Moscow, Oct 20 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Russia has denounced the human rights record of the US, citing maltreatment of children, breach of privacy, police brutality, secret jails and freedom of expression issues.
Russian Foreign Ministry Friday presented a report to the State Duma, the lower house of country’s parliament, which will hold hearings on the human rights issue coming Monday.
A Duma source privy to the document quoted it as saying that hundreds of thousands of children in the US are mistreated and that resulted in 1,600 deaths in 2010 alone.
It makes special mention of the maltreatment of children adopted from Russia.
Citing US NGOs, Russian diplomats note that “about one police officer in 100 has been involved in criminal abuses, including sexual harassment, indecent behaviour or rape.”
On prisons, the report says that “the US remains the country with the largest prison population in the world – 2.2 million.”
Another issue is secret CIA prisons, in particular in Poland, Afghanistan, Iraq, Thailand, Morocco, Romania and Lithuania, the report said.
The report also criticises US legislation permitting “special services” to monitor all private electronic correspondence without a court order.
In 2011, they filed more than 1.3 million requests for information on mobile users.
“Between 2004 and 2007 the number of electronic messages monitored by US special services rose by 3,000 percent,” the report says.
–IANS/RIA Novosti
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