Beijing – Responding to U.S. complaints, China charged Thursday that the Bush administration has no standing to criticize other countries on human rights because its own record is full of blemishes at home and abroad.
The Chinese accusation, in a retort to the State Department’s annual human rights report issued Tuesday, called particular attention to what it said were abuses committed by U.S. soldiers and intelligence agents against terrorist suspects in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. But it also underlined what it described as increased willingness by Washington to spy on its own citizens by monitoring their telephone calls, computer connections and travels.
“As in previous years, the State Department pointed the finger at human rights conditions in more than 190 countries and regions, including China, but avoided touching on the human rights situation in the United States,” said the report, issued by Premier Wen Jiabao’s office. “We urge the U.S. government to acknowledge its own human rights problems and stop interfering in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of human rights.”
The Chinese response to U.S. human rights concerns has become a fixture over the past eight years. In the first years, it centered on a contention that human rights should be defined to include social and economic improvements, such as health care and education, where the Chinese government can point to rapid progress.
These arguments were raised again this year, with charges that racial minorities, women and children suffer disadvantages in the U.S.
But more recently, the report’s tone has sharpened and the sweep of its counteraccusations has broadened as reports accumulate of U.S. abuses abroad against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorism. These include accusations of kidnapping, torture and imprisonment without legal recourse – the same abuses often raised by the United States with Chinese authorities.
