.
4. Institutional Discrimination Aimed at Obliterating Other Races
People are the most precious beings in the world and, as such, deserve the right to receive social respect. Therefore, they must be on an equal footing in terms of personality, irrespective of differences in nationality, race, political view, religious belief, property status and intellectual level.
Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
The United States of America was founded as a result of massive killing of American Indians and destruction of their civilization. Clinging to the anachronistic racism, it grows more undisguised in its institutional and traditional discrimination against other peoples.
Under the protection of the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Public Housing Act and other federal laws diverse racist actions are encouraged, such as collective imprisonment of people of colour and ethnic minorities, residence isolation, discriminatory education and deprivation of political rights.
Afro-Americans and other ethnic minorities live isolated from their white counterparts.
The racial distribution chart of Washington DC shows a clear division between blacks in the east and whites in the west.
The Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and association of the UN Human Rights Council said, after a visit to the US in July 2016, that black and other people of colour live in segregated quarters, criticizing that racial discrimination and persecution in this country have an evil impact on freedom of assembly and association.
Black people in particular are forced to live in places where health and environmental indices have reached the danger level.
To cite an example, tap water for public use usually contains lead and copper. In many areas, which are mostly inhabited by black citizens, the content of lead exceeds the tolerance limit by 400 times.
The authorities of Flint, Michigan, postponed the replacement of rusting pipes allegedly for financial reasons, compelling the citizens to consume water containing rust and lead for over one year and a half. It turned out in March 2016 that many were suffering from lead poisoning.
According to a report by the task force on African descendents of the UN Human Rights Council, 40.4% of the homeless are Afro-Americans and their unemployment rate is double the national average. And as for the same offences, the imprisonment rate of black men is 5.9 times higher than that of white men and the rate of black women, 2.1 times higher than white women.
Worse still, an increasing number of Afro-Americans are being shot dead by white policemen. The targets in the vast majority of police shootings are innocent black people.
The Washington Post, dated March 3, 2016, said that most of the 256 people who fell victim to police shootings in the first three months of the previous year were black.
On July 5, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, policemen fired bullets through the chest and back of an unarmed Afro-American called Alton Sterling. The following day a policeman in St. Paul, Minnesota, opened fire on a young black man named Castel sitting in his car, for uncertain reasons.
Black men were shot to death in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 20 and in front of a shop in the suburbia of San Diego, California, on the 27th of the same month.
Black people are in constant fear of being shot by white policemen.
In the black communities a “family custom” prevails of parents warning their sons at adolescence against offending police: Now that you are grown up, cops may target you; you must never answer back, resist or misbehave.
Even Eric Holder, Attorney General in the Obama administration, confessed that he had cautioned his black sons in a similar vein.
Killing and collective imprisonment of Afro-Americans by police are typical examples of a modern version of racial discrimination.
Half of the youngsters of African origin presume that they will not pass 35.
The deplorable situation of racial discrimination in the US is evidenced by the fact that one in three black citizens of this country has been convicted previously.
In the US the ratio of men to women is 100:99 in case of whites and 100:83 in case of blacks.
The New York Times carried a shocking article based on a survey of black people in the age group of 25-54, to the effect that on average there is only one man for six women. This striking disproportion is attributable to collective imprisonment, police shooting and many other abuses.
Obama admitted during his July 8 visit to Poland that in his country twice as many blacks as whites fall victim to police shootings.
The point is that the US authorities are conniving at and encouraging race-hunting and racial discrimination.
The Washington Post stated that over the past two decades 26 of 28 FBI investigators had spoken in favour of police in dealing with cases of black victims of shooting and 95% of the 268 trials reviewed were unfair.
The chief of the task force on African descendents of the UN Human Rights Council, in his statement issued in early July 2016, described the killing of Afro-Americans by police as a reflection of institutional racism.
Racial discrimination is not confined to Afro-Americans.
