US and its allies build a stage for human rights over innocent Afghan lives. Cartoon: Vitaly Podvitski

The China Society for Human Rights Studies (CSHRS) on Tuesday released a report, revealing a series of crimes committed by the US in the Middle East and surrounding areas that have seriously violated the basic human rights of people and caused permanent damage and irreparable losses to countries and people in the regions. 

The report, coming ahead of the first anniversary of the US' hasty withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which was left with a dire humanitarian crisis, shows that as the nature of American hegemony and the barbarity, cruelty and perniciousness of its power politics have been completely exposed, people of the world would have a better understanding of the hypocrisy and deception of American democracy and American human rights.

Titled "US Commits Serious Crimes of Violating Human Rights in the Middle East and Beyond," the report focused on Washington's systematic violations of human rights, including launching wars, massacring civilians, and damaging the right to life and survival; forced transformation, unilateral sanctions, severe infringement of people's rights to development, life and health; creating a "clash of civilizations" and abusing imprisonment and torture, and violating freedom of religion and human dignity. 

The report said that the US has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention, torture of prisoners, and indiscriminate unilateral sanctions in the Middle East and surrounding areas. 

It is a usual practice of the superpower like US to conduct unilateral cruel actions, including launching wars and imposing sanctions, to deal with its conflicts with foreign countries and regions, Chang Jian, a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Nankai University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Under the disguise of democracy and human rights, the real intention of the US' cruel actions against foreign countries and regions is purely to serve the interests of its domestic capital groups and its military-industrial complex, Chang noted.

Chang's view was supported by Zhu Yongbiao, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at Lanzhou University, as Zhu said that the US tried to use its so-called democratic system to reform Afghanistan and abandoned the country when the reform failed, and Afghanistan lost its value, with a total disregard for the most basic humanitarian issues. 

It further demonstrated that whatever the US does is only intended to serve its own interests, Zhu noted.     

The US not only rallied its allies to launch the Gulf War (1990-1991), the Afghanistan War (2001-2021), the Iraq War (2003-2011), and so on, but also was deeply involved in the Libyan War and the Syrian War, creating humanitarian disasters rarely seen in the world. The warmongering US has caused direct, serious and lasting damage to local people's rights to life and survival, the report said.  

Nearly one year after US troops' withdrawal, Afghanistan now has the highest number of people in food insecurity in the world, with more than 23 million in need of assistance, and approximately 95 percent of the population having insufficient food, according to the UN website.  

Of particular concern is the vulnerability of more than 4 million internally displaced people, including people belonging to minorities, and over 3.5 million seeking refuge in neighboring countries, 

The US claims that it is the beacon of human rights, but it is actually seriously infringing on Afghan people's rights to life and property. Its protection of human rights is exclusive to a small group of people, and this has also been demonstrated by gross inequalities among different nationalities and the problem of racism within the US, Chang noted. 

The US is also very good at shifting public attention. Nearly one year after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the country has successfully shifted the attention of the international community by trying to pass the buck to China and Russia, then fanning the flames of the Russia-Ukraine crisis leading to military conflicts between the two and now provoking on the Taiwan question, observers warned.       

What we can do is keep calling for international society to pay attention to the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan as well as in the Middle East, and continue to urge the US to take responsibility, experts said.

At the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council held in June, a representative from the Chinese Mission to the UN in Geneva stressed that the US should be held responsible for the current situation in Afghanistan and should take meaningful steps to compensate the Afghan people for their suffering.

In February, the Global Times launched an online petition demanding that the US return the life-saving money to Afghans unconditionally after the US released a plan to unfreeze money from Afghanistan's central bank but use it for the US' needs, which irritated the international community. The petition drew more than 420,000 signatures.     

Another online poll launched by the Global Times in July asking respondents whether the UN Human Rights Council should conduct a field investigation into US human rights violations has drawn more than 50,000 participants as of press time, with over 80 percent supporting the proposition.