It is that time of year again when all of a sudden Beijing is
concerned with human rights. The Information Office of the State
Council of the People’s Republic of China issued a report on March
9 entitled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2005.”
This is a yearly ritual conducted by Beijing in response to the
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released annually by the
United States. The PRC’s report states its intentions with the
following explanation: “To help people realize the true features of
this self-styled ‘guardian of human rights,’ it is necessary to
probe into the human rights abuses in the United States in 2005.”
Thus, China has entered into a political clash with the United
States in an effort to expose Washington’s “hypocrisy.” But is this
report anything more than a state-sponsored joke? You be the
judge.
Entitled “On Life and Security of Person,” the first section of
the report explores the performance of the United States government
in providing the necessary security required to protect its
citizens. The crime rate in America is provided with particular
emphasis on violent cities and well-publicized cases of homicides
throughout the year. The idea here is that “the unchecked spread of
guns has caused incessant murders” and that this constitutes a
transparent violation of human rights. Perhaps if the United States
only had a one-party dictatorship that squashed individual freedoms
Americans would be fortunate enough to have a more peaceful society
on the model of the Peoples Republic of China.
The following section details the supposed excesses of law
enforcement and the judiciary. As evidence the report provides the
juvenile epithet for the issue of domestic wiretapping as the
“Snoopgate scandal” and notes: “Secret snooping is prevalent and
illegal detention occurs from time to time.” Additional support
includes the allegation that while the “United States proclaims to
be a ‘paradise of freedom,’” more Americans are imprisoned than
anywhere else in the world. However, to really drive home the human
rights situation in America it is noted: “On December 21, 2005, the
U.S. Senate voted to extend the Patriot Act, a move that aroused
keen concern in public opinion.” Oh, the nerve of the United States
Senate!
The third section seeks to illustrate the deficiencies of
political rights and opportunities in the United States. “The
United States has always boasted itself as the ‘model of democracy’
and hawked its mode of democracy to the rest of the world,” the
report proclaims. It is than added, “In fact, American ‘democracy’
is always one for the wealthy and a ‘game for the rich.’” To
support the claim, Beijing explains that money plays a large role
in elections and that lobbying can influence politics in
Washington. In Beijing’s opinion — or at least in it rhetoric —
the United States is not really the model democracy to which it
claims.
According to the State Council’s report, to understand the state
of democracy in America one must look no further than former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark. The report states: “Clark said it is
an offense to democracy to describe the United States as a
democracy.” This is the same former 1960s official who has defended
Slobodan Milosevic, Rwandan butchers, and Saddam Hussein. In his
January 24, 2005 Los Angeles Times commentary entitled
“Why I’m Willing to Defend Hussein,” Clark proclaims that members
of the Bush administration and the military should be tried for war
crimes. He demands that “any court that considers criminal charges
against Saddam Hussein must have the power and the mandate to
consider charges against leaders and military personnel of the
U.S., Britain and the other nations that participated in the
aggression against Iraq, if equal justice under law is to have
meaning.” It’s reassuring that the Chinese State Council relies on
such a reputable barometer of law and justice as the unimpeachable
Ramsey Clark.
Astoundingly, the report disparages the lack of representation
of women in politics in the United States. This is a rather odd
complaint considering that American women have the identical
opportunity as men to run for political office, while it would not
be reaching for straws to suggest that there is a slight lack of
political representation in China of anyone who is not a member of
the Communist Party. However, it is worth noting that it is not
just the content of the government that is determined by China’s
communist elite.
The Chinese government’s control of the press is so excessive
that the non-governmental organization Freedom House rated China at
177 out of 194 countries in their 2005 global survey on press
freedom. Nonetheless, Beijing’s report contends that America
“flaunts its press freedom but scandals about the U.S. government
blocking and manipulating information came out continually” in
2005. The charge is that the United States is responsible for
planting stories in the news media — especially in Iraq — that
portray a positive image of America and its Armed Forces. While
this may be true, the comparison of the United States government’s
ability and desire to shape the news with those of their
counterparts in China is absurd at best. Twenty-seven million
Iraqis today have a far more independent news spectrum than the 1.3
billion Chinese are permitted by their repressive government.
A substantial portion of the report is also devoted to racial
discrimination and the rights of women and children in the United
States. Beijing’s report determined that racial discrimination is a
problem in the justice and law enforcement communities in the
United States. A primary piece of evidence to support this claim is
that “William Bennett… once said that the only way to lower the
crime rate in America was for all black women to have an abortion.”
If the inclusion of such an inconsequential support item were not
enough, it should now be undebatable that Mr. Bennett’s words were
taken out of context, as he emphasized that such a suggestion would
be reprehensible. This points clearly to the disingenuousness of
China’s State Council and is indicative of their report as a
whole.
THE FINAL SECTION OF THE REPORT is entitled “On the United States’
Violation of Human Rights in Other Countries.” Several themes of
dubious validity are offered in an attempt to portray the United
States as a country that speaks of democracy and universal
freedoms, but is, in fact, a principal violator of international
human rights. The report states: “Pursuing unilateralism on the
international arena, the U.S. government grossly violates the
sovereignty and human rights of other countries in contempt of
universally recognized international norms.”
One area in which such violations occur is that Washington
“frequently commits wanton slaughters of innocents in its war
efforts and military operations in other countries.” Beijing
charges that the United States does not only use excessive force
but deliberately targets civilians. “The year 2005 also witnessed
frequent overseas military operations targeting at civilians by
U.S. forces, causing quite a number of deaths and injuries.” The
dictators running Beijing should know that the United States does
not target civilians in Iraq or anywhere else in the world, but has
freed millions from the very tyranny that the Communist Party of
China continues to support around the globe.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang stated in a March
9 press conference: “The U.S. should put an end to its erroneous
act of interfering with other countries’ internal affairs and mind
more of its own human rights issues.” Make no mistake about it;
this rather candid remark illuminates the genuine motivations of
the State Council’s annual report on the United States. Beijing
seeks an international system where human rights and democratic
institutions are a domestic matter, and any foreign concern for
such affairs is intrusion on one’s sovereignty. Such an
international order would give the communist leadership of China
the freedom to limit liberty at home, re-create 1989’s Tiananmen
Square massacre at will, seize Taiwan by any means possible, and
continue to advance its strongest relationships with the most
repressive and anti-American regimes on Earth.
As noted by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang, certain
actions by the United States “have met increasingly stronger
criticism by its domestic public and the international community.”
This statement is accurate, but it is also telling. Periodically,
the citizens or officials of the United States damage its
reputation both at home and abroad, but the transparency of the
American society permits these issues to be criticized and
corrected openly. This is not the case in China, and this is what
will continue to distinguish America’s human rights record from
that of the Peoples Republic of China. As long as Beijing fails to
note the difference, its criticism will never be considered more
than a state-sponsored joke.
