"Guantanamo is only the visible part of the story. Evidence continues to mount that the US operates a network of detention centers where people are held in secret or outside any proper legal framework - from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond," Amnesty added, noting that Bush had failed to respond to these "longstanding concerns".

"It is worth also worth noting," stressed Schulz, "that this administration never finds it 'absurd' when we criticize Cuba or China, or when we condemned the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

Bush and Cheney's insistence that the detainees themselves concocted the reported abuses also drew criticism.

Immigrant workers;

The torture of prisoners in Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, and other places is not an aberration after 119. The external concentration camps established as part of the "war on terror" reproduce longstanding practices of the US prison system.

A network of prison facilities in which detainees are held indefinitely without charges, denied access to attorneys and family, terrorized by dogs, and subjected to abuse tantamount to torture, as well as sexual humiliation are another "gulag" of jails and detention facilities strung across the United States in which tens of thousands of immigrant workers are being held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

ICE, a branch of the Homeland Security Department, deported a record 198,000 detainees in 2004. In addition, on average have 22,814 immigrants languishing in jails, nearly four times 1994. The ICE contracts out the detentions to county jails who are often housed alongside violent criminals, where they face verbal abuse, overcrowding, and denial of medical attention, as well as physical beatings, solitary confinement and the psychological torture of not knowing if they will ever be released
Many of the abuses were caught on the jail's surveillance tapes. US media reported that 'These tapes substantiated many of the detainees' allegations.' Furthermore, the officers were not just a few bad apples but 'a significant percentage of those who had regular contact with the detainees,'

The federal government, farms out immigrants to county jails for whom it is a profitable enterprise. "A growing number of counties across the nation are renting space in their jails to the US government to house foreigners arrested for immigration violations. The 'revenue population,' as one official called the detainees, can help counties defray the cost of running jails and even lower property taxes. " [Economic reforms!]

Use of depleted Uranium (DU) - another crime;

U.S. forces first used depleted uranium (DU) in the 1991 Gulf War, when some 300 tons of depleted uranium—the waste product of nuclear power plants and weapons facilities—were used in tank shells and shells fired by A-10 jets. It was also deployed by U.S. and NATO forces during the Serbia conflict but less. Nevertheless, in the wars in Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq, DU has become the weapon of choice, with more than 1,000 tons in Afghanistan and more than 3,000 tons used in Iraq. Moreover, while DU was fired mostly in the desert during the Gulf War, in the current war in Iraq, most of DU munitions are exploding in populated urban areas.

Uranium is a highly toxic heavy metal. According to Mt. Sinai pathologist Thomas Fasey, who participated in the New York Guard unit testing, the element has an affinity for bonding with DNA, where even trace amounts can cause cancers and fetal abnormalities.

Dr. Doug Rokke, a health physicist at the University of Illinois who headed up a Pentagon study of depleted uranium weapons in the mid '90s after concerns were raised during the Gulf War, concluded there was no safe way to use the weapons. Rokke says the Pentagon responded by denouncing him, after earlier commending his work. "DU is a war crime. It's that simple," Rokke says. "Once you've scattered all this stuff around, and then refuse to clean it up, you've committed a war crime."

At the war's start, the United States refused to allow U.N. or other environmental inspectors to test DU levels within Iraq. Now the United Nations dare not to Iraq because of security problems.
Of course, the concern has been raised only when many returning US soldiers were found to be contaminated .Who cares for the poor Iraqis, who have and will keep on suffering.

China exposes US Human Rights record;

When US State Department accused China of Human Rights violations, Beijing exposed US hypocrisy because Washington remains silent on its own violations.

"In 2004, the atrocity of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights performance of the United States. The scandal shocked the humanity and was condemned by the international community," said the Chinese report on USA. "It is quite ironic that on Feb. 28 of this year, the State Department of the United States once again posed as the 'world human rights police,"' it said.

China accused the American military of committing "wanton slaughters," killing thousands of foreign civilians and torturing detainees. "The atrocity of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the infringement of human rights of foreign nationals by the United States," said the report .The report said that racism was deeply entrenched in the United States. It said politics were manipulated by the wealthy and dismissed the U.S. electoral system as a "contest of money."

China also accused US of interfering in its internal affairs, and covered various US domestic issues relating to labor conditions, homelessness, race relations, crime and firearm use, civil liberty concerns about the US Patriot Act -- even the amount of money spent in political campaigns.

A section called "Infringement upon Human rights of Other Nations" dealt with military conflict, foreign policy and arms sales. It accused the US of "military aggression around the world and brutal violation of sovereign rights of other nations." US waged a war against Iraq "without authorization by the United Nations," and carried out "wanton and indiscriminate" bombing, including such targets as "residential areas, shopping malls and civilian vehicles."

It said that more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians (it is now over 100,000 as last reported in London's The Lancelet) had been killed in the war, attributing the statistics to Britain's Independent newspaper. It comes from Iraq Body Count, a grouping of US and British academics and peace activists that bases its numbers on "corroborated media reports."[Very conservative estimates] Of course, U.S. and UK do not do body counts for other nationalities. (Why is it not in itself a human rights violation, when Iraq is under US led occupation?)

China quoted writer William Blum, "Since 1945, the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, suppressed over 30 national movements, in which millions of people have lost their precious lives and many more people been plunged into misery and despair." China also cited US of incarcerating terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and US violation of human rights of local people .It controls and dominates the world' conventional arms trade , thus increasing violence all around .

While China certainly does not have a great human rights record but it is justified in questioning the self-appointed US role to be "the judge of human rights in the world." It criticizes every one "Meanwhile, it has turned a blind eye to its own human right problems."

(Gajendra Singh., served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in1992 -96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the1990 - 91Gulf war), Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies, in Bucharest. The views expressed here are his own

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