US annual human rights circus show exposes its hypocrisy and political bias

The US Department of State released its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on Tuesday, about three months later than usual. However, the additional time has not been spent improving the content to align with facts, but instead on reducing it to about one-third the length of last year's reports.

The tremendous amount of reediting work that has been done is to ensure that the reports conform with the US administration's policies, even though the State Department has described it as an effort to make the reports more "streamlined", "more readable" and adhering more closely to what's required to be in them by law.

For instance, the agency removed whole categories of violations not "explicitly required by statute", including gender-based violence and environmental justice. The deleted material includes issues widely regarded as fundamental rights under international law, such as the right to a fair public trial, as National Public Radio observed in a report.

According to a State Department memo the US media obtained about the editing of the reports, editors were ordered to remove references to diversity, equity, and inclusion, sexual violence against children and violation of privacy.

Even though the US administration insists it remains committed to defending human rights, the "minimalist rewrite", as some US lawmakers put it, fundamentally serves the US' domestic politics, and might not comply with domestic law, which requires a "full and complete" accounting of internationally recognized human rights.

The United States has compiled these reports on every country in the world since the 1970s. The reports, which are invariably patchwork based on carefully selected "reported facts", constitute grave interference in other countries' internal affairs, and the practice is widely criticized by the international community.

That Congress still relies on these assessments to shape decisions on foreign aid and weapons sales clearly demonstrates the reports' politicized nature. Human rights protection is only an excuse for the US to justify its interventionist foreign policies as well as weaponized sanctions that have no legitimate basis in international law.

The irony is that human rights are essentially a privilege enjoyed only by a few in the US. Racial discrimination, inequality, and forced repatriations and deportations are just the tip of the iceberg.

In February, the US president signed an executive order pulling the country out of the United Nations Human Rights Council again, unwarrantedly citing "political bias", particularly against Israel, and the agency's alleged "failure" to adequately address human rights abuses globally as due cause.

But the reality is it is the US that applies "political bias" on human rights issues, and it is the US that is actually, overtly or covertly, behind many human rights abuses and humanitarian crises around the world, such as the one unfolding in Gaza.

The US baselessly criticizes China over so-called human rights issues related to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in the reports. If the US administration truly cares about the human rights of Muslims, why does it turn a blind eye to the hell on earth in Gaza? Why does it turn a blind eye to the historical injustices suffered by the Palestinian people? These are questions the Chinese ambassador to the UN raised recently at a UN gathering, toward which his US counterpart was as mute as a fish.

The US withdrew from the United Nations human rights body in 2018 — on similar grounds, in disregard of the fact that its cutting off funding to the agency will seriously affect many of its critical humanitarian aid projects in the least developed countries.

No wonder the extent to which the US government can manipulate the concept of "human rights" to suit its own policy changes has even made many ardent supporters of the US' weaponization of human rights dumbstruck. Many so-called bedrock principles of human rights, such as those related to gender, the environment, race and judicial justice, that have been taken for granted by generations of human rights advocates as the foundation of the US beacon, have bitten the dust.

As such, the reports are naturally devoid of credibility. Instead of showing the US as being principled, they only serve to expose its hypocrisy and double standards on the issue. Using human rights as a political tool undermines humanity's core values and basic principles. It also poses serious risks, such as its potential to escalate conflicts and jeopardize cooperation on pressing global issues. Exercising political bias on human rights, the US only exacerbates the global turbulence with its latest annual human rights circus show.