Look, Uncle Sam is busy cleaning up its own mess on human rights problems. Does the US still think it's the beacon of human rights? Illustration: GT

A year-long investigation published on Sunday by The Washington Post has documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970, three times as many as reported by the US Interior Department earlier this year. A Chinese expert pointed out that the US, while failing to draw lessons from its historical human rights abuses, continues to use human rights as a pretext to carry out political manipulation and interfere in other countries' internal affairs, which is a double standard.

According to the Post, more than 800 of those students are buried in cemeteries at or near the schools they attended, underscoring how, in many cases, children's bodies were never sent home to their families or tribes.

The Post's investigation found the deaths by drawing on hundreds of thousands of government documents that also revealed how children were beaten and harshly punished if they did not adhere to strict rules in the classroom — and in the fields, laundry rooms, kitchens or workshops where they often were forced to spend half their days.

"These were not schools," the Post quoted Judi Gaiashkibos, executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose relatives were sent to Indian boarding schools. "They were prison camps. They were work camps."

Dozens died in suspicious circumstances, the article continues, "and in some instances, the records provide indications of abuse or mistreatment that likely resulted in children's deaths," the Post said.

The US' policies toward Native Americans have long been a sensitive topic, Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday. 

When addressing these issues, the US government often focuses only on small-scale events, such as investigations into boarding schools; however, if there were sufficient records, more cases might be uncovered, said the expert.

In October, US President Joe Biden formally apologized to Native Americans for what he described as "one of the most horrific chapters in American history" - government-funded boarding schools that abused indigenous children and forced them to assimilate over a 150-year period, according to US media reports.

While the US promotes so-called universal values globally, and claims to be a defender of human rights, it fails to address its maltreatment of indigenous people in history, the expert said. 

The problems in the US remain unresolved, yet it continues to hype up human rights issues in other countries, aiming to divert attention. "If we were to write a report on human rights in the US, the policies toward minorities and the persecution of Indigenous peoples would undoubtedly represent a significant trauma in human history," he noted.

The history of the founding of the US was also a history of the suffering of Native Americans. The maltreatment of Indigenous people was an original sin and the existence of those Indian boarding schools is the clearest evidence of this. Historically, the US committed cultural, psychological, and physical genocide of Native Americans, who even today remain an invisible community and disappearing minority, Lin Jian, a spokesperson with the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on August 2 at a regular press conference, when asked to comment on a US Department of the Interior report.

The US government report revealed that nearly 1,000 Indigenous children died while attending boarding schools operated or supported by the US government where many Indigenous children suffered from physical abuse, and were forced to change beliefs and punished for using their Native languages.

Lin said that the historical injustice long suffered by Native Americans must receive full and serious attention and the human rights abuses inflicted by the US in the world must be addressed. The US needs to draw lessons from history, take a hard look at its track record, and stop its human rights abuses and using human rights as a pretext to interfere in other countries' internal affairs.