White Paper on the Human Rights Violations

in the US in 2017

The Institutes of International Studies of the DPRK

In 2017, when Donald Trump, the rascal, steeped in Yankee-style outrageousness was inaugurated as the president of the US, most heinous human rights violations were committed countlessly in the US, striking the world people with astonishment.

This notwithstanding, the US, covering up its own miserable human rights situation and styling itself an “international human rights judge,” picked a quarrel with the human rights issues of other countries under the signboard of “respect for universal human rights” and “defence of liberal democracy,” and tenaciously manoeuvred to interfere in their internal affairs.

In order to lay bare the hypocritical and deceptive nature of the US, an A-class human rights violator, through the pitiable human rights plight in the country in 2017 and make the voices of international justice ring out loudly, the Institutes of International Studies of the DPRK publishes this White Paper.

1. Deceptiveness of “Freedom” and “Democracy” of the US Style

Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights empowers all people to participate in the political and social work of their own countries on an equal basis.

But in the US, a self-styled “model country of democracy,” all national organs are staffed with those representing the interests of monopoly capitalists, and the working masses are thoroughly excluded from politics.

This is eloquently proved by the appointments of the officials in the Trump administration.

Soon after being inaugurated as president, Trump filled the important posts of his administration with billionaires, who had “contributed” to his election campaign, and their mouthpieces.

Tillerson, the Secretary of State, Ross, the Secretary of Commerce, and also the Secretaries of Treasury and Defense are all billionaires from conglomerates. The total assets of public servants at the level of deputy secretary and above of the current administration are worth of 14 billion US$.

The anti-popular policies the Trump administration pursued openly in 1 year were, without exception, for the interests of a handful of the rich circles.

Tax cuts plan can be taken as an example.

Long before he came to power, Trump loudly trumpeted that if tax was reduced for the rich people, it would increase investment, followed by the creation of many jobs and the increase of income of the poor.

In November 2017, the House of Representatives railroaded through a tax cuts plan on reducing the corporate tax rate to 21％ from the former 35％ and abolishing or reducing some individual income taxes including the inheritance tax.

The point is that the plan is intended to reduce the tax by 14％, equivalent to 300,000 US$ per year, for each of the rich households that account for only 1％ of the US population, whereas only 1％, equivalent to 100 US$ every year, will be reduced for each of the poor households that account for the majority of the population.

In this regard, the US economists have already raised an alarm, saying that the tax cuts plan would precipitate rapid increase of financial deficit, which would in turn cause sharp decrease in the expenditure on most vulnerable social welfare items and decline in the livelihoods of the working masses, leading the US to become a country with the largest income gap between the rich and the poor.

International instruments on human rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stipulate that everyone has the right to freely express his or her opinion.

But quite different is the situation in the US, whose favourite words are “freedom of the press” and “freedom of expression.”

In the US, where genuine freedom of the press and expression does not exist, intervention in and crackdown on the press grew more intensified over the past one year.

Soon after taking office, President Trump described the US mass media as an “enemy of the people that broadcasts false news,” and took an extreme measure of banning such major media organs as The New York Times and CNN from attending the unofficial news briefings by the spokesman of the White House.

What was worse, he tweeted a video clip on Twitter, in which he, portrayed as a professional wrestler, threw his opponent marked with “CNN” to the ground, making even the gangsters blush shame.

There is a saying that the water poured on the back of the head flows down to the heel.

Following Trump, Pompeo, the director of CIA, and Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, appeared at an official gathering in April and denounced WikiLeaks, the scandal expert media, as a hostile information organ and its founder Assange as a crook, blasting that they would arrest Assange on the suspicion of violating the counterintelligence law and taking government property.

In the US, between January and September 2017, the cases of searching and confiscation against journalists account for 12 and the same goes for 11 cases of violation against them. Moreover, 19 persons in the domestic press circles and 4 foreign journalists were arrested or detained and suffered fascist outrageousness.

Obviously, this is none other than a childish retaliation and suppression against journalists who have just found faults with the president and broadcasted the truth and a gag upon the freedom of speech.

The deceptiveness of “freedom” and “democracy” of the American style finds clear expression in the worsening of the extreme racial discrimination and misanthropy.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination stipulates that all acts of propagandizing and committing racial discrimination should be defined as crimes and punished by law.

However, racial discrimination and misanthropy are serious maladies inherent to the social system of the US, and they were aggravated since Trump took office.

In January 2017, Trump branded immigrants as a “source” of the increasing rates of crime and unemployment, and signed an executive order on banning their entry into the US.

Particularly, the US government decided to build a wall along the areas bordering Mexico on the pretext of preventing immigrants from entering the US, and it aggressively launched immigrant hunting, thus within 100 days of its inauguration, 41,300 immigrants in major metropolises including New York and North Carolina and 10 states were arrested or expelled.

The racial violence that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12 is a typical example of the acme of the current administration’s policy of racism.

Hundreds of gangsters including the notorious Ku Klux Klan members and neofascists openly staged a demonstration in advocacy of White supremacy, and drove a truck over the protestors, killing and wounding 20 of them.

