by Sezin Koehler

Created on: May 01, 2008

Contrary to the positing of this question, human rights are not actually thought of as a non-US issue and it is quite presumptuous to think otherwise. Human rights are, in effect, a worldwide issue and the United States plays a huge part not only in their supposed protection, but also in their violation at home and abroad.

The United States has been one of the world's worst human rights violators when it comes to the rights of its indigenous peoples, or Native Americans. The US government, since its inception, has been in breach of hundreds of treaties signed between itself and what it historically recognized as sovereign Native American nations. The US government has enacted genocidal policy upon genocidal policy throughout indigenous communities in the United States, from the dumping of toxic waste on reservation lands or areas that are highly populated by indigenous Americans, to the denial of land and resource rights, the outright stealing and destroying of sacred ancestral grounds, and many more equally horrific human rights violations.

Let us also take on the question of the Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been illegally held without charges for years. They have been subjected to various tortures in the interim and many of them have not even been charged with any specific crime except the possibility of being an enemy combatant, including the two children who are being held as well. This is a human rights issue of highest order, and one that the US government has been trying to assuage in the international sphere for some time now without much success, especially considering the stories of torture, deprivation and abuse from those who have been released from the Guantanamo detention center.

Aside from the denial of rights to indigenous peoples in the USA and the human rights violations in Guantanamo Bay, there are a whole host of other human rights issues at play in the United States. The USA is the only developed nation that still utilizes the death penalty, and considering the disproportionate number of men who belong to racial minorities who are not only in prison but also on death row is certainly an issue closely linked with the fundamental human rights of America's racial minorities. Election fraud was present during both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections that installed George W. Bush as the "leader of the free world." Furthermore, the Bush administration has cut welfare and health benefits for a good majority of the mutilated soldiers who have come back from the illegal war in Iraq. The US landscape is dotted with "detention facilities," not unlike the Japanese internment camps installed during World War II, for Muslim-Americans who can be held without explanation or just cause. And on, and on. These are all heinous human rights violations of the highest order perpetrated by the US government itself.

How can the issue of human rights not be thought of an American issue along with all the other nations in the world who are violating the human rights of their own and other nation's citizens? Because the United States considers itself to be a champion of human rights around the world and because it sells itself as such both home and abroad would be the only reason a question such as this even exists, to imply that somehow human rights do not apply to the actions of the United States government and its subsidiary bodies. To say that the phrase "human rights" is considered a non-US issue is a gross misstatement, not only within the United States itself but as the US government's policies continue to negatively affect Americans and the rest of the world.

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