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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, March 12, 2002

US Human-Rights Report: A Product of Pride and Prejudice

On March 4, the US State Department dished out a document entitled "The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2001". The report avoids mentioning the United States' own human rights problems, while making irresponsible remarks about the human rights situations in more than 190 countries and regions, including China. Making use of the human rights issue each year, the United States makes wanton charges against other countries in an extremely haughty manner and has thus naturally aroused the resentment and anger of many countries in the international community.


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On March 4, the US State Department dished out a document entitled "The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2001". The report avoids mentioning the United States' own human rights problems, while making irresponsible remarks about the human rights situations in more than 190 countries and regions, including China. Making use of the human rights issue each year, the United States makes wanton charges against other countries in an extremely haughty manner and has thus naturally aroused the resentment and anger of many countries in the international community.

This report launches completely irresponsible attacks on China's human rights situation, slandering that there exists "large-scale infringement of human-rights situation" in China and "the human rights records remain very bad". At the same time, the report talks a lot about China's State administrative system, slandering that the Chinese government practices a "centralization of power", "interfering in the judicial process", "the State lacks a democratic political life", and what not. This type of distortion and depreciation can be seen everywhere. What is noteworthy is that the US human rights report this year adopts two tactics in accusing China of its human rights situation: One is making groundless accusation, second is adopting double standards. The report frames up charges against China's human rights situation, many of which are "said to be" placed on a fragile basis. The United States has consistently paraded itself as a responsible country, but on the issue of human rights, it has gone so far as to resort to fabrication and assumption to defame China. The report flagrantly boosts the arrogance of Xinjiang's "Turkistan" which advocates separation of the motherland and works in collusion with terrorist forces, claiming that it should be given protection, and accusing the Chinese government of its stand on attacking national splittism and terrorism, this gives expressions to America's typical double standards. Another point deserving attention is that the American human rights report this year lists the questions of China's ethnic groups and religions as the two focal points for attack, besides making discreet remarks on the situation in Xinjiang and Tibetan regions, the US report brazenly censures China for its just actions of lashing out at heresy to safeguard public security, the report pours out grievances for the "Falun Gong" diehards. Twisted facts must be clarified. The Chinese government sternly rejects US unwarranted charges against China and intervention in China's internal affairs.

The United States began releasing "The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" in 1990. The past 10-odd years were the best period witnessing the constant improvement in China's human rights situation. During this period, the Chinese government had all along put the defense and promotion of people's rights to subsistence and development in the first place, made energetic efforts to develop the economy and improve the conditions for people's living and development. The favorable situation featuring the sound development of China's society and economy, the continual strengthening of the construction of the democratic and legal systems and the incessant improvement in the human rights situation is publicly acknowledged by the international community. After it achieved its goal of quadrupling the 1980 per-capita GNP (gross national product) in 2000, China registered a 8.5 percent real increase in the per-capita disposable incomes of its urban residents last year. The central and local finance departments also increased social security expenditures by a big margin. The continual perfection of China's National People's Congress system and the system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation means full attention to and embodiment of judicial guarantee for Chinese citizens' political rights and human rights. Over the past 20 years and more since the initiation of the reform and opening-up program, China's socialist legal system has begun to take shape through amendment and promulgation of laws, and decisions on the enactment and interpretation of related laws. To actively protect citizens' economic, social and cultural rights, the Chinese government has enacted the "Labor Law" and "Stipulations on the Management of the Labor Market", allowing laborers to fairly enjoy the employment right, medical insurance and other social welfare services. In the process of constructing the legal system, China pays attention to the protection of women and children's rights and interests, advocates equality between men and women and attacks acts of infringing the rights of women and children. On the issue of minority ethnic groups, the Chinese government has always advocated that various minority ethnic groups, without exception, equally enjoy all civil rights prescribed in laws. In order to guarantee the equal and special rights and interests of minority ethnic groups, China institutes an ethnic regional autonomous system in regions inhabited by minority ethnic groups in compact communities. In the aspect of religion, the Chinese government advocates freedom of religious beliefs, the religious beliefs and relevant rights and interests of various ethnic groups should be respected.

True, as a most populous developing country in the world, China is subject to the restrictions of natural and historical factors and the level of economic development, but China's human rights situation is in the process of being increasingly improved. This fact is universally acknowledged and beyond all doubt. The development of human rights is a historical process, there exist rooms for development and improvement in all countries, but no countries have the right, in the haughty manner of a colonialist type, to charge other countries or cultures with "barbarity" and "backwardness". Dialogs on the issue of human rights should be conducted between countries on an equal footing, the historical and cultural characteristics and the requirements of phase development of the other side should be fully understood and respected, this is the only correct way for the development of human rights. Differences on the issue of human rights have always been existing between China and the United States, this is a fact, but differences should be resolved through consultation on an equal footing, instead of making wanton interference in the internal affairs by flaunting the banner of the human rights issue. We demand that the United States abide by the basic norms of international law and the principles of the three Sino-US joint communiques, stop the use of so-called country reports on human rights practices to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and carry out with actual deeds the consensus recently reached by heads of the two countries on developing constructive cooperative relations between China and the United States, and value and safeguard the hard-won good momentum of the gradual improvement of Sino-US relations.

In today's world, the conditions in various countries differ in a thousand and one ways, and each has its own choice in the state system and the mode of development. Countries, big or small, strong or weak, should be equal in terms of sovereignty, they should respect each other and treat each other as equals. In the sphere of international human rights, no counties or international organizations have authorized the United States to serve as the "judge of human rights" and to interfere in the human rights issue of other countries. Instead of tackling a multitude of domestic human rights problems, the United States insists on practicing "moral imperialism" everywhere in the world, with the aim none other than to seek "moral superiority" in the world, and exercise "spiritual control" over other countries to pave the way for its so-called global strategy. This practice of the United States has initiated an evil instance in the international relations and has thus met with universal opposition from the international community, as a result, the American attempt to use the human rights issue to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries has suffered repeated defeats. The US State Department's country reports on human rights practices-2001, as soon as it appeared, was denounced and attacked by many countries, thinking that the US act of interference in the internal affairs of other countries is intolerable and unacceptable. Related public opinions point out the United States must be aware that unilaterally ordering other countries about with its own "human rights standard" will not work. The United States takes great pain to create a country report on human rights practices each year, which is resented and condemned by the overwhelming majority of countries each year. The United States should, indeed, conscientiously make a self-examination.



By People's Daily Online

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