What was more surprising is that at a press conference Trump, who has a title of president, denounced the protestors as “peculiar Left ” and backed the advocates of White supremacy by saying that “both sides are to blame.”

Pointing out that voices are rising at home against the Trump administration which pursues racial discrimination and racism as a national policy, mass media comment that an end can never be put to racial violence unless the system of anti-popular racial discrimination is overthrown in the US.

This is a true picture of “freedom” and “democracy” of the US style.

2. A Desert of Human Rights Where Even the Elementary Rights to Existence Is Violated

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stipulates in Chapter 3 the rights of all people to have an opportunity to maintain their life through labour and to enjoy full living conditions for themselves and their family members, including food, clothing, housing and medical assistance.

However, in the US the absolute majority of the working masses, deprived of elementary rights to survival, are hovering in the abyss of nightmare.

Above all else, the right to labour is openly neglected in the US.

One of Trump’s election pledges was the creation of jobs, but after taking office, he has failed to fulfill his obligation as an administrator finding the cause of the worsening unemployment issue in immigrants and “unbalanced foreign trade” with several countries.

As a result, during the first week of March, 241,000 persons joined the large contingent of the unemployed; in May 9 000 public servants were fired from governmental agencies; in September the number of the unemployed increased by 33,000 as compared to that of the previous month; the number of the unemployed and street beggars are largely increased.

In particular, unemployment of young people has become a matter of serious social concern; currently the unemployment rate of young people under 25 is 7.9%, and 31% of graduates from high schools do not have proper jobs.

The irresponsible and anti-popular rule by Trump is turning the US into a country of unemployment.

The right to housing is not provided properly in the US.

House prices across the country skyrocket every year, showing a rise of 7% in one year until November over the corresponding period of the previous year. This resulted in the rapid increase in number of the homeless wanderers.

In particular, the prices shot up by 11.1% in Las Vegas, the city ranked as the most expensive city to afford a house. And in New York, a “flourishing city,” the number of homeless persons increased by about 40% as compared to 12 years ago, thus recording the highest level. In California 56% of its residents, feeling oppressed by the snowballing housing rent, are going to move to other places.

According to what the US administration made public, in 2017 the homeless numbered 554,000, about 10% increase as compared to that two years ago, and the poor families, living in rented rooms devoid of elementary facilities for living, numbered approximately 8,300,000.

If those who might lose their houses anytime are added, this number may become countless. Recently, heavy snow and biting cold made it a usual thing in the US that homeless people are frozen to death.

The absolute majority of the Americans are also totally deprived of their rights to education and medical treatment, and are thrown into the whirlwind of all social evil.

The soaring school expenses are plunging the students into the hell of loans.

Over the last 40 years the school expenses increased by 1,297%, which means students with difficult living conditions had no choice but to substitute their school expenses with government loans.

In this period the number of students indebted to the government was 44 million, the total amount of their loans reaching 1.3 trillion US$.

Of them, 400,000 owed more than 200,000US$ each, and those who failed to refund their debts until they were 60 numbered 2.8 million.

In addition , because of the loans that have trebled over the last 10 years, university graduates now owe 37,000 US$ each on average. As a result, student loan is regarded as the biggest “debt of the citizens” next to housing loan.

Scared to bear the burden of paying off their debts until the very last minute of their life, many young people are giving up their dream of studying, some of them choosing suicide.

This reality is the obvious outcome of money-oriented education industry and anti-popular education system of the US.

Money is valued more than human life in the US, so any medical policy on the health and welfare of the working people is like to expect a chicken to be hatched from a boiled egg.

The country’s healthcare system is notorious in the world for exorbitant fees and labyrinthine procedures. If diagnosed with a disease, an ordinary citizen should risk losing all of his or her property to be cured of it.

Therefore, those who are diagnosed with a disease but cannot afford to pay their medical fees total 50 million. Flu, lung diseases and asthma cause 36,000, 40,000 and 150,000 deaths, respectively, on an annual average.

On the other hand, health-hazardous disqualified products are on sale across the country, which often leads to an outbreak of infectious diseases.

Large quantities of rotten meat products from a foodstuff company based in Pennsylvania were sold in May last year. This led to a multiplying number of food poisoning cases in New York and several other states. In June, owing to the sale of noxious cosmetics, the number of patients with skin diseases doubled as compared with the previous year.

At the onset of last year the West Nile virus spread far and wide, causing various kinds of neurological disorders. By October it was found that 1,295 citizens were infected with the virus, of which 67 were dead. In the course of the year public fear grew of various epidemics such as hepatitis A, Zika virus, measles and Noro virus.

American women’s rights in the US are worsening under the “Statue of Liberty”.

The US is one of the world’s two countries that have yet to embrace paid maternity leave.

Over the past decade the proportion of the American women who live below the poverty line has risen from 12.1% to 14.5%, and they usually receive 25% less salary than their male colleagues of the same post.

