US commits serious crimes of violating human rights in ME

BEIJING: The United States has committed a series of crimes that seriously violate international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention, abuse of torture, torture of prisoners, and indiscriminate unilateral sanctions in the Middle East and surrounding areas, constituting systematic violations of human rights with lasting and far-reaching harm.

The US crimes have not only led to frequent and repeated wars in the Middle East and other places, plunging them into the quagmire of conflicts and security dilemmas and seriously undermining local people’s rights to life, health, personal dignity, freedom of religious belief, survival and development.

1. Launching wars, massacring civilians, and damaging the right to life and survival

American historian Paul Atwood, in his book titled War and Empire: The American Way of Life that came out in 2010, pointed out that “war is the American way of life.” Since the founding of the United States, there were less than 20 years in which it has not participated in a war, making it a veritable “war empire.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been involved in almost all major conflicts and wars in the Middle East and surrounding regions, which have become the area hardest hit by the external wars launched by the United States.

Statistics from the US Smithsonian Institution Magazine has shown that since 2001, wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of “anti-terrorism” covered “about 40% of the countries on the planet.”

The United States not only rallied its allies to launch the Gulf War (1990-1991), the Afghanistan War (2001-2021), the Iraq War (2003-2011), and so on, but also was deeply involved in the Libyan War and the Syrian War, creating a humanitarian disaster rarely seen throughout the world. The warmongering United States has caused direct, serious and lasting damage to local people’s right to life and survival.

First, want only waging wars in violation of international law. The Afghanistan War and the Iraq War are the two largest wars launched by the United States in the Middle East and surrounding regions, spelling dreadful disasters to the lives and living condition of the people of the two countries.

The Brown University’s Costs of War Project pointed out that more than 174,000 people died directly in the war in Afghanistan, of whom more than 47,000 were civilians.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the nearly 20year war in Afghanistan forced 2.6 million Afghans to flee abroad and displaced 3.5 million others.

In 2003, the United States bypassed the United Nations and violated the basic international law principle of the prohibition of the use of force to launch the Iraq War with excuses fabricated out of thin air, constituting aggression against Iraq.

According to Statista, a global statistical database, from 2003 to 2021, about 209,000 Iraqi civilians died in wars and violent conflicts, and about 9.2 million Iraqis became refugees or were forced to leave their homeland. The United States launched wars in the Middle East and other places, seriously undermining the right to life and survival of the people in the region.

Second, trampling on international law and killing innocent civilians indiscriminately. In order to achieve its own military goals, the United States disregards the lives of civilians in other countries. —AFP