US report calling China 'force of instability' backfires, misses reality

The US human rights reports on nearly 200 countries and territories have long been regarded as biased because they never include human rights violations in the US.

Compared to China, the US is more deserving of the title "force of instability". From the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, regime change in Libya, rampant drone strikes in a number of countries that have caused many civilian deaths, covert special forces, spy operations and secret prisons abroad to the withdrawal from the Paris climate deal and cutting funding to the UN, the list could go on and on.

A lawyer by training, Sullivan clearly was deliberately ignoring the human rights violations in the US.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch, in its recent World Report 2018, said the US moved backward on human rights at home and abroad across a range of issues in 2017, the first year of the Trump administration.

The report critized Trump's actions on refugees and immigrants by calling them criminals and security threats; equivocated on white nationalism and consistently championed anti-Muslim ideas and policies.

According to the report, the Trump administration has embraced policies that will roll back access to reproductive health care for women and undermined police accountability for abuse.

"Many vulnerable groups endured renewed attacks on their rights during the year. Other longstanding US laws and practices - particularly related to criminal and juvenile justice, immigration, and national security - continued to violate internationally recognized human rights," the report said.

It's not the first time for Human Rights Watch to note the 2.3 million people in US state and federal prisons and jails on any given day, the world's largest reported incarcerated population.

As people just marked the 50th anniversary of the passing of Martin Luther King Jr, on April 4, the report sadly noted that black men are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white men, and an unarmed black person is five times as likely to be killed by police as an unarmed white person.

At the Guantanamo detention center, the US continues to hold 31 men there indefinitely without charge. And throughout 2017, the US continued to carry out large-scale warrantless intelligence surveillance programs without transparency or oversight, according to the report.

Sullivan should definitely read this report, especially the 18 pages on the US, because that is why people disagreed so strongly with his indentifying of "force of instability".