The illegal immigrants of Latin American origin, numbering 11 million to 12 million, are now called newly-emerging slaves. They mostly live hand-to-mouth in the southern states, tilling the land or doing other backbreaking jobs which whites are loath to do. It is obvious that in the near future they will suffer the same fate as Afro-Americans.
The ramifications of racial discrimination are causing dismay and apprehension in the US itself.
According to a joint opinion poll in July 2016 by The New York Times and CBS, 69% of Americans expressed indignation over the rapidly spreading racial discrimination in their country, a hike from 38% in 2015. Extreme national chauvinism and racial discrimination, which are against the mainstream of the present era of independence, will lead the US to division and ruin.
The above-mentioned violations of human rights in the US are the tip of the iceberg, and they are by no means accidents that were witnessed in 2016 alone.
These criminal offenses, which run counter to human dignity and intelligence, are the inevitable outcome of the American-style democracy and the US social system based on the law of the jungle and extreme individualism.
The US is loud in its advocacy of “universal respect for human rights,” publishing “annual reports” that deal with the human rights situations in other countries. However, it can never cover up nor negate its own human rights situation that has been the subject of international criticism and condemnation.
The justice-loving peoples the world over must raise their voices against the deceptive schemes pursued by the US, seeing through its real identity as the planet’s bleakest desert, and the worst violator, of human rights.
March 15, Juche 106 (2017)
Pyongyang
 |
| Police car burns during African American rebellion in Milwaukee during 2016. |
Styling itself an “international human rights judge,” the US, the most heinous criminal state against humanity, resorts to arbitrary intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, picking a quarrel with their human rights situations.
What are the standards of human rights the US is applying?
Based on the Yankee values, the fundamentals of which are extreme egoism, mammonism and misanthropy, they are geared to serving the interests of a handful of the privileged class; they have nothing to do with the dignity of the absolute majority of the working people.
That the US is turning white into black in its approach to the “human rights” situations in other countries while leaving in the dark its own human rights situation, which evokes indignation from the world, is a deliberate distortion of genuine human rights and an unpardonable challenge to international justice and conscience.
In order to disclose the pitiable human rights situation in the US, where all sorts of injustice,
rightlessness and social evils cut a wide swathe, through the human rights violations committed in the country last year, the Institute of International Studies of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea publishes this White Paper.
1. The Anti-Popular Nature of the US Political System Seen through Elections
2016 was a year of presidential election in the US.
Election is, in general, a process whereby members of a social community choose persons who can represent their opinions and interests. The standard by which fairness of an election is judged is the support of the widest range of the social community.
Paragraph 3 of Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates, “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections….”
However, what is decisive in the elections in the US is not the political knowledge or capabilities of candidates, but it is money.
If one has money, he can become an influential man and win “mass support” even though he is good-for-nothing.
This is why presidential candidates, irrespective of the ticket he is running with, waste no energy and time in gathering funds by all means, and billionaires, in their turn, pour their money to have their spokesmen in the Oval Office.
In October 2016 WikiLeaks made public over 19 000 e-mails between the major figures in the National Committee of the Democratic Party, exposing the inside story of fundraising by the Democrats.
An e-mail they sent to an influential supporter in Tennessee proposed that if he made an additional donation of USD 33 400, he may be invited to a party hosted by the president.
It was also disclosed that the supporters who had donated USD 467 600 ~ 1 250 000 in the period after January 2015 were granted various privileges including checking into a deluxe hotel in Philadelphia, where the Democratic convention was to be held.
Such evil practices were not confined to the Democrats.
As a result, the US presidential election in 2016 was recorded as squandering the largest sum of money in history.
According to the statistical data, about USD 5 billion was consumed in the presidential election in 2008 and USD 6 billion in 2012, whereas in the last presidential election it amounted to USD 10 billion.
Advertisement for the presidential candidates cost USD 4.4 billion, and the earnings by websites, radio stations and newspapers for political advertisement amounted to USD 1.2 billion, USD 916 million and USD 882 million, respectively.
