The Chinese report, issued by the State Council, or Cabinet, takes aim at U.S. democracy — calling it “a game for the rich” — the high murder rate, domestic wire tapping and detention of Iraqi reporters by U.S. forces in Iraq.
“We urge the United States government to face squarely their own human rights problems, reflect on their own actions, take practical measures and improve their human rights situation,” the report, carried by the official Xinhua news agency, said.Other abuses involved “secret snooping, police abuse, wrong convictions and the highest ratio of people behind bars”, it said.
“The United States has always boasted itself as the model of democracy and hawked its mode of democracy to the rest of the world, but in fact, American ‘democracy’ is always one for the wealthy and a ‘game for the rich’,” it said.
The United States should also “rectify their method of using human rights questions to create international confrontation”, the report said.
“We disapprove of countries meddling in other countries’ domestic affairs,” added Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in reaction to the U.S. report, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament.
The United States was also a country plagued by murder and the private ownership of guns was widespread, the China report said.
“The unchecked spread of guns has caused incessant murders,” it said, detailing a series of gruesome incidents where people had killed their grandparents, school pupils or church goers.
“According to figures released by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, murder increased by 2.1 percent across the United States during the first six months of 2005, compared with the same period of 2004,” the report added.
The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that China increased its censorship of the Internet and of media critics last year and that harassment and detention of those challenging the authorities grew.
The annual report is usually swiftly rejected by China, which says its human rights definition differs from the West, insisting that the basic rights of its 1.3 billion people to food, clothing and housing take precedence over individual civil liberties.
China’s report quoted widely from U.S. media, including the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN, detailing human rights abuses.
Beijing often criticises many of these same foreign media outlets for their biased coverage of China.
The report also quoted the Committee to Protect Journalists in detailing the cases of four Iraqi reporters locked away by the United States in Iraq.
The same group last year named China as the world’s leading jailer of journalists for the seventh consecutive year with 32 behind bars.
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley)
source:Reuters