China slams US racial tensions, police brutality in report
BEIJING — China assailed what it called America’s “terrible human rights problems,” in its annual report on rights abuses in the United States, citing police brutality, high levels of incarceration, racial prejudice and money politics.
The report issued on Thursday by the Information Office of the State Council is a tit-for-tat response to the US State Department’s yearly report on human rights around the world that said repression and coercion of those involved in civil and political rights in China remained “severe.”
As in previous years, China’s report accused the US of sitting in judgment of the human rights situations in other nations while ignoring its own defects. Mainly citing facts and figures from the US media and civil rights groups, the report focused heavily on what it called a deterioration of race relations in 2016.
“With the gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty, worsening racial discrimination and the election farce dominated by money politics, the self-proclaimed human rights defender has exposed its human rights ‘myth’ with its own deeds,” the report said.
e report specifically mentioned the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police and the killing of five officers in Dallas, Texas, and pointed to a pattern of what it called law enforcement treating people of colour more harshly than whites. It also said blacks and Hispanics were discriminated against in incarceration, employment and education, earning less and facing harsher penalties for violations.
Its final section dealt with what it called “gross violations of human rights in other countries,” pointing to reports of civilian deaths from US military action in countries including Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. It also criticised Washington’s failure to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the US government’s electronic surveillance of other countries and foreign nationals.
China has issued the report every year since 2000 as a means of countering US criticisms.
China, whose population of 1.37 billion is more than 91 percent Han Chinese, portrays itself as a multi-ethnic state where all groups live in harmony. However, members of the Tibetan and Turkic-speaking Uighur minorities allege rampant discrimination in employment and education and religious minorities including Christians and Muslims are subject to heavy restrictions on their activities.
The one-party authoritarian communist state also brooks no political opposition and heavily polices the internet and public forums, censoring and sometimes imprisoning those perceived to be challenging its authority.
The State Department’s report focused mainly on Chinese legal abuses and restrictions on constitutionally guaranteed civil rights, including free speech and freedom of religion. It said China locked up “tens of thousands” of political prisoners, sometimes denying them medical treatment and said authorities continued to harass them even after their release.
Lawyers, dissidents and those petitioning for redress of official abuses have been rounded up, while high profile prisoners such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo remained in prison, the report said.
This year’s US report was issued amid concerns the US was backing away from its traditionally vocal advocacy on human rights under President Donald Trump.
In a departure from past practice, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson skipped the launch of the report.
Trump has made little mention of human rights during his campaign or presidency, and Human Rights Watch, whose research is cited by the State Department in its reports, said his administration’s commitment to human rights is already in question due to his policies related to Muslims and his plan to drastically cut the foreign aid budget.
Meanwhile, several US states have said they will move forward with legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s revised executive order that targets citizens of six Muslim-majority countries and refugees.
Washington state, which was the first to sue over Trump’s initial travel ban that created chaos worldwide and was eventually blocked, argued that the revised order violates the constitution “by disfavouring Islam”.
Bob Ferguson, the state’s attorney general, said a motion by his office calls on an existing injunction against the travel ban issued in January to be applied to the new directive.
“My message to President Trump is — not so fast,” Ferguson said. “After spending more than a month to fix a broken order that he rushed out the door, the president’s new order reinstates several of the same provisions and has the same illegal motivations as the original.”
Attorney generals in the states of New York, Massachusetts and Oregon said they had taken steps to join the lawsuit that Washington had filed along with Minnesota.
The opposition comes on top of a separate legal challenge to the new ban brought by Hawaii.
The revised executive order issued on Monday bars new visas for people from Syria, Iran, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen, and temporarily shuts down the US refugee programme for 120 days.
It is supposed to go into effect on March 16, and does not apply to travellers who already have visas.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said the executive order has hurt Oregon, its residents, employers, agencies, educational institutions, healthcare system and economy.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called the executive order “a Muslim ban by another name”.
The attorney general in Hawaii argued that while the new order features changes to address complaints raised by courts that blocked the first travel ban, the new order is pretty much the same as the first one.
“Nothing of substance has changed: There is the same blanket ban on entry from Muslim-majority countries (minus one),” state attorney general Doug Chin said in a statement.
Hawaii’s lawsuit says the order will harm Hawaii’s Muslim population, tourism and foreign students.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday the administration believed the revised travel ban will stand up to legal scrutiny. — AFP