Irrespective of who he or she is, a politician thus bought by billionaires has to frame “laws” and execute policies in favour of the powerful supporters.
Former President Jimmy Carter lamented, saying: An unlimited range of bribe has become an important factor in the nomination of a presidential candidate and his or her election; the US political system has already been reduced to an instrument for making a compensation to the major political supporters.
The fact resulting from such money-centred election is that no party other than the Republican and Democratic parties that represent the interests of the ruling classes can take part in the election.
This is tantamount to institutionally ruling out the possibility of a progressive party representing the interests of the broad sections of the masses entering the political circles.
The electorate has no other option than to choose one of the two established political parties, and their disillusion with elections is growing more and more as the days go by.
This is illustrated by the fact that the turnout for the last presidential and general elections was 60% and 30-40%, respectively.
According to a joint opinion poll by The New York Times and NBC, 85% of the voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the US election system last year.
People from various social strata staged demonstrations in 30 cities including Washington DC in protest against the money-centred political system.
In April last year members of the Spring of Democracy held a march on foot for 240km, from Philadelphia to Washington DC, shouting “No money for politics!” and “Don’t buy our future with money!” They demanded putting an end to the rotten election system and effecting a free and fair election.
The election in the US, in which an astronomical sum of money is squandered for the presidential office when the majority of the people are living in dire poverty, has no relations whatsoever with the interests and opinions of the “people,” which the ruling classes are wont to refer to.
This is just a concentrated expression of the nature of the US political system against the people, against human rights, the system that exists only for the sake of the political careerists and privileged classes.
It is too clear that this political system is incapable of ensuring elementary rights to life and to existence for the working people, let alone their dignity and political rights due to social beings.
2. A Human Rights Desert Where Even Elementary Human Rights Are Not Provided
American Dream, this is what frequently trips off the tongue of the US politicians when they are soliciting votes or making a speech.
This word, which first appeared in American Epic written by Adams in 1931, means that if everyone works to the best of one’s ability one can buy one’s own flat and car, give education to one’s children and live better than the preceding generation.
The present realities in the US present a quite different picture.
The working people, who account for the absolute majority of the population, are deprived of the elementary rights to existence like food, clothes, housing, working, medical treatment and learning and the economic and social rights, let alone the dream for the future, and are living in the abyss of nightmare.
Paragraph 1 of Article 6, paragraph 2 of Article 12 and paragraph 1 of Article 13 of Chapter 3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stipulate the right of all people to have an opportunity to maintain their life through labour, the right to provide conditions for medical service and medical concern to all the people when they fall ill and the right of all the people to education.
In the US, in one week in October 2016, 265 000 persons joined the chronic contingent of the unemployed numbering 7.9 million; 18.8% of the total number of the unemployed was young people.
Last year the number of persons without shelter exceeded 560 000, and 322 000 persons in 17 northern counties in Florida are maintaining a bare existence with the help of “charitable organizations.”
According to the statistics made public by economists jointly in the end of 2016, the average annual income of the wealthy people accounting for 1% of the total population was 81 times that of those under the middle class, a considerable increase from 27 times 36 years ago.
Deprived of their right to learning, young people have lost hope for the future, and the degenerated ones are turning to crime.
Over the past 25 years school expenses skyrocketed, to 440%.
One academic year in a public university costs USD 10 000, whereas it is USD 50 000 for a private university; universities, which give education in medicine and other disciplines that require time and effort, demands USD 500 000.
About 6 million young people less than 24 years old do not think about going to school and 1.2 million high-school students give up further studies every year because of the exorbitant school expenses.
Even middle-class Americans, three out of four, owe debts to give education to their children, which they fail to clear off until the children enter university.
Russian newspaper Pravda exposed the astonishing fact that the debts owed by university students in the US amount to USD 1.3 trillion.
The skyrocketing school expenses have become another major factor in the aggravated social evil of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
42% of the people born to destitute families accounting for 20% of the total number of families in the US fail to free themselves from destitution even after they have become adults.
