The 2024 World Report of the international organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW), which analyses the human rights situation in more than 100 countries, went somewhat unnoticed in the mainstream media in Latin America. In my opinion, the mainstream media tend to use it only when it suits them, generally to continue with their rhetoric against Cuba or Venezuela, without explaining that the US economic sanctions against these countries generate poverty, migration, and end up violating human rights.
In general, the mainstream media tend to hide or disguise the serious human rights violations that occur in their own countries while, by editorial line, defending the neoliberal economic system that allows the concentration of wealth for a few and poverty (violation of human rights) for many.
Of course, almost nothing is said about Big Brother, about American democracy, about the human rights situation in the United States, and if they are known, no one cries foul or demands condemnation. Even less is there any criticism of US foreign policy, which has dire consequences for other countries in terms of human rights.
We watch in the news with horror, sadness and impotence the death of more than 24,000 Palestinians, many of them children, killed by Israel with US weapons and support.
On 11 January, the German news agency DW en Español interviewed HRW’s deputy director for Latin America, Juan Pipper, and asked him how to explain the double standards of the US, which twice vetoed a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
“This double standard that we see in the US, that we see in Brussels and also in other countries around the world is one of the great challenges for human rights globally today,” said Pipper, adding that the international community reacted correctly to the war in Ukraine.
“We need to apply the same tools, the same answers in the case of what is happening today in Palestine and in other lesser known crises such as what is happening in Sudan or much closer to home, in our region, in Latin America, in Haiti. These are dramatic situations of human rights violations that require the international community to respond clearly and without double standards. Always protecting human rights and the victims,” said Pipper.
It should be noted that in the conflict in Ukraine the vast majority of countries are opposed to war and have advocated peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. While the US and NATO countries have resolved to support the war and continue to bleed both nations.
The World Report 2024, by the international organisation Human Rights Watch, notes in the section on the human rights situation in the United States itself that “racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and threats to democracy remained pressing human rights problems in the United States in 2023”. Let’s look at some parts of the report in question.
Police killings
According to the report, “as of 28 September, police had killed more than 800 people in 2023, similar to previous years. Per capita, the police kill three times as many black people as white.
The numbers of people killed by police continued to increase, reaching 1329 in 2023 according to the monitoring site mappingpoliceviolence.org.
The Human Rights Watch report notes that “widespread calls to reduce over-reliance on the police and address social problems by investing in housing, health care, and education were largely drowned out by calls for increased police funding and reversal of police reforms”.
The latter, “were driven by persistent dissemination of misinformation and misleading narratives about increasing crime rates and declining public safety”.
The same, taken out of the textbook, can be seen in so many countries, where, aided by the mass media of the power groups, fear is sown in order to continue militarising life and justifying laws that give more guarantees and impunity to the Security Forces.
Another precedent indicated by the Report, common in many countries around the world, is that “most police departments in the United States refuse to provide data on their use of force, which necessitated the collection and analysis of data from non-governmental organisations”.
Economic Inequality and Incarceration
In the United States, one of the richest and most industrialised countries in the world, according to the report, “the racial wealth gap remained stark: for every dollar of white family wealth, black families had just 24 cents and Hispanic families, 23 cents, a gap that has changed little over the past 50 years.”
“Income inequality in the United States is very high compared to other rich countries: the top 10 percent of earners capture almost half of all income and the bottom 50 percent earn only 13 percent.”
The report notes that “the GINI index, a statistical measure of income inequality, shows that for the United States it has increased by 3.2 per cent since 2021. Wealth inequality is equally stark: the poorest 50 percent of the US population owns only 1.5 percent of the country’s private wealth”.
Poverty, inequality, wide disparities in access to rights among the US population may explain, to some extent, the increase in the incarceration rate, The HRW report says there are “approximately 2 million people held in state and federal jails, prisons, and immigration detention centres on any given day, and millions more on parole” and where, of course, there is “vastly overrepresentation of black people in prisons and jails” in the US.
Migrants: Biden expels 2.3 million people
This point, the issue of migration to the US, is perhaps one of the few issues one can read about in the mainstream media. Although, as with many issues, it does not address the profundity of the causes of migration, which is poverty, the consequences of neoliberalism, climate change, sanctions against third countries, and militarisation driven by the US itself, which are factors that explain why people seek to migrate.
The HRW report notes that “state and federal authorities (in the US) continued to pursue policies designed to deter people from seeking asylum in the country, in blatant violation of international human rights law, virtually forcing them to take more dangerous routes”.
“The 2020 Title 42 summary removal policy expired in May, but was replaced by a labyrinthine new asylum rule. Under Title 42, justified as an emergency measure to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, the Biden administration summarily removed 2.3 million people without reviewing their asylum claims,” says HRW.
It is worth recalling Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution” and states are obliged by international law to process asylum claims.
The report recalls that “as a candidate, Biden promised to end the detention of immigrants in private prisons, but as of July, 90% of the 30,000 foreign nationals who are detained on average every day in the US were held in private facilities”.
The Illegal Guantánamo Prison
We must remember that inside the US military base in Guantanamo, territories that Cuba demands to be returned to the country, there is still an illegal prison that violates human rights.
This past 11 January, it was 22 years since its opening, which was established by President George W. Bush in 2002, after the attacks of 11 September 2001. The illegal prison at Guantánamo has housed more than 700 prisoners.
The HRW document notes that “at the time of writing, 30 foreign Muslims were being held at the US military detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, including five accused of involvement in the 11 September 2001 attacks”.
It also notes that “talks on a deal for the 9/11 defendants to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison stalled after President Biden rejected requests for the men’s care to help them recover from CIA torture and not serve their sentences in solitary confinement”.
It is worth adding that the document does not mention the existence of political prisoners held in US jails such as Mumia Abu Jamal or Leonard Peltier, among others.
US foreign policy
The HRW report also analyses some US foreign policy practices starting with the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stating that “President Biden sharply criticised the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Israelis and other civilians, and pledged to increase support for Israel’s defence beyond the annual military aid already approved”.
However, HRW is critical of this, noting that “such security assistance and arms transfers violated U.S. domestic laws and policies that condition U.S. military aid on ensuring that its allies do not violate international law. US officials publicly and privately urged Israel to minimise civilian harm in its military answer and to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza”.
He added that if it is true that some Biden administration officials voiced their concerns, the Israeli government did not change its policy and continued to attack the Palestinian civilian population, which must be protected and respected according to international law and international humanitarian law. Despite this, the US has continued to send arms and military assistance to Israel.
On the Russia-Ukraine war, the report states that “the United States continued to provide significant military and economic support to Ukraine in 2023 in answer to Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022” and that “Biden approved the transfer of U.S. cluster munitions to Ukraine. These weapons are banned by an international treaty because of the dangers they pose to civilians, but neither the US nor Ukraine is a party to that treaty.
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