China issues human rights record of the US

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=80&ItemID=7349
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Our Network members - which include organizers, lawyers, policy groups, educators, researchers and scholars - have been monitoring a wide range of domestic human rights issues, and are concerned that under the watch of this administration and the full gaze of the rest of the world:

- The US military has systematically committed acts of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. - Hundreds have been detained indefinitely, without trial, and often in secret.

- Criminal trials have been conducted in military tribunals that do not provide adequate transparency or due process protections.

- Foreign nationals have been deported to third countries where it was likely they would be tortured.

- Coercive and unreliable interrogation techniques that amount to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment have been defended and promoted.

- More than one thousand immigrants in the US were rounded-up immediately after September 11th in a manner that was arbitrary, discriminatory and violated basic human rights.

Furthermore, the US has still failed to ratify half of the major international human rights treaties, including:

- The Convention on the Rights of the Child (ratified by every other country in the world except Somalia).

- The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (ratified by 177 countries -- over ninety percent of the members of the United Nations).

- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ratified by 149 countries).

- The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ratified by 97 countries).

In this memorandum, we outline several other areas of concern for human rights - primarily, although not exclusively, with respect to human rights practices affecting US citizens and residents.

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