The situation of medical service in the US is a graphic testimony to the system’s anti-human nature.
It costs USD 500 to have a tooth pulled out, tens of thousands of dollars for appendectomy, USD 1 000 for a day in hospital for first aid, and USD 100 000-200 000 for an operation on the emergency case in the first-aid room.
The “health insurance” has become a legal tool for emptying the people’s purses.
According to The New York Times dated July 22, 2016, a swindler organization in Florida has squeezed USD 1 billion from two major health insurance companies over the past 14 years; it was the largest-ever fraud in history.
The funds drained by health insurance fraud from the year 2009 already exceeded USD 29.9 billion, and the Department of Justice made public that from the end of June 2016 management personnel of medical organs and doctors numbering 301 were prosecuted on suspicion of health insurance fraud.
Pessimism and despair of the future lead to all sorts of social evils–degeneration and crime–and the easiest victims are women and children.
Though it frequently calls for “equality for all,” the US has yet to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Though women occupy 57% of the workforce, their salary is 80% of that of their male counterparts, and it is 69% and 58% for the Afro-American and Hispanic women.
About 6 million women fall victim to violent crimes every year.
Sexual crimes number over 500 000 on average every year, more than 2 million women experience violation in their families, and about 20% of women fall prey to rape.
One out of five girl students suffer sexual violation. Sexual violation against women is rampant in the armed forces, and about 60 000 women are subjected to sexual harassment and violation in prison every year.
A UN human rights specialist disclosed in January this year that the mortality rate of the women of ethnic minorities and black women during delivery to children was 77%, or four times that of white women.
Human trafficking openly committed in the US is beyond human imagination.
A UPI dispatch on February 10 this year disclosed that the cases of human trafficking in 2016 increased by 35.7% compared to the previous year. According to the report, California took the first place with 1 323 cases, followed by Texas, 670, and then Florida, 550.
Polaris, a human trafficking watchdog, defined human trafficking as “a form of modern slavery that traffickers force the victims into commercial sex service or labour against their will through violence, deception and coercive means,” and recently exposed the true nature of the corrupt US society by publishing a report that human trafficking in 2016 increased by 35.7% compared to the previous year.
In the 7 572 cases of human trafficking confirmed last year, women victims numbered 6 340, of whom 2 397 were minors. This illustrates the plight of women and minors.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates the international obligation to the provision of the right to rest to the children, to their labour safety and to the prevention of sexual exploitation and infringement against them. The US has not ratified this convention.
The number of children living in hunger and poverty is 16 million, and child abuse is lawful in 19 states. About 80% of the children who died of maltreatment were less than four years old.
Juvenile labour is lawful in the US, and about 800 000 children are forced to labour.
The US is the only country in the world, which imposes life imprisonment upon children without anyone to support them and in which 5 000 of the 50 000 juvenile inmates are in the prisons for adults.
Sexual crimes against minors are widely prevalent, and 100 000 are victims of human trafficking.
In June last year CNN reported astonishing news: a man in Pennsylvania, named Kaplan, had been detaining over 10 children, ranging from a six-month-old baby to a teenage girl, and among them were two children born of a girl, whom he had taken in custody and raped four years ago when she was 14 years old.
These show that the US is a matchless desert of human rights, a living hell, where the working masses cannot enjoy the elementary rights to survival, much less entertain a hope for the future.
3. The Largest Murderous Country in the World Rife with Gun Violence
The right to life is the most basic and precious of all the rights of man.
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.” And paragraph 1 of Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights points out, “All men have the inherent right to life. This right is protected by law. No one’s life shall be deprived of at will.”
In American society gun violence that disregards and stamps out man’s right to life has become an inherent “culture.”
The following provide a glimpse of the “culture.”
In the US anyone can obtain a rifle and carry it everywhere.
98% of Americans live in a 15-km radius around rifle shops. Nationwide, such shops total 23 000 and their annual sales top 200 000 pieces. Prices of various guns range from USD 200 to USD 1 000.
