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U.S. Violation of International Human Rights Norms under Fire

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

    Pyongyang, February 20 (KCNA) -- The Law Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences in an indictment on Feb. 19 branded the United States as the world's biggest human rights abuser and a typical criminal state as it has failed to guarantee its citizens elementary rights and wantonly violated international human rights norms in different parts of the world while being keen on spreading American-style view on value worldwide only. The indictment said:
    The U.S. has violated international human rights norms which call for providing the people with the elementary right to existence.
    It has been so indifferent to the state measures to provide the popular masses with elementary right to existence that they are now finding themselves in miserable conditions baffling human imagination.
    The disaster caused by hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans last August is a clear indication of the Bush administration's anti-popular policies.
    According to the latest information, 38.2 million Americans are exposed to constant hunger and the number of the unemployed and the homeless reached tens of millions. Los Angeles, a center of the U.S. movie industry considered as a symbol of luxuries, is, in fact, called "city of starvation". The city health authorities in their official announcement on Sept. 7, 2001 said that about 1.4 million people in the city suffer from the shortage of food and more than 584,000 are languishing in the mire of abject starvation.
    In 2001 alone about one million workers became jobless due to the serious economic crisis, an all-time high in a decade.
    The rich who account for no more than 0.02 percent of the population of the U.S. hold 60 percent of its assets. According to the report released by the U.S. census institution, more than 43.448 million Americans or 16 percent of the population, are denied medical treatment for the mere reason that they cannot afford to insure themselves for health care.
    International human rights norms which call for providing people with political rights are also violated in the U.S.
    The U.S. election system has so many restrictions that broad popular masses are not allowed to participate in the election.
    There are more than 60 kinds of election restrictions in the U.S. whose federal states have their own laws.
    The freedom of thinking is also encroached upon in America. About 200,000 agents and over 21,000 repressive machines are now engaged in quelling progressive ideas in the U.S.
    The freedom of speech is also abridged in America.
    The U.S. encroaches upon the right of independent mass media at home and abroad. The U.S. claimed its presence in Iraq is to help it in its "reconstruction." It, however, pressurized and manipulated the Iraqi media to release reports in favor of the U.S., far from helping them observe impartiality and objectivity in their service, thus encroaching upon the freedom of speech of the mass media. According to the information disclosed by the Los Angeles Times late in November 2005, the U.S. paid 40 to 2,000 U.S. dollars for every pro-U.S. article carried by an Iraqi publication and more than 1,000 articles of that content were published by Iraqi media. The Lincoln Group directed by a special institution of the U.S. has 15 Iraqi newspapers under its control.
    Such violation of the freedom of speech of the mass media obliged to represent justice and impartiality only is an outright challenge to international human rights norms. The U.S. has also breached international human rights norms which call for eradicating all forms of racial discrimination.
    More than one third of the black are denied job for the mere reason that they are colored.
    According to information made public by the Los Angeles city authorities on Dec. 20, 2001, from September to December 2001, the year when the Bush administration took office, the number of crimes related to the racial discrimination increased almost eight times in the city as compared with that in the same period of the previous year. To top it all, the living conditions of the black are awfully deplorable as their rights are violated due to racial discrimination.
    The U.S. also violates international human rights norms that call for banning torture and providing the prisoners with rights concerning judicial administration. After launching wars in different parts of the world under the pretext of combating terrorism following the Sept. 11 incident, the U.S. administration instructed the military and the CIA to set up secret prisons in its military bases in different countries and regions of the world and aboard its navy warships for the purpose of interrogating POWs and terror suspects. It has practiced medieval and barbarous torture against them.
    Its barbaric torture took the lives of more than 70 prisoners in those overseas secret prisons of the CIA in 2002 alone and more than 9,000 prisoners were reported to have been put to unbearable torture in those prisons on charges of being terror suspects as of the first half of 2004.
    As seen above, the U.S. is the worst violator of international human rights norms and the world's biggest human rights abuser. It is illogical and a mockery and an insult to the genuine human rights for such a country to talk about "protection of human rights". The law institute appeals to the lawyers all over the world who value justice and truth to turn out in the actions to bring the Bush administration to human rights justice.