Full text: Chronology of Human Rights Violations of the United States in 2015

MAY

May 4

A poll jointly released by the CBS News and the New York Times showed that 61 percent of Americans characterized race relations in the United States as "bad." The figure was the highest since 1992.

May 5

The Washington Post website reported that Brendon Glenn, an unarmed and homeless 29-year-old black man, was shot by police outside a bar in Venice, California.

May 6

According to a report by the ABC News, figures released by the International Labor Organization showed that the United States is only one of three countries in the world that don't offer paid maternity leave.

May 7

According to a survey released by the Public Religion Research Institute, 51 percent of Americans disagreed that blacks and other minorities receive equal treatment as whites in the criminal justice system, and 78 percent of black Americans disagreed that blacks and other minorities receive equal treatment to whites in the criminal justice system.

May 11

The United States was reviewed for the second time on its human rights records through the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council on May 11. Several reports produced as part of the review revealed that more problems concerning torture, death penalty and other fields existed in the United States, which was a sharp contrast with the country's claim of improved human rights. Many nations criticized the U.S. reluctance to sign the human rights treaties. The UN has set up nine core human rights conventions, six of them are still awaiting the country's ratification. The United States portrays itself as the global leader in human rights, but fails to safeguard the economic, social and cultural rights listed in international human rights instruments.

May 13

The Washington Post website reported that a mentally-ill female prisoner, Natasha McKenna, died after she was shot four times with a Taser stun gun by a guard in the Fairfax County jail three months ago. Her hands and feet were shackled when she was shot.

May 19

The Washington Post website reported that Alfredo Rials-Torres, an unarmed 54-year-old Hispanic man, was shot by police in an apartment in Arlington, Virginia.

May 22

The CNN website reported that in a complaint filed with the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, a coalition of more than 60 Asian-American organizations claimed that Harvard unfairly held Asian-American applicants to a higher standard.

May 26

The BBC website reported that the Mapping Police Violence project showed that black people are three times more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people.

May 28

A New York Times article cited a report as saying that racial residential segregation has become a way of life in the United States. About one third of African-Americans live in severe segregation, with Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City among the cities suffering the most severe racial segregation.

May 29

A report released by the Pew Research Center shows that a majority of Americansopposed the government collecting bulk dataon its citizens. Sixty-one percent of those aware of the U.S. government's surveillance programs said they had become less confident that the programs were serving the public interest.

JUNE

June 1

According to U.S. Census Bureau, about 17.4 million children under the age of 18 are being raised without a father as of June 2015 and 45 percent of them live below the poverty line. [June 2

According to a report posted on the website of the Guardian, the CIA used sexual abuses and other forms of torture more extensively than had been disclosed by the Senate report in 2014. Majid Khan, a Guantanamo Bay detainee-turned government cooperating witness, said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals, videotaped him naked, placed his feet and lower legs in tall boot-like metal cuffs that immobilized his legs, hung him naked from a wooden beam for three days and provided him with water but no food. All the above torture details that Khan had undergone were not included in the Senate report.

June 10

According to a report released by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the United States is one of the world's worst countries that systematically infringed on workers' rights.

On the same day, CNN Money reported on its website that a video showing a white officer with the Police Department in McKinney, Texas, using violence against a 14-year-old African American girl went viral online. A white witness who shot the video said there was no doubt race was a factor in how police responded.

June 11

A Pew Research Center survey showed multiracial American children were discriminated in the United States. Fifty-five percent of multiracial Americans said they had been subjected to racial slurs or jokes.

June 15

The Washington Post website reported that Kris Jackson, an unarmed 22-year-old black man, was shot by police as he tried to climb through a motel room window in South Lake Tahoe, California.

June 17

According to the website of CBS News, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, opened fire and killed nine people, including a pastor, at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.

June 18

Citing a Gallup survey, the USA Today website reported that a drastically greater number of African-Americans now rank race relations as the most important issue facing the country, following the killing of unarmed African-American Michael Brown by law enforcement officers in Ferguson. Sixty-eight percent of African-Americans believe the American criminal justice system is racially biased.

June 24

The website of the U.S. News and World Report said in an article that the U.S. education spending as a percentage of all government spending had consistently decreased over the last five years, down to just one percent in 2015 from 1.27 percent in 2011, resulted in an overall 19.8 percent decrease.

On the same day, the British newspaper Independent reported that the United States had bugged the phones of three French presidents and many other senior French officials for a long time. A French government spokesman said this was "unacceptable."

June 25

The Washington Post website reported that Spencer McCain, an unarmed 41-year-old black man, was shot by police in Owings Mills, Maryland.