China Hits Back at U.S. Human Rights Record

Jonathan Ansfield

BEIJING (Reuters) - China scolded the United States on Monday over everything from the war in Iraq to racial clashes in Cincinnati, in a report that highlighted the ideological rift dividing two powers that have increasingly friendly ties.

Beijing's annual assessment of human rights in America came in retaliation to the U.S. report on 191 countries last week, which upbraided China for "backsliding." A U.S. official also said Washington was heading in the direction of a U.N. resolution on China's rights record.

"As in previous years, the United States is again playing the part of the world's 'human rights police'," the Chinese report began. "And as in previous years, the U.S. report again leaves out the United States' age-old malpractices and problems with human rights.

"Because of this, we also cannot but do as we've done in previous years, and help the United States fill in its record on human rights," said the report, released by the spokesman's office of the State Council, China's cabinet.

Whereas U.S. charges target abuses of individual liberties, Beijing insists that basic human rights means putting priority on sheltering, clothing and feeding its 1.3 billion people -- and preserving social stability at almost any cost.

The Communist government also bristles at what it deems to be perennial U.S. meddling in others' domestic affairs.

Last week, China flatly rejected U.S. accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture, suppression of political and religious groups and foot-dragging on steps toward democracy in Hong Kong.

The Foreign Ministry stopped short of warning of a setback in ties with Washington. Sharp differences notwithstanding, the two countries engage in a human rights dialogue.

But Beijing has sought to respond in kind. The English-language China Daily unleashed a scornful rebuttal on Saturday.

"NO PARADISE FOR RIGHTS"

"China is no paradise for human rights," its editorial acknowledged. "But our culture has no respect for gossipmongers who wag their tongues freely in disregard of the truth."

It was the fifth straight year Beijing has issued a report on the rights record of the United States.

This year, the government embargoed the document and distributed it to some foreign media three days ahead of time.

The 22-page appraisal, based on articles in U.S. newspapers and U.S. government statistics, reeled off snapshots of America's social ills, from murder, rape and homelessness to the scandal over fabricated stories that befell the New York Times.

It seized on nationally publicized incidents like the fatal clash last November between Cincinnati police and a 41-year-old black man, the latest incident of racial tension in the Midwestern city which was hit by race riots in 2001.

"Forty years after Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, the equal rights pursued by America's blacks and other minorities remains a dream that can be aspired to, but not attained," the report said.

China also tried to expose the weight big business exerts on the American electoral process, quoting Britain's Independent newspaper as saying President Bush's had amassed $200 million for the 2004 campaign.

"The presidential election, viewed as a symbol of American democracy, in reality is a money game played by the rich."

China reserved one of its harshest indictments for American actions abroad since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Quoting another report in the Independent, it said 13,000 unarmed men, women and children died in attacks led by U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, calling the Iraq campaign the bloodiest for civilians since the Vietnam War.

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Source: "Reuters".