Xinhua Commentary: Human rights claims are the new costume of the US

BEIJING, March 1 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government on Monday issued the Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2021, which sheds light on the reality of a country claiming to be a beacon of human rights and provides the world with a clear image of U.S. human rights violations.

"All men are created equal," the Founding Fathers of the U.S. wrote in the Declaration of Independence. All men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Americans are told that their right to life is inherent, yet a ravaging pandemic has served them a cold reminder that the U.S. government is reluctant to work for that right.

As the U.S. purports to walk the high ground of human rights, its status quo is displaying a different reality. According to the report, the U.S. has seen the world's highest numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, with 34.51 million confirmed cases and 480,000 fatalities in 2021 -- figures that far surpassed those seen in 2020.

When the virus landed as a threatening challenge, politicians in Washington did not treat it as an urgent priority. And many, in the name of human rights, continued to indulge in their hysteria and shifted the blame to other countries.

The great loss of lives in the U.S. during the pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the country's accumulated human rights crimes over recent decades. When there is a flame in its backyard, the U.S. government flaunts its old trick: It makes no mention of itself and goes to great lengths to create something bigger and larger in significance to split the attention of the people.

Beyond the pandemic, other U.S. realities, including racism, bipartisan conflict, wealth discrepancy, environmental issues and border issues, have brought great numbers of severe human rights violations in the U.S. But few cases -- extreme examples like the case of George Floyd -- have come to light.

Some U.S. politicians know that "human rights" are merely used as propaganda utilized to manipulate the internal affairs of other countries. So when the phrase is accompanied by a question mark, it is not at all surprising to see the United States stumble.