Human Rights Abuses In The United States Of America

The United States of America has its fair share of issues and a number of human rights abuses, but what distinguishes it from other countries is the way in which the justice system acts to redress miscarriages of justice.

Human Rights Abuses In The United States Of America

In 1607, the early English and European immigrants who arrived in America and settled on the Native Americans’ land were subjects of the colonial powers of the 17th and 18th centuries. From 1622 to 1774, these immigrants sought to control newly settled American land and wars were fought between Native Americans and the immigrant’s frontiersmen who encroached on their territory, resources and trade while often maltreating them. The immigrants then revolted against the British colonial power by saying, “taxation without representation is tyranny” and had and won the revolutionary war that began in 1775 and ended in 1783. The settled American land had seven principal leaders: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. There were many other leaders who contributed to the governing of the American land. 

On July 4, 1776, the seven principal leaders, unlike any other country, founded on civic values a country called United States of America, that had thirteen States and these documents: the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Bill of Rights, the Constitution (with no mention of God), and the Federalist Papers (which urged to ratify the Constitution). 

The documents and amendments, among other items, have secularism, individualism, freedom of all kinds including also freedom of expression and freedom of or from religion, democracy with electoral votes for minority interests during Presidential election, and Congress having House of Representatives proportionally from all States and Senate with two Senators from each State regardless of the population size. 

For many centuries, slavery was globally common, often in the African regions where Black slaves were bought and sold to other regions including also Arabia and the regions ruled by the Muslim Arabs. For example, the early Muslims had Black slaves and raid-captured Jewish slaves and female sex slaves. 

In the 17th century and later, Black African slaves were brought to the American land and sold to the settled immigrants, mostly farmers in the Southern States who treated the Black slaves as their own properties by giving the slaves their own last names and any Western first names for assurance, which caused the Blacks to lose their African identity and lineage forever.

The White Southerners denigrated, persecuted (whipped some Black males and females every week), segregated and forced the Blacks to do the hard domestic chores and to exhaustively work mostly in the cotton plantations to pick cotton while often being lashed or chained. ‘Race’ which had been a recent but rare social construct was used by the White Southern elites to identify the Blacks as a race that was unequal to the Whites.

Such atrocities toward the Blacks resulted in a civil war between the Northern States and Southern States in the mid-19th century and the Southern States lost the war. With the President Lincoln’s actions and Bill passed by Congress and with the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, slavery was abolished legally in December 1865 in the United States, giving the African Blacks their freedom and fundamental human rights, which also included pursuit of their happiness.

But, socially, due to the generational hatred toward and denigration of the Blacks and sense of segregation by the Whites, the slavery sense could and can never be totally abolished in some White families. However, any alleged usurpation of the Blacks’ human rights or personal properties by the Whites, private citizens or public officers, are prosecuted speedily and the perpetrators are made to pay the price via fines or imprisonment if found guilty by the jury of peers who are Blacks or Whites with diverse ethnicities, religiosities or views. 

America, which is a country of laws that are supreme and enforced, and of justice that is blind and speedy for the public interest, has now fifty States and is the most free country in the world. Except the Native Americans who have tribal sovereignty and their own self-governed territories or reservations within the US, the Americans are ethnically, politically and religiously diverse immigrants from all over the world who came to America - a land of freedom and opportunity - with their urges to live free, meet their fundamental needs, and then to realize their dreams for their own and their children’s future while integrating into the mainstream American society.

Thanks to freedom of expression, some earlier White immigrants, in the 19th to mid-20th century, socially denigrated, disliked or used ethnic slurs against the later White immigrants from Europe probably due to a fear of losing their jobs or businesses to the later immigrants. For. Example, some White employers had displayed a help-wanted sign that read: “Irish Need Not Apply.”

The US Congress made and passed anti-discrimination laws to protect the rights of all the existing and future employees. Finally, all earlier immigrants learned that the later immigrants had talents, skills, abilities, capabilities or competencies, which added values to the jobs, businesses and lifestyles that had benefited not only the earlier immigrants, but also America. So, immigrants are always welcomed to America. For example, the poem lines on the Statue of Liberty base in New York (the immigrants’ old gateway) says, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...

