The human rights situation in the United States, which has notorious records, worsened in 2021. Political manipulation led to a sharp surge in COVID-19 deaths; Shooting deaths hit a new record; Fake democracy trampled on people's political rights; Violent law enforcement made life harder for migrants and refugees; Discrimination against ethnic minority groups, especially Asians, intensified. In the meantime, unilateral U.S. actions created new humanitarian crises across the globe.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, the epidemic prevention and control has been highly politicized, which has become a tool and a bargaining chip for Republicans and Democrats to attack, reject and confront each other. U.S. politicians focused only on their political gains in disregard of people's lives and health.
By the end of 2021, nearly 30 percent of Americans still had not been vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
According to the analysis by researchers at the University of Southern California and Princeton University, the deaths caused by COVID-19 have reduced overall life expectancy by 1.13 years, the biggest drop since the Second World War. Life expectancy was estimated to fall by 2.10 years among African Americans and 3.05 years among Latinos, while the decline was 0.68 years among whites.
A study published in The Lancet Regional Health -- Americas in October 2021 found 32.8 percent of U.S. adults experienced "elevated depressive symptoms" in 2021, compared to 27.8 percent in the early 2020 months of the pandemic and 8.5 percent before the pandemic.
The Washington Post reported on Dec. 7, 2021 that "homelessness is one of the United States' greatest current challenges, no matter the region." The New York Times reported on Dec. 19, 2021 that in San Francisco one of every 100 residents was homeless.
The U.S. CDC said that the vast majority of U.S. COVID-19 deaths have been among people aged 65 or older. According to Stat News, an American health-oriented news website, more than half a million elderly people in the United States have died from COVID-19, accounting for four-fifths of all fatalities.
Washington vigorously pursues "America First," not only withholding anti-epidemic materials from other countries, but also prohibiting the export of domestic medical materials and buying out the production capacity of drugs that may be used to treat COVID-19 patients. The United States has repeatedly coerced the WHO, interfering and dragging down global anti-pandemic cooperation.
The United States has engaged in "vaccine nationalism," pushing some underdeveloped countries and regions into a desperate situation of having no vaccines to administer.
Since March 2021, the United States has thrown away at least 15 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, significantly more than many poor countries have prepared for their whole populations, according to NBC News on Sept. 1, 2021.
The United States is the country with the largest number of privately owned guns in the world. The U.S. public have lost confidence in the government's social security governance and felt extremely insecure, which drives many to purchase guns to protect themselves.
The United States has the worst gun violence in the world. According to statistics released on Jan. 5, 2022 by the Gun Violence Archive website, the number of fatalities from shootings in the United States rose from 39,558 in 2019 to 43,643 in 2020, and further to 44,816 in 2021. In 2021, there were 693 mass shootings in the United States, up 10.1 percent from 2020.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on Oct. 5, 2021 that children and teens in the United States are 15 times more likely to die from gunfire than their peers in 31 other high-income countries combined, quoting data from the Children's Defense Fund.
At least 30 shootings occurred on U.S. campuses during the school season from Aug. 1 to Sept. 15, 2021, killing at least five people and injuring 23, the highest number on record.
A total of 1,229 teens aged 12 to 17 were killed and 3,373 injured in shootings in the United States in 2021.
According to data compiled by Mapping Police Violence, at least 1,124 people died in 2021 due to U.S. police violence. The majority of killings occurred during non-violent offenses or when there was no crime at all.
The USA TODAY website reported on June 21, 2021 that police in the United States fatally shoot about 1,000 people a year. Police have fatally shot more than 6,300 people since 2015, but only 91 officers have been arrested, or just 1 percent of those involved.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate and the highest number of incarcerated people in the world. An Associated Press investigation has found that the U.S. federal Bureau of Prisons is a hotbed of graft, corruption and abuse.
Since 2019, more than 100 U.S. federal prison staff members have been arrested and convicted of sexual abuse, murder and other offenses.
According to statistics released by the U.S. National Registry of Exoneration on Jan. 11, 2022, 2,933 people have been wrongly convicted in the United States since 1989, with a combined 25,600 years of wrongly imposed prison sentences. However, 14 U.S. states lack legal provisions related to compensation for wrongful convictions.
The USA Today website reported on July 8, 2021, that a survey showed that only 17 percent of Americans believe the U.S. criminal justice system treats everyone fairly.
In order to win elections, Republicans and Democrats used legislation and gerrymander as well as other tactics to aggressively prevent voters who do not favor them from casting a ballot.
