The China Society for Human Rights Studies (CSHRS) on Tuesday released a report, revealing a series of crimes committed by the United States in the Middle East and surrounding areas that seriously violated international law.

Titled U.S. Commits Serious Crimes of Violating Human Rights in the Middle East and Beyond, the CSHRS report focused on Washington's systematic violations of human rights, including launching wars, massacring civilians, and damaging the right to life and survival; forced regime change, unilateral sanctions, infringing on people's rights to development, life and health; creating a "clash of civilizations" and abusing imprisonment and torture, and violating freedom of religion and human dignity.

Taking the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War as examples, the report said they are the two largest wars launched by the United States in the Middle East and surrounding regions, spelling dreadful disasters to the lives and living conditions of the people of the two countries.

More than 174,000 people died directly in the war in Afghanistan, of whom more than 47,000 were civilians, according to the report, citing the Brown University's Costs of War Project.

The nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan forced 2.6 million Afghans to flee abroad and displaced 3.5 million others, the report said, citing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

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Casualties and refugee numbers from the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan

And after U.S. unilaterally launched the Iraq War in 2003, about 209,000 Iraqi civilians died in wars and violent conflicts, and about 9.2 million Iraqis became refugees or were forced to leave their homeland between 2003 and 2021, the report said, citing data from Statista, a global statistical database.

Almost two decades after the war started, the U.S. public is still divided over whether it's right to use military force in the Iraq War. 

A survey published by the Pew Research Center in March 2018 showed that in late March 2003, a few days after the U.S. invasion, 71 percent supported the decision to use military force, while just 22 percent said it was the wrong decision. Fifteen years later, those supporting fell to 43 percent.

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Graphics: The human cost in Iraq war

The report underlined that the United States has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention, abuse of torture, torture of prisoners, and indiscriminate unilateral sanctions in the Middle East and surrounding areas.

The United States established Guantanamo Bay detention camp to lock up a total of nearly 780 "terrorists" from the Middle East and elsewhere, many of whom have been held without bringing any criminal charge, according to the report, adding that, more than 30 people, old and frail, remain in the prison, who are deprived of liberty for long periods of time and subjected to endless mental and physical torture.

Facts show that the United States 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, the report said.

As the nature of American hegemony and the barbarity, cruelty and perniciousness of its power politics have been completely exposed, people of the world would have a better understanding of the hypocrisy and deception of American democracy and its human rights, the report noted.

(With input from Xinhua)