China criticises US rights record
China criticises US rights record - The Irish Times - Tue, Apr 12, 2011
CHINA HAS issued a report slamming Americas human rights record, saying US actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, coupled with homelessness, violent crime and the undue influence of money on politics at home, puts it in no position to judge others.
In a kind of tit-for-tat publication schedule, the Beijing report is a yearly rebuttal to the US state departments annual assessment of human rights around the world, which usually severely criticises Chinas record on freedom of speech and individual rights.
This years state department report said Beijing had stepped up restrictions on lawyers, activists, bloggers and journalists, tightened controls on civil society and raised efforts to control the press, the internet and internet access.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton said she was deeply concerned about Chinas current crackdown and highlighted the case of Ai Weiwei, Chinas most famous and controversial artist, who helped design the Birds Nest Olympic Stadium for the 2008 Beijing Games.
He was detained on April 3rd reportedly for unspecified economic crimes.
The Chinese government response was to warn the US government to stop interfering in Chinas domestic business.
It followed this statement up with the human rights report, which is issued by the information office of Chinas state council.
The report said the US uses human rights as a political instrument to defame other nations image for its own strategic interests. The Chinese report said the US equivalent was full of distortions and accusations about the human rights record in more than 190 countries, but turns a blind eye to its own human rights situation and seldom mentions it.
One of the main areas of criticism is the impact on civilians in the Iraq and Afghan wars. In the United States, the violation of citizens civil and political rights by the government is severe, it said.
The report depicts an America where violent crime is out of control because of poor monitoring of gun control, and where the prison population has risen by 13 per cent in five years.
In China, the great firewall system of controls keeps internet use on a tight leash. However, the China rights report accuses the US of restricting internet access, focusing on the approval granted by a US senate committee which would give the federal government absolute power to shut down the internet under a declared national emergency.
Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, that was fifty or sixty years ago.
