[Peace-discuss] Xinhua lashes back at Hillary Clinton's hu shuo ba dao.

[E. Wayne Johnson]

[...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.]

...the United States turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights 
situation and seldom mentioned it. The Human Rights Record of the United 
States in 2010 is prepared to urge the United States to face up to its 
own human rights issues...

...The U.S. regards itself as "the beacon of democracy." However, its 
democracy is largely based on money. According to a report from The 
Washington Post on October 26, 2010, U.S. House and Senate candidates 
shattered fundraising records for a midterm election, taking in more 
than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars as of October 24. The midterm election, 
held in November 2010, finally cost 3.98 billion U.S. dollars, the most 
expensive in the U.S. history. Interest groups have actively spent on 
the election....

...The United States has always called itself "land of freedom," but the 
number of inmates in the country is the world' s largest. According to a 
report released by the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety 
Performance Project in 2008, one in every 100 adults in the U.S. are in 
jail and the figure was one in every 400 in 1970. By 2011, America will 
have more than 1.7 million men and women in prison, an increase of 13 
percent over that of 2006. The sharp increase will lead to overcrowding 
prisons. California prisons now hold 164,000 inmates, double their 
intended capacity (The Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2010). In a New 
Beginnings facility for the worst juvenile offenders in Washington DC, 
only 60 beds are for 550 youths who in 2009 were charged with the most 
violent crimes. Many of them would violate the laws again without proper 
care or be subject to violent crimes (The Washington Post, August 28, 
2010). Due to poor management and conditions, unrest frequently occurred 
in prisons. According to a report on Chicago Tribune on July 18, 2010, 
more than 20 former Cook County inmates filed suit saying they were 
handcuffed or shackled during labor while in the custody, leaving 
serious physical and psychological damage. On October 19, 2010, at least 
129 inmates took part in a riot at Calipatria State Prison, leaving two 
dead and a dozen injured (China Press, October 20, 2010). In November, 
AP released a video showing an inmate, being beaten by a fellow inmate 
in an Idaho prison, managed to plead for help through a prison guard 
station window but officers looked on and no one intervened until he was 
knocked unconscious. The prison was dubbed "gladiator school" (China 
Press, November 2, 2010).

Wrongful conviction occurred quite often in the United States. In the 
past two decades, a total of 266 people were exonerated through DNA 
tests, among them 17 were on death row (Chicago Tribune, July 11, 2010). 
A report from The Washington Post on April 23, 2010, said Washington DC 
Police admitted 41 charges they raised against a 14-year-old boy, 
including four first-degree murders, were false and the teen never 
confessed to any charge. Police of Will County, Illinois, had tortured 
Kevin Fox to confess the killing of his three-year-old daughter and he 
had served eight months in prison before a DNA test exonerated him. 
Similar case happened in Zion, Illinois, that Jerry Hobbs were forced by 
the police to confess the killing of his eight-year-old daughter and had 
been in prison for five years before DNA tests proved his innocence....

READ MORE:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-04/10/c_13822287.htm
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