The United States has one of the worst human rights records in the world, according to a report by Russia’s Foreign Ministry.
The report, which the ministry has submitted to the lower house of Russian State Duma for deliberations, denounced the US for its dismal human rights record, citing child molestation, invasion of privacy, police brutality and restrictions on the freedom of expression.
The report noted that “hundreds of thousands of children” are maltreated in the US every year, which has led to 1,600 deaths in 2010 alone.
“About one police officer in 100 has been involved in criminal abuses, including sexual harassment, indecent behavior or rape,” it said.
“The US remains the country with the largest prison population in the world - 2.2 million,” the report underlined.
The Russian report also criticized a US legislation authorizing “special services” to keep tabs on all private electronic messages without any judicial order.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Paul Larudee, political commentator, to further discuss the issue.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Police brutality, secret rendition programs, breach of privacy, restrictions to freedom of expression this is merely the tip of the iceberg because Russia right now is only focusing on what is taking place on American soil. Do you agree with this assessment?
Larudee: Actually the points that you are citing are the most dramatic aspects of US human rights violations and actually I would say that they are pretty well-known not so much necessarily in the United States where to a large extent they are not even believed but certainly in the world they are but it goes much beyond that because the United States is planning for the Utah Data Center which is a small town actually devoted entirely to the gathering of data and surveillance on mostly American citizens but on people around the world and it is designed to create the possibility of knowing what everyone does at virtually every moment of their lives through their electronic activities which can be as simple as using a bank card.
But what they do with people when they find them doing something that they consider suspicious is terrible and we cannot depend on the law to defend us anywhere in the world. Of course, the United States acts outside the law as well in the cases of extraordinary rendition that you are talking about but even within the law they make up the law sometimes as they go along and really what we need is political action in groups to band together in order to defend ourselves which is what is happening now in the United States, it is not we don’t depend on law, the role of law anymore.
Press TV: Well I will come back to that, but not only all these go against the US constitution but is also calling to question the moral high ground that the US takes when it comes to human rights now doesn’t it?
Larudee: I have to say that the moral high ground of the states is something upon myth. When the United States dominated the world economy and consisted 50 percent of the world economy just after World War II it had few serious enemies and therefore it could allow itself the luxury of not worrying about threats. Now it worries about threats everywhere because it is on the decline and therefore I think this is one of the reasons that human rights violation are on the rise in the United States.
Press TV: Last year we saw the start of the Occupied Movement which sort of was a grassroots movement to stand up against this very injustices that are taking place in the US, the government going against the US constitution and taking back American rights bit by bit but many argue that the US has become a police state. Is there any hope considering that on an international arena the US simply is not adhering to any calls?
Larudee: Well in fact you put your finger on it. The United States has by far the largest incarceration rate of any county in the world has more than 2 million people behind bars, many of them for political reasons.
But the Occupy Movement indicates that you can push people only so far that the United States in its entire history has never had a general strike throughout the country the way you have in other countries France and Italy and Spain and others, the people have banded together and done this.
That hasn’t yet happened but the Occupy Movement was a step in that direction and even though in many cases the Occupy Movement is not focused as times get more difficult and as the sides begin, the authorities begin to wage war on a more massive scale with an increasingly impoverished population, I think you are going to see real serious resistance in the United States and you are going to see the creation of ...or a lot of people have accused it of being fascist but I think that pales by comparison with what we will eventually see here.
AHK/HGH
