In 1989, the United States intervened in Panama militarily because of issues such as the jurisdiction of the Panama Canal. American soldiers occupying Panama search the streets of Panama City for pedestrians.
Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Hu Tairan
On June 11, 2022, a girl attended a gun control rally in Lansing, Michigan, USA.
Xinhua News Agency/Reuters
On August 16, 2021, a large number of Afghans surrounded kabul airport, and a U.S. soldier pointed a gun at an Afghan man.
Photo by Vakir Kosar (Image China)
On October 26, 2013, protests against the NSA's mass surveillance of ordinary Americans took place in Washington, D.C. The picture shows the live placard.
Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Fang Zhe
In order to maximize its own interests, the United States has long pursued economic colonialism, carried out subversion and infiltration, abused economic sanctions, and imposed armed intervention in Latin America, causing social turmoil and lagging development in some countries so far, and seriously infringing on the basic human rights of the people of Latin American countries, such as the right to subsistence and the right to development. At the same time, the US government ignores the trend of the times of openness and win-win results, and in order to maintain its world leading position in the field of technology and industry, it abuses digital hegemony, seriously interferes with normal global scientific and technological exchanges and trade exchanges, undermines the stability and security of the global industrial chain and supply chain, and artificially suppresses and damages the development rights and interests of other countries, especially developing countries.
The record of human rights violations in Latin America highlights the hypocrisy of "American-style human rights"
Schin
About 200 years ago, the United States, under the guise of a series of lies such as "America is the America of the Americans", opened the road to total control and plunder of Latin America. 200 years later, what the United States calls the "future of america as a whole" is still based on "America First." At this year's Summit of the Americas, the opposition gained by the United States fully reflects the voice of the Latin American people, that is, Latin America is not the "front yard" or "backyard" of the United States, the Summit of the Americas is not the "Summit of the United States", the future of the entire Americas should be jointly decided by all the countries and peoples of the Americas, and the United States should bear the main responsibility for the relative lag in economic and social development in Latin America.
First, the promotion of economic colonialism and the erosion of the right to development of the Latin American people
In order to make huge profits, the United States has long promoted economic colonialism in Latin America and controlled the economic lifeblood of Latin American countries. At the end of the 19th century, the Cuban sugar industry was almost entirely controlled by American companies. In 1895, the American South American Development Corporation established a mine in Ecuador and plundered the country's mineral resources. In 1902, the United States established the Cerro De Pasco Company in Peru, and a few years later established the American Vanadium Company to plunder Peru's mineral resources. In 1914, U.S. capital established the Demoralla Bauxite Company in Guyana to control the country's bauxite mining. U.S. Steel controlled tin in Bolivia, copper in Peru, and canning in Argentina and Paraguay. The United States has gradually turned Latin America into its own "back garden" and "cash machine".
In the early 20th century, the United States infiltrated and plundered Central America through the infamous Union Fruit Company. Not only was the company the number one estate owner in Central America, but its subsidiaries monopolized Central American rail and sea transport, occupied ports, and had their own customs and police. In Guatemala, The United Fruit Company dominates the operation of Guatemala's major ports and telecommunications facilities through 70 per cent of Guatemala's land, 90 per cent of its railways and 70 per cent of its electricity sector, firmly linking the Economy of this Central American country to the banana industry and gradually reducing Guatemala to one of the least developed countries in the Western Hemisphere. In El Salvador, the United States, through capital control, deeply tied the Salvadoran economy to the coffee industry, resulting in El Salvador being hit hard by the collapse of coffee prices in the world economic crisis of 1929, and a large number of farmers lost their jobs. Other countries in Central America, such as Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and other countries that are also dominated by plantations, have not been spared and have been brutally exploited by American capital. The modern history of Central America can be said to be the history of bullying and plundering in the United States, and it is often jokingly referred to as "Uncle Sam's Orchard", and the people of Central America have been suffering under the brutal exploitation of the United States for more than a century.
