On human rights, US shouldn't lecture us: China

Hitting back at the United States, China on Sunday came out with a report on America's human rights record accusing Washington of turning a 'blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation.'

The report titled 'Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010' was released by the Information Office of China's cabinet, hours after Washington issued Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2010.

The US reports are 'full of distortions and accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China. However, the United States turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation and seldom mentioned it,' the Chinese report said.

The US has taken human rights as 'a political instrument to defame other nations' image and seek its own strategic interests,' the report said.

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China's report said the United States could not be justified to pose as the world's 'human rights justice.'

"However, it released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to accuse and blame other countries for their human rights practices," the report said.

These moves fully expose the United States' hypocrisy by exercising double standards on human rights and its malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights, it said.

The Chinese report asked the US government to 'take concrete actions to improve its own human rights conditions, check and rectify its acts in the human rights field, and stop the hegemonistic deeds of using human rights issues to interfere in other countries' internal affairs.'

It said violation of citizens' civil and political rights by the US government is severe. Citizen's privacy has been undermined.

More than 6,600 travelers had been subject to electronic device searches between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, nearly half of them American citizens, it said, citing figures released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The report said abuse of violence and torturing suspects to get confession is serious in the US law enforcement, and 'wrongful conviction occurred quite often.'

While advocating Internet freedom, the US in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace, the report said.

US applies double standards on Internet freedom by requesting unrestricted "Internet freedom" in other countries, which becomes an important diplomatic tool for the US to impose pressure and seek hegemony and imposing strict restriction within its own territory, the report said.

The US regards itself as 'the beacon of democracy.' However, its democracy is largely based on money, the report said.

The US reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes and its people's lives, properties and personal security are not duly protected, the Chinese report said.

One out of every five people is a victim of a crime in the United States every year, said the report.

In 2009, an estimated 4.3 million violent crimes, 15.6 million property crimes and 133,000 personal thefts were committed against US residents aged 12 or older, and the violent crime rate was 17.1 victimisations per 1,000 persons, it said.

The United States also ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns and had high incidence of gun-related crimes, it said, adding that some 90 million people own an estimated 200 million guns in the United States, which has a population of about 300 million.

"Racial discrimination, deep-seated in the United States, has permeated every aspect of social life," said the report.

Minority groups confront discrimination in their employment and occupation. The black people are treated unfairly or excluded in promotion, welfare and employment, the report quoted US media reports as saying.

It is reported that one-third of black people confronted discrimination at work, against which only one-sixteenth of the black people would lodge a complaint.

The New York Times reported on September 23, 2010 that by the end of September 30, 2009, Muslim workers had filed a record 803 claims of complaints over employment discrimination, up 20 per cent from the previous year.

Poverty proportion for US minorities is high in the United States. The poverty proportion of the black was 25.8 per cent in 2009, and those of Hispanic origin and Asian were 25.3 per cent and 12.5 per cent respectively, much higher than that of the non-Hispanic white at 9.4 per cent, the report said citing US media figures.

Gender discrimination against women widely exists in the United States, and women in the country often experience sexual assault and violence, it said.

Statistics showed that some 20 million women are rape victims in the country, some one fifth female students on campus are victims of sexual assault, and nearly 3,000 female soldiers were sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2008, up nine per cent from the year before.