They include flame throwers worth USD 1 600 each. Private guns add up to 357 million.
According to recent statistics for a given state issued by Boston University, 1% increase in the rate of gun owners leads to more than 0.9% rise in the murder rate.
As for the heinous gun violence that is growing rampant in American society a French journalist said after a tour of the US: Foreigners staying on American soil are often advised never to be angered by traffic accident. Worldwide, such a reserved manner is considered cultured. In the US, however, this is the way to save your own life.
In particular, 2016 was a blood-soaked year ridden with cases of gun violence.
The first ten days of the year witnessed 120 shootings in Chicago, Illinois, which was three times as many as the year before and which killed 19 and injured 101 in all. April and May saw four similar incidents in a row, which left 14 dead and 78 injured. Over the whole course of last year 3 500 shootings occurred in this city, killing or injuring 4 331.
On February 7 there was a spate of shootings in California, Florida, Mississippi, New York and other states, causing extreme social unrest and fear.
On June 12 a nightclub shooting took place in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53–one of the most atrocious and sanguinary shootings in American history. That day saw 160 or so victims nationwide, which was a record-breaking number.
By the close of the year nine citizens fell victim to shootings in Washington, Los Angeles and North Carolina. In Chicago 27 shootings killed half of the victims on the eve of New Year’s Day.
The cancer of gun violence is rapidly spreading through educational institutions.
It is estimated that 100 000 students carry small arms to school for self-defence and a daily average of 160 000 are reluctant to go to school for fear of being shot or abused.
An unidentified criminal broke into a professor’s office at Delta State University, Mississippi, before shooting at the latter’s head. Another in his twenties stormed into a classroom of a university in Oregon and fired at random on students and their teacher, killing 13 and injuring over 20.
A similar incident in the parking lot of the dormitory at Arizona State University killed or injured four. Three fell victim to another firing in the compound of the University of Tennessee and two girls of a high school in this state were shot dead on the campus, causing it to close down.
2016 saw a jump in the murder rate in at least 21 cities, as compared to the previous year, and more than 57 000 cases of gun violence took place nationwide, claiming 14 000 lives and injuring 30 000.
Gun industries, instead of bearing the responsibility for these victims, are thriving at the cost of their blood.
For example, according to a Spanish newspaper, the profit gained by Smith & Wesson Co. of the US has increased ten-fold over the past seven years.
In September 2016 the National Rifle Association expended USD 7.7 million in advertising for the defence of gun ownership.
The privileged elite enjoy unlimited freedom and luxury, raking in huge profits from gun sales, whereas innocent civilians perish amid violent crime waves—this epitomizes gun culture in American society, a true feature of the worst human rights violator.
4. Institutional Discrimination Aimed at Obliterating Other Races
People are the most precious beings in the world and, as such, deserve the right to receive social respect. Therefore, they must be on an equal footing in terms of personality, irrespective of differences in nationality, race, political view, religious belief, property status and intellectual level.
Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
The United States of America was founded as a result of massive killing of American Indians and destruction of their civilization. Clinging to the anachronistic racism, it grows more undisguised in its institutional and traditional discrimination against other peoples.
Under the protection of the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Public Housing Act and other federal laws diverse racist actions are encouraged, such as collective imprisonment of people of colour and ethnic minorities, residence isolation, discriminatory education and deprivation of political rights.
Afro-Americans and other ethnic minorities live isolated from their white counterparts.
The racial distribution chart of Washington DC shows a clear division between blacks in the east and whites in the west.
The Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and association of the UN Human Rights Council said, after a visit to the US in July 2016, that black and other people of colour live in segregated quarters, criticizing that racial discrimination and persecution in this country have an evil impact on freedom of assembly and association.
Black people in particular are forced to live in places where health and environmental indices have reached the danger level.
To cite an example, tap water for public use usually contains lead and copper. In many areas, which are mostly inhabited by black citizens, the content of lead exceeds the tolerance limit by 400 times.