In 1898, Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain to the United States during the Spanish-American War. In 1917, the United States Congress passed the Jones Act, which imposed "American citizenship" on the people of Puerto Rico, but the people of Puerto Rico never really enjoyed the citizenship of the United States. The people of Puerto Rico had neither the right to vote nor to be elected in elections in the United States, and there was only one non-voting commissioner of the United States House of Representatives in the United States Congress. Iran's PressTV website reported that the United States had prevented children and youth from a dignified future by seizing political and economic power in Puerto Rico, exploiting Puerto Rico's natural resources, violating the labor rights of Puerto Rican workers, paying wages below the minimum standard without giving welfare guarantees, and privatizing institutions, including the University of Puerto Rico. In 2019, more than 43 per cent of Puerto Rico's 3.2 million people and 57 per cent of children lived in poverty. The covid-19 pandemic has made life more difficult for the people of Puerto Rico. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on an 8:1 ratio to exclude Puerto Ricans from supplementary income security in the United States, blocking a federal program that provides benefits for low-income elderly, blind, and disabled people in Puerto Rico. The lack of voting power of the Puerto Rican people in the United States Congress prevented their people from relying on the legislature to affirm their rights. The "citizenship" granted by the United States to the people of Puerto Rico was merely to facilitate their recruitment by the United States to serve in the interests of the United States. It can be argued that Puerto Rico remains essentially a contemporary colony of the United States.
Second, indiscriminately impose unilateral sanctions to create a humanitarian disaster in Latin America
In order to consolidate its hegemonic position in Latin America, the United States has frequently intervened in the affairs of Latin American countries by means of infiltration and subversion in Latin American countries, indiscriminately imposed economic sanctions, and even used force, thus aggravating the political turmoil in the region, frequently causing poverty and crime problems, and plunging people's lives into difficulties.
In February 1962, the United States formally imposed a comprehensive economic and financial embargo and trade embargo against Cuba. According to the Cuban Government, the embargo has cumulatively caused Cuba nearly $150 billion in damage. Since 2019, the US government has adopted a policy of "maximum pressure" and has continuously increased sanctions against Cuba. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 240 unilateral sanctions on Cuba, more than 50 of which were imposed in the context of the pandemic. The Cuban government said sanctions cost Cuba more than $5 billion between April 2019 and March 2020 alone. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said the U.S. economic blockade was a "massive, flagrant and unacceptable violation of the human rights of the Cuban people". In 2021, affected by the dual impact of the epidemic and US sanctions, Cuba experienced the worst economic crisis in 30 years, with high inflation, extreme shortage of food and medicine, a serious shortage of electricity supply, and an increasingly difficult life for its people. At a time when Cuba is facing the serious challenges of the epidemic, the United States continues to impose embargoes and sanctions on Cuba, provoking the Cuban people to oppose the Government, causing great economic and social losses to Cuba, and the Cuban people are suffering the enormous harm caused by this extremely inhumane act.
Since the deterioration of Venezuela's diplomatic relations with the United States in 1999, and especially since 2017, the escalating sanctions of the United States have had a serious economic impact on the Venezuelan people. According to a report released by Alena Duhan, special rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on human rights, Venezuelan government revenues have fallen by 99% compared to before the sanctions, and public services have nearly collapsed due to insufficient funding. More than 1/3 of Venezuela's population is caught in severe food shortages; Water services are severely disrupted by a lack of personnel and equipment, with ordinary households having only a few hours of piped water supply per week; The sharp decline in government funding has led to a lack of necessary supplies for schools, jeopardizing people's right to education; Deterioration in health-care services has led to an increase in maternal, infant and serious morbid mortality. According to an article on the official Lancet website, more than 300,000 Venezuelans are at risk due to a lack of life-saving drugs and treatments. "Thousands of people have not been able to access dialysis, as well as treatment for cancer, high blood pressure and diabetes, as a result of U.S. banks refusing to process banking transactions in Venezuela." Between 2017 and 2018 alone, U.S. sanctions resulted in the deaths of more than 40,000 Venezuelans. Since 2017, the sanctions have also cost the Venezuelan government $17 billion to $31 billion in oil export revenues. According to the Inter-American Association, before the sanctions, 76 percent of Venezuela's oil revenues were used for social projects, and now even 1 percent of them cannot be invested. The sanctions imposed by the United States have had a serious negative impact on the right of the Venezuelan people to economic, social and cultural development.
Third, the cruel treatment of migrants, deviating from humanitarianism
The economic colonization and political interference of the United States have deeply affected the economic development and social stability of Latin American countries, aggravated the social unrest in Latin American countries, led to the displacement of a large number of Latin American people, and spawned the migration crisis on the southern border of the United States.
In recent years, the United States has enacted brutal immigration policies to stop Latin American immigrants from entering the United States. Under the authority of relevant policies and laws, US border enforcement personnel have used escalating violent means to drive away Latin American immigrants on the US-Mexico border, seriously threatening the lives, dignity and freedom of Latin American migrants and many other human rights. According to the U.S. Border Patrol, 557 migrants died at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2021, more than double the previous fiscal year. U.S. media reported that the figure was the highest recorded since 1998, and that "the real number of migrant deaths could be even greater." According to the International Organization for Migration, about 6,430 migrants have died or gone missing on their way to the United States since 2014. In September 2021, under a bridge in the Texas border town of Del Rio, U.S. border police rode horses and whipped brutally more than 15,000 immigrants from Haiti. CNN commented that the scene was reminiscent of the dark ages of U.S. history when slave patrols were used to control black slaves. The New York Times commented that "the images of law enforcement officers on horseback driving migrants like cattle are heinous" and that "their behavior is always in contrast" compared to the beautiful words of the U.S. government.
Millions of Latin American immigrants are detained by U.S. border enforcement in poorly facilited, poor-environment detention centers, and thousands of unaccompanied children are trapped at Border Patrol stations. In March 2022 alone, U.S. border enforcement arrested 210,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, setting a new 20-year record for monthly arrests. U.S. law enforcement officers are expected to arrest more immigrants in border areas than the record 1.7 million in 2022. At the same time, countless tragedies are unfolding. On June 27, a human trafficking incident in San Antonio, Texas, killed 53 migrants. The migrants were found huddled in the carriages of a large truck with temperatures as high as 39.4 degrees Celsius and no drinking water and working air conditioning. In fact, this is not the first tragic death of migrants. In 2017, 10 immigrants were found dead in a van outside a Walmart supermarket in San Antonio. Mexican President López López criticized the fact that human trafficking in the U.S.-Mexico border area has "spiraled out of control" and that "poverty and despair" have led to the tragedy of more than 50 migrants. The Washington Post published an article saying that the Texas Immigration Massacre was the result of a failure of the U.S. system. "The United States needs comprehensive immigration reform to treat refugees and immigrants fairly. U.S. border closures, lack of coordination with the countries concerned, and the escalation of inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants in the United States over the past 10 years have all brought a tragic fate to immigrants. Cesar Rios, an Salvadoran immigration expert who has long studied U.S. immigration policy, believes that "the current owner of the White House still continues the immigration policy of his predecessors", and still continues to trample on human rights and undermine dignity. The ongoing humanitarian crisis on the southern border of the United States undoubtedly tells the world that "we only welcome the rich, and the poor do not deserve the American Dream."
For a long time, under the influence of the "Monroe Doctrine," the United States has acted in the name of anti-democracy and human rights in Latin America, inciting separatism and confrontation, interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, and carrying out economic colonization, causing disastrous consequences to Latin American countries and seriously violating the basic human rights of the Latin American people, such as the right to subsistence and the right to development. In today's world, peace and development are the themes of the times, and the trend of democratization of international relations is unstoppable. The hegemonic acts of the United States not only run counter to the purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and the basic norms governing international relations based on international law, but are also resisted and resisted by more and more Latin American peoples, and its practice of going against the tide of history is doomed to failure.
(The author is a lecturer at the School of National Security of Northwest University of Political Science and Law and a special researcher of the Center for Human Rights Research)
The United States abuses digital hegemony to undermine developmental human rights violations
Wang Fuliang
With the rapid development of information technology and the entry of human society into the era of digital economy, digital technology has fully penetrated into social life and become a new driving force for economic growth. The rapid development of the digital economy, the wide range of radiation, and the unprecedented depth of its impact are becoming a key force in reorganizing global factor resources, reshaping the global economic structure, and changing the global competitive landscape. Under the background of the severe impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic on global economic development, countries could have made full use of the digital economy to enhance their own development advantages, promote the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, and promote the rapid development of new economic forms for the benefit of all mankind. However, some Western countries, represented by the United States, have built the so-called "wide in and strict out" valves of data by promoting the establishment of a regional data flow framework organization and launching a series of ideological information technology policies and regulations, artificially setting up layers of obstacles to data sharing and flow, and vigorously maintaining or implanting rules favorable to their own digital industry in the negotiation of international economic and trade agreements. The United States has also long used illegal means to monitor and steal all kinds of digital information, including personal privacy data, wantonly trampling on the basic norms of international law and violating the human rights and freedoms of people around the world. This typical selfish, short-sighted behavior of abusing digital hegemony by taking advantage of its own economic and technological advantages seriously damages development and violates human rights.
