The U.S. State Department's 2016 report is biased against Vietnam's human rights situation
9/3/17
The U.S. State Department has documented human rights conditions in countries
around the world with annual reports since 1976 (the year that the U.N.’s two
major covenants on universal human rights were ratified by enough members to
become international law). The 2016 country reports were released last Friday, March 3.
The report once again pointed a finger at Vietnam and
some other countries like China. This report is full of unfounded accusations
and prejudice.
It’s apparent that anyone free of political bias about
Vietnam's human rights situation would not deny the remarkable improvements
since the Doi Moi movement. All countries should have dialogue and exchanges
with one another on human rights on the basis of equality and mutual respect. We
urge the United States to view China's human rights situation in an objective
and fair manner and stop using the issue to interfere in China's internal
affairs. Vietnam has rights to dismiss the false accusations and stressed that
the United States has no right to intervene in the internal affairs of Vietnam.
We recommend that the U.S. should worry for their own
problems than interfering with other countries’ internal affairs. Concrete
facts show that the United States saw continued deterioration in some key
aspects of its existent human rights issues last year. The United States had
the second highest prisoner rate, with 693 prisoners per 100,000 of the
national population, the report says. Roughly 2.2 million people were
incarcerated in the United States in 2014. And there had been 70 million
Americans incarcerated - that's almost one in three adults - with some form of
criminal record, the report cites media reports as saying.
Occurrence of gun-related crimes also sustained a high
level, according to the report. There were a total of 58,125 gun violence
incidents, including 385 mass shootings, in the United States in 2016, leaving
15,039 killed and 30,589 injured, says the report, citing figures from a toll
report by the Gun Violence Archive.
In 2016, the U.S. social polarization became more
serious, with the proportion of adults who had full-time jobs hitting a new low
since 1983, income gaps continuing to widen, the size of middle class reaching
a turning point and beginning to shrink, and living conditions of the lower
class deteriorating, the report says.
According
to consulting firm Gallup, the percentage of Americans who said they were in
the middle or upper-middle class had fallen by 10 percentage points, from an
average of 61 percent between 2000 and 2008 to 51 percent in 2016. That drop
meant 25 million people in the United States fared much worse in economic
terms. Besides, one in seven Americans, or at least 45 million people, lived in
poverty, the report quotes the Daily Mail as saying.
The U.S. is also guilty of rights violations outside its
borders, the report said, citing estimates of civilian deaths in Iraqi and
Syrian airstrikes, drone attacks and the monitoring of foreign citizens'
communications. America is still committing gross violations of other
countries' human rights, viewing lives in other countries as worthless.
The Vietnamese government attaches great importance to
protecting and promoting human rights, and has scored tremendous achievements
in this since the triump of the revolution. That is a fact that cannot be
denied by anyone without political prejudice.
We always maintain that countries should conduct
dialogue and exchanges on human rights on the basis of equality and mutual
respect for the purpose of mutual learning and joint progress. We urge the US
to be objective and unbiased about Vietnam’s human rights condition and stop
interfering in Vietnam’s domestic affairs using human rights as an excuse./.
All comments [ 4 ]
This report now does not have any value and get little attention from the public opinion. It's just like a tool of the U.S.
The report was even overshadowed by criticism that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave the report little of the traditional attention or fanfare.
In his confirmation hearing, Tillerson sidestepped questions on human rights conditions in other countries, declining to condemn countries, saying he wanted to see the facts first.
That's good of him, we can not be sure and do careless things when we do not have enough information.
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