China fired back Thursday at US criticism of its human rights record, issuing a report that denounced the US for offenses ranging from allowing crime and poverty at home to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The report -- issued annually in response to the US State Department global human rights survey -- accused the American military of committing "wanton slaughters," killing thousands of foreign civilians and torturing detainees.
"The atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the infringement of human rights of foreign nationals by the US," said the report released by the press office of China's Cabinet.
The US State Department survey released Monday accused China's communist government of persecuting dissidents and religious activists, and said prison inmates were tortured and mistreated.
Washington is likely to again seek censure of China next month at the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Past such motions to censure have been killed by China's allies on the commission.
The Chinese report accused the US of hypocrisy in condemning conditions in foreign nations while staying silent on its own.
"In 2004, the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights performance of the US. The scandal shocked humanity and was condemned by the international community," the report said.
"It is quite ironic that on Feb. 28 of this year, the State Department of the US once again posed as the `world human rights police,"' it said.
The report cited the case of Zhao Yan, a Chinese woman who was beaten and attacked with pepper spray by a US border guard during a visit to Niagara Falls. The guard has been charged with battering her.
In other criticism, the report said racism was deeply entrenched in the US. It said politics were manipulated by the wealthy and dismissed the US electoral system as a "contest of money."
The report cited census bureau figures saying numbers of Americans living in poverty had been rising for three straight years to 35.9 million in 2003. It also said Americans were threatened by "rampant violent crime," and civil rights abuses by law enforcement.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS