China yesterday criticized the US over a “terrible human rights record,” denouncing it for police brutality and global surveillance a day after Washington released a report on Beijing’s own performance.
In a report sourced mainly from US media, China said the US was “haunted by spreading guns, frequent occurrence of violent crimes, the excessive use of force by police.”
It said that US intelligence had used “indiscriminate” torture against terrorist suspects, while “violating human rights in other countries” with drone strikes and mass surveillance programs.
The document is released each year by China the day after the US Department of State issues its annual global human rights report. Beijing does not release rights reports on other countries.
Unlike China, the US is a multiparty democracy, but the report said: “Money is a deciding factor in the US politics, and the US citizens’ political rights were not properly protected.”
The Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly imprisoned those who openly challenge its right to rule or have protested publicly.
Its state-run media said in December last year that torture by Chinese police to extract confessions is “not rare,” in an unusual admission.
Yesterday’s document, released by the Chinese State Council largely cited US domestic media Web sites, including the New York Times, which is blocked by Beijing as part of its Internet censorship regime.
China said the US justice system suffered from “serious racial bias,” highlighting police killings of several black men, which sparked protests over the past year.
The US has “grim problems of racial discrimination, and institutional discrimination against ethnic minorities continued,” it added.
Washington’s own report on Thursday said that in China “repression and coercion were routine, particularly against organizations and individuals involved in civil and political rights advocacy.”
It also said that Beijing continued to repress ethnic Uighurs and Tibetans.
The US report criticized voting rights in Hong Kong.
“The most important human rights problems reported were the limited ability of citizens to participate in and change their government through the right to vote in free and fair elections,” it said of the territory.
Hong Kong lawmakers last week rejected a Beijing-backed electoral reform package, which was derided as “fake democracy” during last year’s “Umbrella movement,” as it required candidates for the city’s next leader to be approved by a Beijing-appointed committee.
The US report also highlighted limitations on press freedom and violence against the media in Hong Kong, after attacks on some leading journalists and executives.
The Hong Kong government hit back yesterday, saying foreign powers “should not interfere” in its constitutional development and added that “great importance” was given to freedom of speech.
Human rights have long been a source of tensions between China and the US, which imposed sanctions on Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left hundreds, by some estimates more than 1,000, dead.
China often says that its rapid economic development in recent decades has led to a greater respect for human rights and that other countries are not entitled to criticize its record.
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