US committing serious crimes in Middle East, says report

Afghanistan internally displaced sit in a bus with their children as they return home to the east, at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Camp in the outskirts of Kabul on July 28, 2022. WAKIL KOHSAR AFP The United States has committed serious crimes in the Middle East and surrounding areas, which is contrary to international law and severely violates the human rights of local people, according to a report released on Tuesday by the China Society for Human Rights Studies.

The US has been involved in almost all major conflicts and wars in the Middle East and surrounding regions that have been hardest hit by the wars launched by the US since the end of the Cold War, according to the report.

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The US has seriously violated the basic human rights of people in the Middle East and other places, causing permanent damage and irreparable losses to countries and people in the region, it added.

Meng Qingtao, professor of human rights studies at Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing, condemned Washington's war crimes and unilateral sanctions in the Middle East and the surrounding areas as serious violations of international law, undermining the international order and severely infringing on the basic human rights of the local people.

Washington's foreign policy and practical measures are designed to serve the fundamental interests of the US. He said that American supremacy is the guiding ideology behind its series of menacing behaviors.

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Since 2001, wars and military operations launched by the US in the name of anti-terrorism have covered more than 40 percent of the countries on the planet The Costs of War Project of Brown University in the US, of which more than 47,000 were civilians, according to Smithsonian magazine.

The China Society for Human Rights Studies report said that the US has abused the use of unilateral sanctions against sovereign countries, causing severe economic losses and a decline in the quality of life of people in those countries.

The US government has more than 9,400 sanctions in effect as of fiscal year 2021, according to the Treasury 2021 Sanctions Review.

The society's report said that the US has imposed sanctions on Iran and other countries since 1979. The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, for example, has forbade foreign companies from investing in Iran's or Libya's energy industry and implemented long-arm jurisdiction, which was gravely harmful and had a far-reaching impact, it said.

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After withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in 2021, the US froze billions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves of the Afghan central bank, giving the Afghan economy to the brink of collapse and worsening the lives of the people, the report said.

Meng, a Southwest University of Political Science and Law professor, said that the irresponsible involvement of the US in Middle East affairs has exacerbated conflict and chaos in the region.

The US has seriously damaged the political, economic and military ecology in the Middle East, while causing more harm to the local community, Meng said. In other regions, including Europe and Asia, negative spillover effects have also been seen.