China slams US human rights record

Looks like our morally superior stance is starting to lose some credibility:

BEIJING (AFP) - China has published a scathing attack on
the human rights situation in the United States, retaliating for a
similar report issued by Washington last week that accused Beijing of
backsliding on its rights record.
Only days after slamming the US report as "interference in its internal
affairs," the State Council, China's cabinet, countered with its own
criticism. Allegations of US atrocities in the wars on Iraq and led the
way. "In recent years, the United States has practiced unilateralism on
the international stage, wantonly engaged in military adventures,
violently invaded the sovereignty of other nations and left the mark of
rights violations everywhere," the 2003 US Rights Violation Record
said. "Since the United States initiated the war on Iraq, 16,000 Iraqis
have been killed including 10,000 citizens," the report said. With a
400 billion dollar defense budget, US defense spending is bigger than
military expenditures of the rest of the world combined, while the
United States is the world's biggest seller of arms. It was responsible
for more than 48 percent of all conventional weapons sales to the
developing world in 2002, the report said. Rights violations were not
only restricted to the 364,000 soldiers Washington has based in more
than 130 countries, the report said, but also occurred at home where
the United States remains one of the world's most violent places to
live. "The United States leads the world in gun ownership, guns are
everywhere and crimes involving guns are on the rise," it said. Of the
15,980 murders committed in the United States in 2001, 63 percent
involved guns, while 56 percent, or 16,586 people, who committed
suicide in the US in 2000 used guns, it said. The report also soundly
blasted the US Patriot Act which has empowered the government to
violate the rights and freedom of ordinary citizens, most notably
American minorities, "in the name of national security and fighting
terrorism," it said. Despite routinely refusing to accept criticisms on
rights abuses in China from groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International, the Chinese report liberally used documentation by such
groups on US rights violations. "According to a Human Rights Watch
report in September 2003, one fifth of men in US prisons faced violent
and dangerous sexual encounters, while one in 10 were raped," the
report said. The report also cited Amnesty for evidence that police
brutality in US jails led to the deaths of at least three prisoners in
2003. The report further slammed US democratic politics as the politics
of the rich and cited the 113 million dollars spent by George W. Bush's
election campaign in 2000 and the projected 200 million dollars for
this year's presidential elections. It also blasted the US social
welfare network and cited the growing numbers of poor and homeless
people. "The richest one percent of the US have wealth that is equal to
the 40 percent of the poorest people in the country," it said. "While
the income of the richest one percent was only 7.5 percent of all
income earned in 1979, it was 15.5 percent in 2000." On Thursday China
expressed "indignation" at the US report which alleged a worsening
human rights situation in China in 2003. The annual State Department
report accused China's communist leaders of letting their human rights
record slip as arrests of democracy activists and extrajudicial
killings continued apace. Also targeted were labour protesters, defense
lawyers, journalists, house church members and "others seeking to take
advantage of the space created by reforms", according to the US report.
The report also said a "harsh repression" of the Falungong spiritual
group continued, that China's record in Tibet remained poor and that
the government had used the war on terror to justify a crackdown
against Muslim Uighurs.

Regrettably, I don't have time right now to comment on this article
(work is really cutting into my strict blogging regimen). All I'm going
to say is that you know you're in trouble when China starts coming down
on you for your human rights record.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 1, 2004 at 01:37 PM | Permalink