Gerrymander has become a tool to suppress the political influence of minority voters.
Gerrymander:改变选区;选区不公正的重新划分
In an opinion published on June 12, 2021, The Washington Post said that in the past few years the world has been horrified by the chaos, dysfunction and insanity of American democracy, which was seen by U.S. allies as a shattered and washed-up has-been.
Statistics released by the New York Police Department on Dec. 8, 2021 showed that anti-Asian hate crimes in the city rose by 361 percent from that of 2020. According to a report of The Washington Post on April 22, 2021, a Pew Research Center survey found that 81 percent of Asian adults said violence against the group was rising.
Since the implementation of the so-called "China Initiative" in November 2018, Chinese scientists have frequently been subjected to gratuitous harassment, monitoring and crackdown by the U.S. government. Vile and absurd acts of the U.S. law enforcement authorities have been constantly exposed by the media.
Bloomberg reported on Sept. 9, 2021 that over the past two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, discrimination against Muslim Americans has surged.
A report published by the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ California chapter on Oct. 28, 2021 showed that more than half of the students surveyed across California said they do not feel safe at school because they are bullied for their Muslim heritage. That's the highest percentage the California chapter has documented since the survey started in 2013.
The United States has a long and dark history of violating the rights of indigenous people, including Indians, who have experienced bloody massacres, brutal expulsions and cultural genocide.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Navajo Nation, the Cherokee Nation, the Sioux Nation and other Native Americans have struggled with disease and poverty, which, however, has all been systematically ignored.
There has been a long-term and systematic economic inequality between ethnic minority groups and the white population in the United States, which is manifested in various aspects such as employment and entrepreneurship, wages, and financial loans.
On July 30, 2021, USA Today reported on its website that a new Gallup poll showed that 59 percent Americans do not believe racial minorities have equal job opportunities.
With a legal system that is structurally set up to advantage and forgive those who are wealthier, while penalizing those who are poorer, particularly minorities, minorities such as African Americans and Latino Americans in particular are crushed into a generational cycle of poverty, UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues Fernand de Varennes said on Nov. 22, 2021.
In 2021, the humanitarian crisis continued to intensify as the southern border of the United States saw an increasing inflow of migrants, and border enforcement officers used increasingly violent means to expel or prevent asylum seekers from entering the country.
Data released by U.S. Border Patrol shows that in fiscal year 2021, as many as 557 migrants died on the southern border of the United States, more than double the previous fiscal year, hitting the highest number since records began in 1998.
"There are more than 5,000 unaccompanied children in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody," CNN reported on April 23, 2021. Many of them have been staying in custody for longer than the 72-hour limit set by federal law, it added.
"A stash of redacted documents released to the human rights group (Human Rights Watch) after six years of legal tussles uncover more than 160 cases of misconduct and abuse by leading government agencies, notably Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol," The Guardian reported on Oct. 11, 2021. "The papers record events between 2016 and 2021 that range from child sexual assault to enforced hunger, threats of rape and brutal detention conditions."
Most of the detention facilities in the United States are built and operated by private companies. In order to reduce operating costs and maximize profits, private companies generally build in accordance with the minimum standards contracted with the government, resulting in poor detention facilities and a harsh internal environment. A lack of supervision has led to chaotic management of the detention facilities and repeated violations of human rights, while detainees suffered varying degrees of physical and mental health damage.
The immigration policy, that is wavering, inconsistent and often disregards human rights, is the main cause of border crisis and immigrants' tragedy. The situation reflects that the policy is deeply affected by extreme xenophobia.
The U.S. government hopes to deter illegal border crossing through tough law enforcement, which has made it more difficult for illegal immigrants to enter the country, resulting in them being forced to cross more dangerous areas. The situation in turn creates a larger humanitarian crisis.
The ongoing war and instability have made nearly a third of the Afghan population refugees. A total of 3.5 million Afghans have been displaced by the conflict, and nearly 23 million face extreme hunger, including 3.2 million children under the age of five.
Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur on Negative Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures on Human Rights, highlighted the sanctions' devastating impact on all of Venezuela's population, as well as on their enjoyment of human rights.
On June 23, 2021, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution for the 29th consecutive year to call on the United States to end embargo on Cuba and start dialogue to improve bilateral ties with the country.
The experts urged the U.S. to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. They also called for reparations to be made for tortured and arbitrarily detained prisoners, and for those who authorized and engaged in torture to be held accountable, as required under international law.
往期回顾