On December 10, 1948, once the World War II ended, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed. Therefore, the UN chose that day to celebrate human rights every year.
If we make a moderately responsible research on the reality after that date, it immediately comes to light, that the United States has appropriated those two words –right and human– and turned them into political instruments to impose sanctionsandcarry out military aggressions, a practice it has maintained until the present day.
However, it is easy to laid bare such conception, as it has been nothing but a facade dressed with cheap sequins, hung with pins that tears apart in front of the truth during these 72 years.
I confess that I don’t know if the Universal Declaration of 1948 can justify what is happening today in that powerful northern empire.Which paragraph establishes that Donald Trump is upholding a human right by setting up cages and detention centers for immigrant minors on the border with Mexico? Where does it place the numbers of Afro-Americans killed by the police in that country whose perpetrators are unpunished? How to understand that around 11,000 people die annually by firearms in the United States?
According to numbers by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), by 2016, 73,3% of murders, 47% of robberies and 31,8% of serious assaults involved weapons. In that country, shootings in public places such as universities, cinemas, squares, hospitals, among others, are very common due to, among other reasons,the easy access to weaponry.
Who then guarantees the human rights, or better said, the lives of the children who died in a school because of the authorized use of a firearm in the hands of anyone, including minors? Who is supposed to control –but doesn’t– the purchase and use of a weapon?What interpretation should be given to the concept of human rights, when precisely on the eve of December10, the United States had almost 15 million people infected by COVID-19, and reported more than 280,000 deaths to the disease, according to WHO?
And we must associate the issue with human rights, since the President of that country bears a great responsibility –or rather, irresponsibility– for the lack of control and for having ignored the pandemic.
The violation of human rights by the United States not only takes place in its territory but it has also spread beyond its borders.
In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan, with the knowledge that this Asian country was one of the poorest in the world. Many years later, there are still military deployed by the Pentagon in that nation, while the number of citizens killed by US airstrikes increased by almost 330 % between 2016 and 2019, according to a study published by Brown UniversityCostsof War Project last Monday.
Moreover, the intervention has left nearly 5,000 dead soldiers, of whom 3,356 are US citizens, tens of thousands of civilians killed and more than 50,536 injured since the UN began collecting statistics on the issue.
The United States invaded Iraq under a crude lie regarding weapons of mass destruction that never existed. They did it to enforce human rights in that nation, according to the then-president George W. Bush
In these 17 years, more than 600,000 people have died, most of them civilians, victims of bombs, rockets, and depleted uranium, according to British magazineThe Lancet.
The same has happened in Libya and Syria, where even today, they kill civilians and then call them “collateral damage”, they publicly steal oil and hinder the fight against terrorism bylocal forces.
Another US-led war, which is as cruel as the military one, is the use of economic, financial, and commercial sanctions against countries whose governments don’t align with the imperial policy and choose to defend their independence and sovereignty.
Countries such as Cuba, which has endured a financial, commercial and economic blockade imposed by the US for more than 60 years, the Bolivarian Venezuela and Sandinista Nicaragua are examples of the above. They also use sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the impoverished Yemen, among other countries.
Besides, they have added to this shameful list, sanctions against Russia and China, challenging world’s balance and peace.
The United States isa country whose government claims to be the example for guaranteeing human rights.Why are they allowed to present themselves as defender of human rights when there are plenty of examples of their foolishness and hypocrisy?
(Taken from Granma)