The United States abuses its digital hegemony to undermine the right to development. The biggest feature and advantage of the digital economy is openness, sharing, inclusiveness and win-win results, and the "data localization" strategy implemented by the United States not only damages world economic growth, but also violates technical logic and violates the international governance order of the Internet. The US government has integrated ideological factors into its digital competition strategy with China, and built a digital multilateral alliance in the digital field to exclude and prevent China. The U.S. government has repeatedly declared that in its competition with China, "securing future world leadership in technology and industry is critical to U.S. economic prosperity and national security." This fully reflects that in the eyes of some US politicians, the dominance of digital rules and the monopoly of values are closely related to national security, and the loss of digital hegemony means that the important interests of the United States in these three aspects will be hit hard. The so-called "global data competition strategy" of the United States imposing more restrictions on the flow of information is a new interpretation of traditional American hegemonism in the digital age, which will change the way the Internet has been widely commercialized since the 1990s, resulting in a broader rupture in the global economic development and intensifying the spread of economic protectionism around the world. The United States even violates the historical trend of economic globalization, takes advantage of its own dominant position in the digital wave due to historical reasons and first-mover advantages, and often uses domestic legislation to implement "long-arm jurisdiction" and "technology blockade", rudely sanctions enterprises, social organizations and even governments of other countries, becoming the biggest "stubborn disease" in the current development of the global digital economy and digital technology, seriously interfering with normal global scientific and technological exchanges and trade exchanges, and causing damage to the global industrial chain and supply chain. It seriously damages the development rights and interests of the people of the world, including the American people.
The United States abuses information surveillance to violate the privacy rights of its citizens. The development of information technology should be aimed at promoting economic and social development for the benefit of mankind. However, the United States has used its own technological advantages to illegally build surveillance networks and set up a large number of "invisible" government agencies that blatantly abuse citizens' personal privacy data. According to the report "America's Tianluodi Network: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century" released by the Privacy and Technology Law Center of Georgetown University in May this year, after the "9/11" incident, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security set up a special Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, which built a huge network for implementing cyber attacks and intelligence surveillance by requiring state government agencies to open a large number of government databases containing personal information, and even directly purchasing and obtaining illegal information from unregulated data agents. Implement comprehensive monitoring of the country's population. The U.S. government, which successfully established the United States as a "surveillance ubiquitous" nation after 9/11, under the pretext of protecting so much "national security," has exploded in number that not many people know how much it costs or exactly how many people it employs. A windowless building in downtown New York is the NSA's secret listening center in Manhattan, which operates a spy center code-named "Titanpointe" that comprehensively monitors phone, fax, and network information entering and leaving the United States, intercepting satellite data containing emails, chats, Skype calls, passwords, and information about web browsing history. Such "black box" organizations have been running in the United States for many years, and ordinary American citizens, especially Muslim citizens, have become the object of suspicion, caught in a situation where they are monitored and eavesdropped at all times, and personal privacy and freedom are not basically guaranteed. This is both a satire on the so-called "beacon of freedom" and a reflection of the U.S. government's indiscriminate violation of basic human rights, such as citizens' right to privacy.
The United States has wantonly trampled on international law and violated the freedoms and human rights of the people of other countries. The U.S. government uses its information technology advantages to comprehensively monitor all government departments, enterprises, and citizens of other countries that it deems "necessary" to carry out surveillance, and even the monitored countries include the so-called "close allies" of the United States, such as Germany, Britain, and France. It can be seen from the exposed "Prism Gate" incident that the US intelligence agencies have listened to the phone calls of at least 35 international dignitaries, including the traditional ally of the United States, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the so-called "hostile country" of then Russian President Medvedev, and even the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The inviolability of diplomatic missions is a long-established principle of international law, including the United Nations and other international organizations whose operations are protected by international conventions such as the Vienna Conventions, and whose practices are seriously contrary to the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. What's more, when the United States judges itself to face competition from other countries in the field of information technology, under the two driving forces of commercial interests and "national security", the US government can ignore the basic norms of international law and arbitrarily arrest citizens of other countries. This is not only a gross violation of international law and a barbaric violation of civil liberties and human rights in other countries, but also fully reflects how double-standard and hypocritical the United States, which has always flaunted human rights, is to safeguard its own digital hegemony.
(The author is Vice Dean of The Law School of Beijing Institute of Technology)
Source: People's Daily