Pursuing unilateralism on the international arena, the U.S. government grossly violates the sovereignty and human rights of other countries in contempt of universally-recognized international norms.

The U.S. government frequently commits wanton slaughters of innocents in its war efforts and military operations in other countries. The USA Today newspaper on Dec. 13, 2005 quoted a 2004 study published in the medical journal The Lancet as saying that it was estimated that about 100,000 Iraqis, mostly women and children, had died in the Iraqi war launched by the U.S. government in 2003. The year 2005 also witnessed frequent overseas military operations targeting at civilians by the U.S. forces, causing quite a number of deaths and injuries. On July 4, 2005, the U.S. forces killed 17 civilians, including women and children, in their air strikes in Konarha Province of Afghanistan. On Aug. 12, a U.S. military armored patrol vehicle fired at people coming out of a mosque in a town in the suburbs of the Iraqi city of Ramdi, killing 15 Iraqis, including eight children, and injuring 17 others. On Aug. 30, U.S. jet fighters launched several sorties of air raids against an area near the western Iraqi border town of Qaim, causing at least 56 deaths, including elderlies and children. On Nov. 21, U.S. troops fired at a civilian vehicle in northern Baghdad, killing a family of five, including three children. On Jan. 14, 2006, U.S. military aircraft struck a Pakistani village bordering Afghanistan, killing at least 18 civilians and triggering widespread anti-U.S. demonstrations in Pakistan.

In 2005, news of prisoner abuse by the U.S. forces again hit headlines, following their 2004 prisoner abuse scandal that stunned the world. To extract information, the U.S. forces in Iraq employed various kinds of torture in their interrogations. They abused the Iraqi detainees systematically, including sleep deprivation, tying them to the wall, hitting them with baseball bats, denying their access to water and food, forcing them to listen to extremely loud music in completely dark places for days running, unleashing dogs to bite them for amusement and even scaring them by putting them in the same cage with lions (reports from The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Washington Weekly and other news media). A report by The Human Rights Watch in September 2005 said that U.S. soldiers regarded prisoner abuse as "amusement" and a way "to relieve stress." Due to the unbearable abuse, many detainees maimed themselves, went on hunger strikes and even rioted. According to a report issued by the South Command of the U.S. military, there occurred 350 self-maiming cases in the prison of Guantanamo, Cuba, in 2003, with 23 prisoners seeking to hang themselves in one week of August. In August 2005, 131 prisoners in Guantanamo went on a hunger strike to protest inhuman treatment. In April the same year, a riot broke out in Camp Bucca prison in south Iraq due to the U.S. warden's refusal to treat a sick prisoner. The United States has time and again rejected the requests of the UN Commission for Human Rights special mechanism to visit Guantanamo to investigate the incidents of prisoner abuse. And after yielding to pressure, the U.S. side made it a rule that the UN delegation should not have any contacts with the detainees there, incurring international condemnation.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States wantonly apprehended terrorism suspects worldwide, flaunting the banner of "anti-terrorism." An AP story on Nov. 16, 2005 said that since the start of the anti-terrorism war in 2001, the United States had detained more than 83,000 foreign nationals, with 82,400 of them under the custody of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. And 700 captives were shipped to Guantanamo. Over the past four years, the U.S. has not brought any indictment against them or brought them to court hearing. By March 2005, 108 people had died in custody. Up to date, there are still 14,500 foreign nationals under U.S. custody.

In 2005, the scandal of the "secret prisons" set up overseas by the U.S. government was revealed, causing an international uproar. The New York Times carried an article titled Secrets and Shame on Nov. 3, 2005, criticizing the overseas secret prison network concealed by the CIA. According to The Washington Post, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA set up covert prisons, only known to a handful of officials in the White House, Justice Department and the Congress, in Thailand, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and some Eastern European countries, detaining about 100 people believed to be terrorism suspects by the United States. Kept in dark and underground cells, the prisoners in the "black sites" have no legal rights and no one outside the CIA can talk with or even see them. Even officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross are forbidden to have any contacts with the captives.

To obtain intelligence from the captives, the CIA employed various kinds of torture, such as forcefully grabbing the shirt front of the prisoner and shaking him, slapping and belly slapping. Prisoners were forced to stand, handcuffed and feet shackled, for more than 40 hours, and they were also left to stand naked in a cell kept at around 10 degrees Centigrade and constantly doused with cold water. The torture also included binding a prisoner to a board with plastic or paper wrapped over his face and water poured over him (the British newspaper The Independent, Dec.4, 2005).

In November 2002, a CIA officer ordered guards of the Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan to strip naked a detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death (The Washington Post newspaper).

The CIA frequently transfers terrorism suspects to other countries for torture and interrogation aboard a secret aircraft. The British, German and French media reported that the CIA plane carrying terrorism suspects had landed in a British military airfield at least 210 times, and crossed German airspace or landed in German airports at least 473 times. The CIA aircraft which took off and landed near Paris also landed and took off in the Guantanamo naval base for six times.

The U.S. government's violations of internationally-recognized norms and human rights incurred strong international condemnation. At a press conference, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louis Arbour sharply criticized the United States for infringing human rights by setting up secret prisons and transferring terrorism suspects without going through legal procedures under the pretext of fighting terrorism, noting that such acts were eroding the global ban on torture. On Dec. 20, 2005, the European Union, through a local court in Milan, Italy, issued warrants for the arrest of 22 CIA agents suspected of kidnapping in Italy. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter described the prisoner abuse by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo as "embarrassing," and going against the rudimentary American commitment to peace, social justice, civil liberties and human rights.

The facts listed above show a poor human rights record of the United States, which forms not only a sharp contrast with its image of a self-claimed "advocate of human rights," but also disaccord with its level of economic and social development and international status. The U.S. government ought to first clean up its own record of human rights before qualifying itself to comment on human rights situations in other countries, let alone arrogantly telling them what to do.

To respect for and protect human rights is a necessity and indicator of human civilization, and to promote human rights is the common responsibility of all countries and a major theme of international cooperation. No country in the world can claim to have a perfect state of human rights, nor can any country stay outside the course of human rights development. The issue of human rights should become a theme of social development in all countries and of international cooperation, rather than a slogan for exporting ideologies or even a tool of diplomacy to fix others out of one's own political needs.

For years, the U.S. government has ignored and deliberately concealed serious violations of human rights in its own country for fear of criticism. Yet it has issued annual reports making unwarranted charges on human rights practices of other countries, an act that fully exposes its hypocrisy and double standard on human rights issues, which has naturally met with strong resistance and opposition from other countries. We urge the U.S. government to look squarely at its own human rights problems, reflect what it has done in the human rights field and take concrete measures to improve its own human rights status. The U.S. government should stop provoking international confrontation on the issue of human rights, and make a fresh start to contribute more to international human rights cooperation and to the healthy development of international human rights cause.