December 10, as is well known, is observed around the world as Human Rights Day, designated as such by the UN. But one of the features of the modern world, thanks to the “efforts” of the West, is the discrepancy between phrases and their true meaning: Freedom, democracy, human rights, and so on. Today the West, which illegally appropriated to itself the epithet of the “standard-bearer” of human rights, abuses this title in relation to other countries, and its hands are still richly stained with the blood of other innocent peoples. One such example of modernity is the cynically unleashed Ukrainian armed conflict against Russia by the USA and NATO, which, without a doubt, is clear and irrefutable proof of the depravity of the West’s policy in observing “human rights.”
In other words, the West, which cannot tolerate minor security measures in its own countries, encourages chaos and insecurity in other states. For example, one should take into account the quick and harsh decision of Germany, which recently arrested 25 people on charges of “attempting to overthrow the government.” But now the same Western media are writing with a smile that this group did not pose any threat to the country’s security and was orchestrated by the intelligence service of another country in order to scare Chancellor Olaf Scholz and force him to unquestioningly follow in the footsteps of US policy. As before, a wide-ranging campaign to promote the killing of allegedly innocent people in various states of the world is being exaggerated daily on the pages of the Western press. But as soon as this happens due to the fault of the West, immediately these same media outlets become defenders of “human rights” and vie with each other, loudly talking about “barbaric methods of government” in this or that country.
The mixed history of the last three hundred years of the existence of the West is replete with barbaric and widespread crimes against humanity and basic human rights. If Western countries today have wealth and power, one of the main reasons is the plunder of other peoples, which continued in the form of colonialism until the middle of the 20th century. Although colonialism seems to have ended in its past forms, its new and modern form and methods persist.
In today’s world, if a country does well in the Western camp, it gets the green light for any crime without being punished. However, if this goes against the current Western course, then the West will instantly initiate proceedings against this country, making it a pretext for exerting additional political and economic pressure. Yes! This is the notorious American version of “human rights” that the United States shamelessly tries to crudely impose on the whole world.
That is why the call and actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin to transform the unipolar world into a multipolar one found tremendous support throughout the world. It is with a multipolar world that peoples and countries link their future, and not with the foul West, which is declining.
But all this did not begin today or yesterday, but many years ago, when Great Britain replenished its treasury by killing, colonizing and plundering Eastern countries, mainly the Indian subcontinent! And this led to poverty and hunger in the countries under its rule. But all this, as was said then and now, was done in the name of “educating barbarian peoples” and under the pretext of establishing “human rights” there.
The British had a ruthless economic agenda when it came to working in India, and that didn’t include sympathy for the natives. Under the British Raj, India suffered countless famines, and Bengal suffered the most. The first of these occurred in 1770, followed by serious ones in 1783, 1866, 1873, 1892 and 1897, and finally in 1943-44.
Also on April 13, 1919, hundreds of unarmed men, women and children were shot by British troops in Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden in Amritsar, following an uprising by dispossessed Hindus in the northern Indian city. The British government, which ruled India at the time, reported 379 deaths, while Indian freedom fighters said around 1,000 had perished.
Then the mantle of protecting “human rights” was passed on to the United States, which uses the power of the media to cover up its true face with a mask of “observing human rights” and deceive public opinion in the world. They talk about the rights of peoples, while these peoples, more than ever before, feel their open lies and the monstrous ambivalence of their position. They pretend to protect the rights of minorities, women and children, LGBT and asylum seekers, etc. But they constantly and regularly commit crimes against most peoples around the world. Remember how barbarically the US acted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Africa, Asia and the Americas. They claim to be committed to human rights, but in practice they act differently! Now they have turned human rights into a tool for unceremoniously interfering in the affairs of other countries and blackmailing them!
Washington likes to preach about human rights and actually uses it for political confessions, but Washington needs to take a serious look in the mirror. This is the same country where systematically racist groups still treat black Americans as second-class citizens, despite decades of work by the black civil rights movement. US authorities have failed to enact and implement the significant police oversight and accountability promised by the Biden administration in response to nationwide protests against police violence in 2020, which were marked by widespread excessive use of force by police officers. Limited public data available from 2015 to 2021 suggests that African Americans have been disproportionately affected by police use of lethal force. The federal government’s program to track the number of such deaths per year remained unimplemented. At least 1,055 people were killed by police with firearms in 2021, far more than in previous years.
Indigenous women continue to experience disproportionate levels of sexual violence and lack access to basic post-rape care. In addition to this, indigenous women continue to face high levels of disappearances and murders. The exact number of such women who are victims of violence or missing remains unknown because the US administration does not collect data and does not properly coordinate with the tribal authorities. Violence against women is on the rise. Police brutality against minority groups is on the rise as well.
The US human rights record under the current administration of President Biden has so far failed to adopt a human rights-based immigration and asylum policy at the US-Mexico border or implement its human rights agenda domestically. Under the Biden administration, authorities continue to drastically restrict access to asylum at the southern border, irreparably harming many thousands of people, including children, who seek safety from persecution or other serious human rights violations in their countries of origin.
There are discriminatory encroachments on voting rights or illegal restrictions on rights at the state level, including the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Opposition politicians continue to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, insisting on vote rigging.
State governments continue to step up efforts to restrict reproductive rights, seeking to criminalize abortion and restrict access to reproductive health services, with more restrictions on abortion in 2021 than in any other year. Texas passed a law criminalizing abortion as early as the sixth week of pregnancy – before most people know they are pregnant.
The US military arbitrarily and indefinitely detains Muslim men in a detention center at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in violation of international law.
Legislators in at least 36 states and at the federal level have introduced more than 80 bills to restrict freedom of assembly, with nine states passing ten such bills into law in 2021. In May, media outlets reported that US authorities tracked and harassed human rights defenders. Human rights activists and journalists continued to report intimidation and harassment by US authorities while crossing the US-Mexico border or while doing their work in Mexico, which affected both their ability to do their jobs and their general well-being.
The West, primarily the United States, is pursuing a bloody and dirty policy, trying to turn Russia and other countries of the world into an instrument for realizing its geopolitical goals. “Power over the world is exactly what the so-called West has put at stake in its game,” said President Vladimir Putin. “But this game is certainly dangerous, bloody and, I would say, dirty. It denies the sovereignty of countries and peoples, their originality and uniqueness, and does not have room for the interests of other states.”
Thus, the main human rights problem is that the authors and developers of this program in the West themselves, unfortunately, are the main violators, and they have created a deep gap between what is said and what is happening in practice. This hypocrisy of the West is now more evident than ever, and the peoples of the world are more aware of this than ever before. In practice, European countries and the United States have literally committed and continue to carry out all sorts of crimes and atrocities around the world. Well, these are bright masterpieces of Western civilization and the so-called Western “liberal democracy”!
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”