China cited the treatment of protesters participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, stating that their arrests can provide a “glimpse of the truth regarding the United States’ so-called freedom and democracy”.
China Daily/ May 26, 2012
Beijing on Friday swiftly hit back at Washington’s annual report on China’s human rights, saying in a report that the US government’s crackdown on protesters in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration is the real illustration of American democracy.
In the report, Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011, the State Council Information Office demanded the US stop its double standards.
Beijing issued the report less than 24 hours after the release of the Washington report, which Chinese experts said used harsher wording than previous editions and reflected US double standards that meet political needs in an election year.
It was the 13th annual report China has published in response to US attacks.
The US report “turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and remained silent about it”, China’s report said.
The Chinese report states that violations of civil and political rights have been “severe” in the US.
It cited the treatment of protesters participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, stating that their arrests can provide a “glimpse of the truth regarding the United States’ so-called freedom and democracy”.
The US State Department started to present its annual human reports in the 1970s, with China long being a key object of attention.
In its 142-page report on China, Washington slammed Beijing for continued “deterioration” in key aspects of its human rights in 2011.
Double standards are the major characteristic of the US report, said Liu Feitao, an expert on American studies with the China Institute of International Studies.
“Washington adopts a totally different standard to the Occupy Wall Street movement and the protests asking for reform in other countries, which bear no difference in nature,” he said.
In a US presidential election year, the Washington report reflected some hawkish politicians’ efforts to contain China, said Li Haidong, a professor of international studies at China Foreign Affairs University.
The US report blamed Beijing for the immolations of monks in Tibetan-inhabited regions on “political restrictions and lack of religious freedom”. China said the self-immolations were politically motivated, as they were part of the Dalai Lama clique’s scheme to internationalize the so-called Tibet issue.
Commenting on the human rights in nearly 200 countries, the US report claimed that “overall human rights conditions remained extremely poor” in countries including Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Belarus and China.
The US report “maligns other countries, and the content concerning China ignores the facts and is filled with prejudice, confusing black and white”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Friday.
“China’s human rights endeavors have made achievements that are plain for all the world to see”, Hong said.
Countries could exchange views and lessons on human rights through “dialogue on an equal footing”, Hong said. “These issues should by no means be used as tools to meddle in the affairs of other countries.”
The People’s Daily said in an editorial on Friday that the US report reflected its alert against a rising China and its restlessness behind the incapability of blocking the rise.
The emotions came as China’s development path has radically rocked the base of the development theory of Western society in which Washington takes a dominant position, the article said.
US criticism of China’s human rights this year is much harsher than before, but China has made concrete progress in its legal system and actions in that regard, said Chang Jian, an expert at Nankai University’s human rights research center.
China published its first working plan on human rights in 2009, Chang said.
This action made China one of the 26 countries since 1993 that have responded to the United Nations call to establish national human rights plans.
“All people pursue human rights, but the ways of realizing them are different from country to country. The US cannot popularize its human rights model to any other country with different conditions,” he said.
The US style has even failed to guarantee its people’s employment rights amid the global recession, Chang said. “More and more US citizens are questioning the political system controlled by a few giant enterprises,” he said.
Here is text of the Chinese Report on US Human Rights.
_______________
How the US Government treated Occupy Wall Street protesters
From selected text in Chinese Report:
- Almost 1,000 people were reportedly arrested in first two weeks of the movement, according to British and Australian media (The Guardian, Oct 2, 2011).
- The New York police arrested more than 700 protesters for alleged blocking traffic over Brooklyn Bridge on Oct 1, and some of them were handcuffed to the bridge before being shipped by police vehicles (uschinapress.com, Oct 3, 2011).
- On Oct 9, 92 people were arrested in New York (The New York Times, Oct 15, 2011).
- The Occupy Wall Street movement was forced out of its encampment at Zuccotti Park and more than 200 people were arrested on Nov 15 (The Guardian, Nov 25, 2011).
- Chicago police arrested around 300 members of the Occupy Chicago protest in two weeks (The Herald Sun, Oct 24, 2011).
- At least 85 people were arrested when police used teargas and baton rounds to break up an Occupy Wall Street camp in Oakland, California on Oct 25.
- An Iraq war veteran had a fractured skull and brain swelling after being allegedly hit in the head by a police projectile (The Guardian, Oct 26, 2011).
- A couple of hundred people were arrested when demonstrations were staged in different US cities to mark the Occupy Wall Street movement’ s two-month anniversary on Nov 17 (USA Today, Nov 18, 2011).
- Among them, at least 276 were arrested in New York only. Some protesters were bloodied as they were hauled away. Many protesters accused the police of treating them in a brutal way (The Wall Street Journal, Nov 18, 2011).
- As a US opinion article put it, the United States could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).
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Movie
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Of course, the Chinese list only the most notable actions where American demonstrators were arrested by their government. We could also add the more than 50 protesters in Occupy San Diego arrested at 2am in the morning during a midnight raid by police.
And btw, we’re not exonerating the Chinese government. The Tienanmen Square massacre has yet to be reconciled with between their government, history, and the Chinese people.
It has been seen from Wikileaks (and as most of the world knew) how America made up most of the news of killing of protesters in T Square. There was no tank crushings and strafing of crowds. It was far from peaceful but then people weren’t herded onto a bridge by police suggestion then arrested.
At least the tank at Tienanmen Square did not run over the protester. What about all the people murdered in cold blood by cops in Amerikkka every single fucking day?
