Human rights matter: Demonstrators protesting the shooting death of 16-year-old Pierre Loury confront police after shutting down the Eisenhower Expressway during a march in Chicago, Illinois recently. — Getty Images/ AFP
Examining the Record of the “Defender of Human Rights”
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Examining the Record of the “Defender of Human Rights”.
It’s April and time for the usual tit-for-tat exchange between China and the United States over their human rights practices.
APRIL is the month when the two biggest economies in the world – the United States and China – lock horns in an annual exchange over each other’s human rights practices.
Since 1977, the United States has been releasing its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, giving its review of human rights issues in countries around the world (but not its own).
And in a retaliatory fashion, Beijing would follow up the next day with its Human Rights Record of the United States in response to the criticisms piled on China.
The Chinese tradition began in 1998 and functioned like a “mirror” for the United States to examine its own human rights flaws. In the words of this year’s document: “Since the US government refused to hold up a mirror to look at itself, it has to be done with other people’s help.”
This year’s collision happened last week.
In the US 2015 report, Washington criticised China’s repression of people involved in civil and political rights advocacy and China’s crackdown on the legal community.
It also highlighted the disappearance of five men in Hong Kong’s publishing industry, believing that Chinese security officials were responsible.
Among others, the report also drew attention to the repression of the minority Uighurs and Tibetans, and tight control on the Internet and media.
As expected, the comments did not go down well with Beijing.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang accused the United States of politicising the human rights issues in China to undermine the country’s stability and development.
“It’s nothing new for the United States to find fault with the internal affairs of other countries in the name of human rights,” he said.
China’s report, on the other hand, curtly labelled the US human rights record as “terrible”, “no improvement”, and plagued with “numerous new problems”.
Citing statistics, surveys and news reports, it zeroed in on the gun violence and excessive police violence, corrupt prison system and the prevailing money and clan politics in the United States.
Racial relations are “at their worst in nearly two decades,” it added.
And, most notably, Beijing reprimanded the United States for violating human rights outside its borders. Examples cited were the deadly Iraqi and Syrian air strikes, drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, and bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan.
The United States is “treating citizens from other countries like dirt,” the report said.
One of the sections in China’s report was reserved for the economic and social rights of US citizens, which Beijing said did not record substantial progress.
A gloomy picture of the United States was painted: “Workers carried out mass strikes to claim their rights at work. Food-insecure and homeless populations remained huge. Many US people suffered from poor health.”
When the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Lu rejected the US report last week, he pointed out that China’s efforts in promoting human rights have resulted in “great achievements that have attracted worldwide attention”.
While he did not elaborate on the great achievements, China has always been championing eradication of poverty as “one of the greatest human rights successes a country could hope for,” as state news agency Xinhua put it early last month.
In an article to dispute the West’s attack on China’s human rights record at the United Nations, Xinhua pointed out that lifting people out of poverty is an area of human rights that is often overlooked by Western countries, in particular the United States.
“China’s achievements in alleviating immense poverty along with its other human rights feats are victim to the West’s selective amnesia,” it stated.
China has a “moderately prosperous society” goal to lift all of its poor out of poverty by 2020. Among the efforts by the Government, according to Xinhua, are increasing the budget to relief poverty by 43%, improving infrastructure in regions with minorities, and reforming the healthcare system.
By rolling out these facts and figures, Xinhua hoped it could change the West’s “tired and dated view” of human rights in China, but added that it won’t hold its breath.
Till next April, then.
By Tho Xin Yi Check-In-China, The Star
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Journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RWB)
released its World Press Freedom Index Wednesday, ranking China fifth
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criticizing Asian countries, including South Korea and Japan for
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Source: Global Times | 2016-4-21 0:38:01
Source: Global Times | 2016-4-21 0:38:01
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