The United States is the last country in the world which should be speaking out about human rights abuses when it continues to torture people at military bases and inside its military, federal, and state prisons across the country.

The US has the world’s largest prison population by a huge margin. There are nearly 2.2 million prisoners here for offenses that include smoking pot and failing to pay off debts. Rape, torture, extended solitary confinement and other human rights offenses are common in US prisons. In many cases, decent medical care is lacking, resulting in avoidable illness and death.

The US prison population is hugely over-populated with Blacks and Hispanics. The racial bias of the US prison population coincides with a deliberate strategy of disenfranchisement aimed at keeping people of color from voting in large numbers. More than half a million Americans are in prison for victimless crimes relating to substances they have chosen to put in their own bodies which cause no harm to anyone else.

There are more people in US prisons than there are prisoners currently being held in China, another staunchly authoritarian country. China’s population is four to five times larger than the US. They do not have an alleged Bill of Rights. The United States still has the death penalty, which has been repeatedly used to execute people later proved to be innocent. Former president George W. Bush personally authorized 152 executions while governor of Texas.

The prison population currently represents almost a quarter of the entire population of Cuba. On the island of Cuba the US admittedly tortures prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. People are held there without charge and denied basic human rights, often without trial and in some cases subjected to what can only be called torture. Some have been held for years after their release has already been authorized by US Courts.

Guantanamo is maintained on Cuban soil for the sole purpose of denying prisoners their human rights.

It is beyond hypocrisy for the US to condemn the government of Cuba over human rights abuses.