The authorities of Flint, Michigan, postponed the replacement of rusting pipes allegedly for financial reasons, compelling the citizens to consume water containing rust and lead for over one year and a half. It turned out in March 2016 that many were suffering from lead poisoning.
According to a report by the task force on African descendents of the UN Human Rights Council, 40.4% of the homeless are Afro-Americans and their unemployment rate is double the national average. And as for the same offences, the imprisonment rate of black men is 5.9 times higher than that of white men and the rate of black women, 2.1 times higher than white women.
Worse still, an increasing number of Afro-Americans are being shot dead by white policemen. The targets in the vast majority of police shootings are innocent black people.
The Washington Post, dated March 3, 2016, said that most of the 256 people who fell victim to police shootings in the first three months of the previous year were black.
On July 5, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, policemen fired bullets through the chest and back of an unarmed Afro-American called Alton Sterling. The following day a policeman in St. Paul, Minnesota, opened fire on a young black man named Castel sitting in his car, for uncertain reasons.
Black men were shot to death in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 20 and in front of a shop in the suburbia of San Diego, California, on the 27th of the same month.
Black people are in constant fear of being shot by white policemen.
In the black communities a “family custom” prevails of parents warning their sons at adolescence against offending police: Now that you are grown up, cops may target you; you must never answer back, resist or misbehave.
Even Eric Holder, Attorney General in the Obama administration, confessed that he had cautioned his black sons in a similar vein.
Killing and collective imprisonment of Afro-Americans by police are typical examples of a modern version of racial discrimination.
Half of the youngsters of African origin presume that they will not pass 35.
The deplorable situation of racial discrimination in the US is evidenced by the fact that one in three black citizens of this country has been convicted previously.
In the US the ratio of men to women is 100:99 in case of whites and 100:83 in case of blacks.
The New York Times carried a shocking article based on a survey of black people in the age group of 25-54, to the effect that on average there is only one man for six women. This striking disproportion is attributable to collective imprisonment, police shooting and many other abuses.
Obama admitted during his July 8 visit to Poland that in his country twice as many blacks as whites fall victim to police shootings.
The point is that the US authorities are conniving at and encouraging race-hunting and racial discrimination.
The Washington Post stated that over the past two decades 26 of 28 FBI investigators had spoken in favour of police in dealing with cases of black victims of shooting and 95% of the 268 trials reviewed were unfair.
The chief of the task force on African descendents of the UN Human Rights Council, in his statement issued in early July 2016, described the killing of Afro-Americans by police as a reflection of institutional racism.
Racial discrimination is not confined to Afro-Americans.
The illegal immigrants of Latin American origin, numbering 11 million to 12 million, are now called newly-emerging slaves. They mostly live hand-to-mouth in the southern states, tilling the land or doing other backbreaking jobs which whites are loath to do. It is obvious that in the near future they will suffer the same fate as Afro-Americans.
The ramifications of racial discrimination are causing dismay and apprehension in the US itself.
According to a joint opinion poll in July 2016 by The New York Times and CBS, 69% of Americans expressed indignation over the rapidly spreading racial discrimination in their country, a hike from 38% in 2015. Extreme national chauvinism and racial discrimination, which are against the mainstream of the present era of independence, will lead the US to division and ruin.
The above-mentioned violations of human rights in the US are the tip of the iceberg, and they are by no means accidents that were witnessed in 2016 alone.
These criminal offenses, which run counter to human dignity and intelligence, are the inevitable outcome of the American-style democracy and the US social system based on the law of the jungle and extreme individualism.
The US is loud in its advocacy of “universal respect for human rights,” publishing “annual reports” that deal with the human rights situations in other countries. However, it can never cover up nor negate its own human rights situation that has been the subject of international criticism and condemnation.
The justice-loving peoples the world over must raise their voices against the deceptive schemes pursued by the US, seeing through its real identity as the planet’s bleakest desert, and the worst violator, of human rights.
March 15, Juche 106 (2017)
Pyongyang
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