Police brutality, racial discrimination, torture of terrorism suspects, horrifically overcrowded prisons, rising income inequality and endemic poverty. These are just some of the human rights abuses in the United States highlighted by China on Friday in response to the State Department’s annual human rights report.
Beijing’s retort is an annual ritual that some might find almost too easy to dismiss. Those who try to equate what happens in the democratic United States with the repression of human rights and civil liberties in authoritarian China will be challenged by the State Department’s 148-page report on China, released on Thursday.
But that doesn’t mean that China’s report, issued by the State Council, the country’s cabinet, doesn’t make for sobering reading.
Citing American news reports, scholarly articles and government documents while adopting a format and tone similar to the State Department report, the Chinese report covers topics such as the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the case of Tamir E. Rice, a 12-year-old in Cleveland who was shot by a police officer after he brandished what turned out to be a toy gun.
“Racial bias in law enforcement and judicial system is very distinct,” said the Chinese report, titled “Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014.” “Compared with other ethnic groups, African-Americans are more likely to become victims of police shooting.”
China’s government considers economic rights to be human rights, and the report takes aim at the rising income inequality in the United States; high poverty rates, especially for minorities; homelessness; and the increasing costs of higher education.
The Chinese report liberally cites a December 2014 report from the Senate Intelligence Committee on the use of torture, listing techniques including “sleep deprivation, waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners’ heads against the wall, lashing, death threats and even the appalling ‘rectal rehydration.’ ”
Still, the report’s statements that Americans “have increasingly lost confidence in electoral politics” and “a few interest groups with power were able to influence the government’s decision making” are bold criticisms coming from a country in which the Communist Party has a monopoly on political power.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing how some lawyers who represent clients in politically sensitive cases in China are physically assaulted.
That a New York-based group, and not one based in Beijing, documented these abuses speaks to the awkwardness of the Chinese government taking on the role of human rights critic.
China’s report drew on extensive reporting by the American news media and by government agencies, including revelations concerning the excessive use of force by the police, torture and the government’s bulk collection of data about United States citizens, issues that have been the subject of national debates and that have, in some cases, led to policy changes.
That sort of debate is not seen on the heavily censored Internet in China, nor in the country’s state-controlled news media.
The State Department’s report said of China’s rights record: “As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to change their government, and citizens had limited forms of redress against official abuse.”
Source: NY Times