The immigrants, with freedom of all kinds and all opportunities, built America with their hands, hard work, and free-thinking abilities, while using their innate potentials and capabilities. They explored, discovered and used natural, medical and social sciences while researching and developing advanced industrial, medical and defense technologies including the disciplines of natural and social sciences, laws and ethics, rules and regulations, and medicine, antibacterial and antifungal drugs, industrial and medical technologies/engineering and mathematics, and performing arts, and also including music, movies and shows to benefit globally all peoples. 

Also, with freedom of all kinds, the immigrants themselves have become prosperous and powerful by realizing their dreams while together making America great and global superpower that makes relentless efforts to protect or defend and support its exceptionalism, secularism, individualism, freedom, democracy, Constitution, laws, ethics, rules, regulations, human rights, and assets, and most of all, its citizens in the US or abroad. 

Experiences show that no matter how kind a person is, a rich or powerful person also attracts envious enemies who look for opportunities to depower or destroy the person, especially when there are differences in values, beliefs or ideologies. This applies to America – a rich superpower, which on the global level, is the most free and democratic, scientifically and technologically advanced, and militarily and politically strong country that supports freedom, democracy and human rights around the world by providing military and financial aid, and that monetarily or materially helps poor or developing countries through various programs, such as USAID to address their needs for health, education, or other crucial aspects of their lives. Also, many non-government organizations (NGOs) of America help the poor, persecuted or controlled people of various poor or developing countries. 

However, America responds via sanctions or strikes to those anti-America countries or terrorists organizations that attack America, such as the 9/11 attack, or its citizens, interests, military bases abroad, or embassies, that attack its friends or allies, such as Israel and Ukraine, or that control, confine or curtail the freedom of their people, or persecute their minorities or dissidents with rampant and often unstoppable human rights abuses, while using the negative religious or secular ideology they espouse.

Nearly 68% of Americans identify themselves as Christians many of whom fund the organized Christian religion that makes 1.21 trillion US dollars a year. As such, the Christian religious leaders are monetarily and politically strong to influence the religious Christian conservative voters and politicians who are mostly Republicans to try to damage or break the wall of secularism enshrined in the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, a wall which separates religion and state, and to repeal the Acts or laws, or ban books, scientific literatures or lifestyles that are against the Bible. 

In order to advance their Biblical agenda, the religious leaders, or believers, by funding or supporting his election campaign, have hypocritically used Donald Trump as a vehicle who is a corrupt and immoral Republican, adulterer, and lawbreaker and who lies and insults almost all the time. 

During his Presidency, Trump appointed three conservative justices to fill the vacancies in the US Supreme Court, resulting in three liberal justices and six conservative justices who overturned the Supreme Court’s over the 50 years old Roe v. Wade ruling that gives women’s reproductive rights. The overturn caused a chaos affecting all women. Trump also courted and supported fringe groups, such as White supremacists, Christian nationalists, anti-Jews, anti-Blacks, anarchists and anti-America groups. 

This resulted in a huge increase in the gun violence, attacks on Asians (due to the Chinese origin of COVID), Jews, Blacks, and worshiping places. But the perpetrators were caught and they faced the speedy justice. Encouraged by Trump who refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 Presidential election, the fringe groups attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 during the count of the electoral votes. So far, nearly 884 perpetrators of January 6 have faced the justice and been found guilty and sentenced.     

Now, Trump has been convicted in one of the four criminal cases against him for breaking the laws. As such, he may lose again or not be able to run for the 2024 Presidential election due to this conviction and the pending criminal cases. So, hopefully the things stirred by him in America may return to normalcy. 

And it is hoped that foreign persons, organizations or countries understand that once it encounters any human rights abuses, America redress them speedily by law and justice, that being against America (which is a country of immigrants) is being against the immigrants who are globally from all the countries, including their own country, that also being against America (which, in addition to civic values and democracy, has freedom of all kinds, a key to prosperity and power) is being against such freedom that the foreign persons, organizations or countries may lack, and that America’s policies are for its own best interest just like any other country has policies for its own best interest. 

The author is a Pakistani American based in California and is the founder of a medical devices research and development company.