Human rights violations in the name of democracy

  Tuesday, 30 August 2016

source: abna

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - In a speech last year, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei highlighted the numerous crimes which were committed by the US against Iranian nationals from June 26 to July 2, and suggested that the week should be entitled the “Week of American Human Rights”.
“In this period, the true nature of American human rights was revealed in our country,” the Leader said, back on June 27, 2015.
Accordingly, on January 11 this year, President Hassan Rouhani communicated a law designating July 2 in Iran’s calendar as the “Day of Revealing American Human Rights”.
Historically, one of the earliest uses of the term “human rights” is attributed to Frederick Douglas when he referred to the fundamental rights of enslaved African-Americans at the time when the United States did not recognize their humanity or their rights.
Since 1945 America has claimed exceptional leadership in promoting international human rights. At the same time, however, it has also resisted complying with human rights standards at home or aligning its foreign policy with these standards abroad.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its annual reports has repetitively talked upon the widespread abuses linked to prison overpopulation, racial disparity, capital punishment, solitary confinement, youth in criminal justice system, police killings, drug reform, immigration, and many other human rights violations instances in the US. In its annual review in 2016, HRW ranked police mistreatment of Blacks in America among human rights crises occurring across the globe.
It has presented high-profile police killings of unarmed African Americans, especially in recent years. Trayvon Martin in Florida, Freddy Gray in Baltimore, Walter Scott in South Carolina, Michael Brown in Missouri, Alton Sterling in Louisiana, are among hundreds of other unarmed black minorities recently killed by police in the US.
African American men are incarcerated at six times the rate of white men, and three percent of all black males are currently incarcerated in a state or federal prison. US police killed at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015, nearly twice each week most of them identified as unarmed, though the actual number is likely higher due to underreporting.
However, when it comes to human rights issue, the US exempts itself from any kind of violations and abuses upon its own citizens, and particularly regarding its own crimes against other nations of the world.
Issuing its annual list of human rights violators, the US has been accustomed to accusing other countries of human rights violations and claiming to be a champion in defending human rights, while there are many report coming out to prove the US holds the first place as the biggest human rights violator in the world.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, for the first time, has launched an art festival to display US policies completely opposed to human rights basic demands, and to promote public awareness and culture of human rights, and also to introduce the real face of international human rights claimants, through art tools, as Leader of Islamic Revolution believes, “any idea not integrated in art is ephemeral.”
The event held on Sunday evening, August 28, to commemorate Iranian artists who have dedicated their works for fighting against arrogance.
The festival was introduced first in June 28, coinciding with American Human Rights Week, and is set at the national level and held in cooperation with the Iranian Lawyers Mobilization, Art Center, Islamic Propagation Organization, the Human Rights Council of the Judiciary, the Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed, and some other public organizations and NGOs.
The most important approach of the popular event is to produce research-based art works on the nature, significance and instances of American human rights.
The study which includes a series of human rights violations of US governments is fully presented to the artists, and they have to produce all artworks of the festival based on the major research findings, using it as a reference which elucidates instances of the US violations against the US citizens, Iran and the rest of the world.
The collection of research-based instances was so comprehensive to become a book entitled "American Human Rights” unveiled during the closing ceremony of the festival.
Javad Hajipour and Mrs. Es’haghi are the two researchers and authors of the book who commented that it includes the collection and documentation of American human rights violations developed in three main sections narrating instances of human rights violations in the US, its anti- human rights performance in the international arena as well as US hostile behavior against the Iranian nation in documentary form.
The festival received about 800 works in different sections and in the form of motion graphics, infographics, poster and paper boards, photography and cartoon.
The works were produced by 350 artists of ‘revolutionary values’ across the country, most of them based on research studies and have been adopted by the festival’s secretariat as accomplished particularly based on American human rights issues.
During the closing ceremony for the first American Human Rights Art Festival, Iranian artists were appreciated, including Iranian film director, producer and documentary filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh and Organizer of Iran's International Holocaust Cartoons Exhibition Seyyed Masoud Shojaee Tababaei who have contributed for years to the disclosure of real face of American and arrogance human rights violations.
US laws and practices routinely violate rights, often rights of those least able to defend their rights in court or through the political process—racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, children, the poor, and prisoners and they most likely to suffer abuses.
US national security policies, including mass surveillance programs, are wearing away freedoms of the press, expression, and association.
Muslim Americans are widely seen as victims of discrimination. Discriminatory and unfair investigations and prosecutions of American Muslims are alienating the communities the US claims it wants as partners in combatting terrorism.
Every US jurisdiction allows children under the age of 18 to be prosecuted as adults and sentenced to adult prison terms in certain circumstances. At the end of 2013, 1,200 children were being held in adult state prison facilities.
Hundreds of thousands of children work on US farms. Child labor is common on tobacco farms in the US, the world’s fourth largest tobacco producer. Congress has not closed a legal loophole allowing children to do hazardous work in agriculture at 16.
US military veterans face systemic barriers in accessing health care, including long delays in obtaining adequate care at Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) health centers.
Millions of women in the United States had been victims of attempted or completed rape. At least one in five women is sexually assaulted in college, according to the reports released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The list goes on. You can find millions of words in describing American crimes and human rights violations, something that is corresponding to the policies of authoritarian, dictatorial and greedy policies of the US.