World blasts U.S. ‘human rights’ hypocrisy

Each year the U.S. State Department issues a report criticizing various countries’ human rights records. This is the height of hypocrisy. The same government that killed 1.5 million Iraqi civilians through economic sanctions and war plays judge over peoples and governments around the world.

This year’s report, issued on Feb. 28, was typical. The countries most heavily criticized are those asserting independence from U.S. domination.

This year, many countries responded to the report, calling the United States what it really is: the biggest violator of human rights on the planet.

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Rangel said that the United States does not have the moral authority to address the issue of human rights. “The government that nowadays violates human rights the most both in and out of its territory is that of the United States, by way of the murder of thousands of people, including children, women and old people, in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Rangel. (Xinhua, March 1)

Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, categorically rejected the U.S. report. “Cuba recognizes that there are violations of human rights in our country, but they are at the Guantánamo Naval Base, in territory occupied against Cuba’s will,” Roque remarked of the U.S. base used as a giant prison for alleged terror suspects. (Prensa Latina, March 8)

A spokesperson for the foreign ministry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea said of the report, “It is nothing surprising for the Bush administration to utter such words as it has inveterate enmity toward the system in the DPRK.” He added that the DPRK is not “interested at all in dealing with Washington.” (AFP, March 5)

The People’s Republic of China hit back at U.S. accusations by criticizing the atrocities committed by U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. The PRC condemned the Bush administration for failing to address poverty, racial discrimination, “severe infringement of civil rights by law enforcement,” and other domestic problems. It described the U.S. “democracy” as “manipulated by the rich,” pointing out that $4 billion was spent on the 2004 presidential election while “poverty, hunger and homelessness haunt the United States.” (People’s Daily, March 3)

Mexico’s Human Rights Commission president, Jose Luis Soberanes, also said the U.S. should not pass judgment on others, citing U.S. harassment of immigrants from Mexico who come to the United States. “The United States violates human rights, especially those of our countrymen.” (Washington Post, March 4)