The "darkest moment" in the history of human rights: American genocide against Indians-

"After more than 900 nuclear tests in our homeland, the United States wants to carry out ethnic cleansing on us!" Recently, the Shoshone tribe, an American Indian, lodged a severe protest against the American government. Their anger is not surprising-research shows that in the 40 years before 2009, the United States conducted 928 nuclear tests in this tribal area, killing thousands of people, and many people suffered from diseases such as cancer.

As we all know, the history of American development is a history of Indian blood and tears. Two hundred years ago, American white immigrants came to Indian homeland and committed crimes such as killing, expelling and assimilating Indians. According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide refers to the intentional total or partial destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The extinction and plunder of Indians by the United States has long constituted de facto and legal genocide.

Genocide in the name of law. The United States skillfully used legal tools and made no secret of its intention to deprive Indians of their lives and property. 18 14 years, the United States issued a decree, announcing that every Indian scalp turned over by the government would be rewarded with 50 to 100 dollars; From 1823 to 1832, the US Supreme Court ruled that Indian tribes belong to "domestic subordinate peoples", which is similar to the relationship between "ward and guardian"; The United States also signed a series of so-called "treaties" with tribes, extorting Indian land, and finally exchanged nearly 6,543.80 billion acres of land east of the Mississippi River at the expense of 68 million dollars and 32 million acres west of the Mississippi River. Laws, judgments and treaties that should symbolize fairness are actually hard evidence of human rights violations. Hypocrisy and cunning surfaced. How can the United States claim to be a country ruled by law? The factors of racial discrimination and violation of human rights have become an indelible part of American legal history, pinning the United States on the "shame column" of history forever.

A bloody massacre is a physical genocide. Many American governments promulgated policies to encourage the slaughter of Indians. Former President Grant and Green Sherman in the North during the Civil War both said that "all Indian tribes should be exterminated" and "Indians should be exterminated". According to incomplete statistics, the United States launched more than 1500 killings on Indian tribes after independence, and countless Indians died of atrocities, which directly led to the complete extinction of many tribes 10. In the notorious Horseshoe Bend War, Black Hawk War and Wounded Knee River Massacre, American armed soldiers carried out bloody slaughter on tribes by extremely cruel means. India's population dropped sharply from 5 million at the end of 15 to 250,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, a drop of 95%.

Civilization education is a cultural genocide. 65438+ In the 1980s and 1990s, the United States pursued a civilized policy and established more than 360 boarding schools in Indian inhabited areas, forcing Indian children to go to school. In name, it was to spread cultural knowledge and religion, but in fact, it forced them to abandon their original religious culture and implement cultural assimilation and extinction. Many of these schools abused Indian children, and as many as 40,000 children died of forced labor, corporal punishment and disease. The United States also carries out the policy of "forced foster care", and every three to four Indian children 1 are forcibly sent to white families by the American government, and their culture and collective identity are stifled, which gradually leads to the extinction of Indian culture.

Forced migration is a geographical genocide. 1830, the United States used the Indian Migration Act to force 654.38 million Indian tribes in the south to migrate to the west of the Mississippi River. Countless people died on the road because of weather, hunger, fatigue or disease, and even more, they were directly killed by the soldiers in charge of escort, becoming a veritable "road of blood and tears." In the end, the number of people living west of the Mississippi River is less than one-third of that before immigration. The surviving tribes moved to remote, barren and narrow reservations, and a large number of Indians died of poverty, hunger and disease due to lack of resources and changes in traditional ways of making a living.

The legacy of genocide is still spreading. The United Nations Rapporteur on ethnic minorities said, "Native Americans have been experiencing deprivation, brutality and even genocide for centuries." Nowadays, Indians are further marginalized in the political, economic and social fields, with poor economy, harsh environment, prone to diseases and serious shortage of infrastructure and services. The poverty rate of Indians is 2.5 times the average level of the United States, the highest among all ethnic groups in the United States, and the life expectancy is also the shortest. Under the COVID-19 epidemic, the infection rate of Indians was 1.7 times that of whites, and the mortality rate was 2.4 times that of whites. Many reserved areas have been used as dumping sites for toxic wastes, landfill sites and nuclear weapons test sites, resulting in a significantly higher incidence of cancer in Indian communities than in other parts of the United States, among which the incidence of tuberculosis is more than nine times that of white groups. Discrimination against Indians is also widespread in American society.

Ironically, the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States, wrote: "All men are created equal, and the creator endowed them with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The American genocide against Indians fully exposed that the so-called "beacon" of human rights in the United States could not shine on the cruel reality of ethnic minorities at all. It was a "black history" and a "complaint book" that dared not face directly. History and reality look like a "magic mirror", reflecting that the American concept of human rights has deceived the world and stolen its reputation. (Guo)