All the more, the majority of the American women are in constant fear and anxiety of sexual abuse.

Even in his dotage, Trump, the lustful old man, is still lusting for one woman after another.

Recently, “The Washington Post” enumerated a list of 13 women who claimed to have been either sexually harassed by him, as well as eyewitnesses’ detailed accounts. The newspaper’s disclosure of the lecherous president’s private life caused a worldwide furore since it became obvious that he treats women as playthings.

Trump treats woman as a target of sexual harassment and a playing tool. In such Trump’s America, 1 woman is sexually abused every 89 seconds.

In April, the US media spotlighted two cases of sexual violence; in Chicago five or six men gang-raped a 15-year-old girl and in California an old man, aged 75, committed sexual crime on minors for about ten years. This shook the American society upside down.

What is more surprising is that only six out of every 1,000 rapists face criminal charges in the US.

In every corner of America, women are suffering both physical and mental agonies. To cite an example, the past four years have witnessed 20,000-odd cases of sexual assaults within the US army and, on a national average 60,000 or so female inmates are subjected to sexual abuse and assualt every year.

A nation’s civilization is judged partly by how its women’s rights are protected.

Then how we should view America where women are falling into a ditch of social evil and where sexual discrimination and disdain of women are becoming incurable disease.

America is nothing but the world’s worst barren land of human rights and also tundra of human rights.

3. A Den full of Depravity and Crime

Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.”

The US has been trumpeting its “advanced civilization,” but it is rife with heinous crimes and its citizens’ rights to life are being trampled ruthlessly.

Currently, 300(three hundred) million guns are in circulation across America.

For the world’s only country where private gun ownership is legalized, the year 2017 began and ended with gun violence.

Last year in Chicago, the notorious city of murder, more than 10 cases of the gun violence occurred on a daily average, leaving 3,540 dead or wounded, and, in October, Las Vegas witnessed the worst-ever gun violence in US history, which killed 59 and wounded 527 in less than 30 seconds.

According to basic statistics, about 61 100 cases of gun violence took place in the US last year, leaving 15 488 dead and 31 058 wounded.

In other words, 42 were shot to death on a daily average, thus recording higher rate in numbers than 2016. Nevertheless, the fact that, in the last November, the number of gun purchasers broke the historical record in purchasing guns shows that the gun violence, in which the more gun crimes prevail, the more gun purchsasing increases, is the inveterate evil of the American society.

In this crime-ridden society gun is not the only means of committing murder.

In mid-April, in Colorado, a man in his thirties was offended by his grandfather and kicked him hard in the head. The 84-year old died on the spot.

In July in Atlanta, Georgia, saw a trial of a woman in her thirties who was caught in the act of attempting to kill her youngest daughter after stabbing her other four children to death. Everyone present at the court was shocked at the behaviour of the criminal and her husband; the mother looked as if she was feeling no pang of guilt and the father was smiling at his wife, putting his thumbs up in a gesture of praise.

Killing between husbands and wives and between parents and their children is commonplace in the US.

Though Trump made a great fuss, issuing an executive order in February, that he would reduce prevalent crimes, every sort of crime is being committed without letup.

Drug abuse is the first item in the list of crimes.

In January 695 cases of drug abuse were revealed in Louisville, Kentucky, 524 cases more than that in the same period of the previous year; also revealed in July were the existence of AlphaBay and HanSa, black network sites that specialized in dealing drugs like marijuana and heroin.

According to data, the number of marijuana users in the US was 20,000,000, a 3% increase as compared with that a decade ago; 4.9% of the students are drug addicts, and over 90 people lose their lives on daily average from drug abuse.

In addition, an average of 20 discharged soldiers use drugs for suicide every day; as the days go by, more and more Americans depend on drugs, falling into degeneration and despair with the curse on their grievous country.

In the decadent American society, not only the kinds of crimes but their types are innumerable.

In April, a criminal who had earned money through bogus marriage for 70 times with immigrants was arrested, and in June and July over 1 000 criminals who were engaged in prostitution were detected in 17 states including Texas.

An increasing number of people are falling victim to human trafficking. Among them are 44 Mexicans and Guatemalans who were traded on American soil in June last year. In July, dozens of other immigrants were tricked by a slave trader into a chamber of 38℃ in San Antonio, Texas, with the result that eight were found dead.

In the US where crimes and evil are rampant, the number of imprisoned criminals tops 2.3 million and one third of the population, totaling 70 million, are ex-offenders.

America is, indeed, an empire of crime and a living hell where one can never lead a carefree life.

* * *

The above-mentioned facts occurred last year offer a brief glimpse of the human rights violations that are being committed in the US, the self-acclaimed prototype of human rights. The “guardian of democracy” and “human rights champion” is kicking up the human rights racket but it can never camouflage its true identity as the gross violator of human rights.

For the international society, it will be worth discerning the hypocrisy and danger of this US-led human rights racket against other countries. They should make proactive efforts to frustrate the Trump administration’s plot on human rights and realize genuine international justice.

January 30, Juche 107(2018)

Pyongyang