China on Friday strongly criticised a US report accusing it of human rights violations, calling the document “fraught with prejudice”, and issued a scathing critique of the United States’ own record.
The annual US report, issued days after China allowed one of its best-known activists to go to New York to study, said Beijing’s human rights record deteriorated in 2011 as authorities stepped up efforts to stifle dissent.
“The content related to China is fraught with prejudice, disregards the facts and confuses right and wrong,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular briefing on Friday, a day after the US report’s release.
“Such an issue should never be used as a tool to attack others or interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”
Hong said China had made “remarkable progress” on human rights over the last 30 years — a period in which millions have been pulled from poverty as the nation embarked on robust economic reforms.
China frequently uses the growing wealth of its citizens to counter accusations of rights abuses.
The United States issued its report five days after the blind legal campaigner Chen Guangcheng, who made headlines around the world after escaping from illegal house arrest, left China for New York. In it, the State Department detailed concerns over the treatment of Chen, saying he and his wife had been severely beaten and activists who tried to visit his home in eastern Shandong province had been assaulted.
Chen, a self-taught lawyer who has been blind since childhood, riled authorities by exposing forced abortions and sterilizations under China’s one-child-only policy.
The report said Chinese authorities have increasingly turned to house arrest, including of family members, and have tried to stifle public debate through rigid controls of the Internet.
“In China, the human rights situation deteriorated, particularly the freedoms of expression, assembly and association,” the US report said.
Beijing retaliated on Friday with its own scathing report on the United States’ rights record, alleging police brutality and discrimination. “The United States has turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and remained silent about it,” said the government report, details of which were released on the official Xinhua news agency.
“Ethnic minorities and non-Christians are discriminated against in fields like law enforcement, justice and religion, rendering the so-claimed ethnic equality and religious freedom nothing but self-glorifying forged labels.”