Tannaberton and James – Have to call BS when we see it: Bull puckey to your ahistorical comments, as in fact, hundreds of Chinese civilians, workers and students were slaughtered like dogs by their own government.
In defense of china, the tanks at Tienanmen square at least stopped.
In a totally unrelated note, here’s a CPD van mowing through a crowd of NATO protesters, severely injuring many of them.
But yeah, shame on china.
Anonymous – You need to check out history more often. Chinese soldiers slaughtered hundreds in 1989. No American Occupy protester has been shot dead, at least not yet. There have been scores of injuries, yes, but ever since Kent State and Jackson State in 1970, American governments are reluctant to simply shoot into unarmed protesters.
That will soon change once the American people have been pushed too far.
With the ever-increasing police brutality and agression against unarmed protesters, the time will come where the people will begin to stand up against tyranny to defend and protect their fellow man.
At this time, when Americans use their 2nd Amendment right to protect their 1st Amendment right, the US government will start using lethal force against the American people.
This, mind you, is exactly what they’re hoping for. They’ll use the armed defence of the people from the police as their pretext for implementing the martial law rules created by the NDAA, Patriot Act, etc.
Forgot the link
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/22714270/highlight/264637#utm_campaign=unknown&utm_source=264637&utm_medium=social
We in the USA don’t have employment rights or health care rights or privacy rights. Our police take violent actions to intimidate people from protesting peacefully in the streets, in parks or anywhere near places of power such as Congress, the White House, world conferences or on Wall Street. We are relegated to “protest zones” far away from the action. We can now legally be strip searched inside any police station for any reason, such as a parking ticket. Any designee of the president can legally snatch us and lock us up indefinitely without charges. We are now subject to warrant-less wiretapping. Homeland Security, created to protect us from terrorists, was used to coordinate the takedown of Occupy Camps. Face it- China has a valid point. We the 99% have increasingly limited rights to protest and to participate in our democracy unless we have serious money behind our voices.
So…a country that allows neither dissent nor opposition is a ringing endorsement of what exactly?
Bearded one: the point of reposting this article was to show America’s hypocrisy; our government condemns China for its failures in human rights, all the while participating in the crack-down of our own democracy movement – the Occupy Wall Street protests. Again, it does not exonerate the Chinese government.
Pam: Thank you for telling it like it really is. There is a percent of the wealthy 99% who call themselves the compassionate ones who stay in their comfort level. The statement below does not nullify what the truth about this country is as observed by China.
“We could also add the more than 50 protesters in Occupy San Diego arrested at 2am in the morning during a midnight raid by police.”
The USA people have been blinded by propaganda. Your rich people are getting richer and control the USA and the poor get poorer. You have international jails open where people have been tortured and have accidentally killed hundreds of people with drone fire and as part of collateral damage and have stolen people in the night for doing nothing. People die on the street because they cannot afford health care – what the f.. The USA was once a proud nation which is now looking more and more like an evil marketing machine. Wall Street runs the US and what a sham attacking China. Just take a good hard look at yourselves, you have just watched your great nation fall into moral disrepair. Your true enemy is within.
Pot calling the kettle black. We are just so much more moral than China, aren’t we? Oh, and we have so much “compassion” for the unfortunates in this country. I heard about a comment from one of these “compassionate” people how awful it was that a group of immigrants walked off the job and left some peaches on trees to rot. It is compassionate that you probably pay these people close to nothing to enhance your standard of living? The 99% are not all poor people. There are wealthy people in the 99% that enrich themselves with cheap labor.
Good the USA got caught with their pants down. Many of our supposedly elected officials are such hypocrites. There’s a Bible verse that you in particular Frank should take note of and that is, “By their fruits you shall know them”.
Does this mean China will stop lending money to the US war machine? Even a kindergarten kid can see it can never be paid back, as of now, not to mention borrowing-to-come.
@Frank Gormlie, leaks from your gov.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
From your own link: “Instead, the fiercest fighting took place at Muxidi, around three miles west of the square, where thousands of people had gathered spontaneously on the night of June 3 to halt the advance of the army.
According to the Tiananmen Papers, a collection of internal Communist party files, soldiers started using live ammunition at around 10.30pm, after trying and failing to disperse the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets. Incredulous, the crowd tried to escape but were hampered by its own roadblocks.”
Still, this sanitized version does not mention any deaths any where.
The matrix of oppression. There’s a picture of female members of what today is named the People’s Liberation Army, carrying spears during the Long March(s) or the Second Sino-Japanese War. That picture showed the virtues and honour of – poor people heroically fighting for their freedom against all odds, equal rights for all Chinese, and Socialism. A few days ago, I saw a picture of modern female Buddhist monks in China practicing martial arts. They had disfigured themselves by removing all of their hair on their heads. The women who carried spears and fought alongside Mao Zedung and other Comrades weren’t mutilated. Why is not Secretary Clinton praising the China of the past and condemning what religious extremism is doing to modern China????
Freedom In America?
What a Joke!
Freedom to go broke, lose jobs, starve, go bankrupt, attacked by drones, be killed by police….yeah, real Freedom…..
Until the citizens fight to take back their sovereignty by, taking control back of all levels of Government…. you might as well write off a once proud nation!
There’s only traitors at the helm….
Check out (and like) “It’s About Time”- A protest song meant to engage and activate: http://tinyurl.com/7p6vuxj
Recently, on National Public Radio, an article about The People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) stated that the P.R.C. is using the strategy of “divide and conquer” in that it is attempting to negotiate treaties concerning the China Sea with separate nation-states such as Vietnam and the Philipines. That’s insane. The P.R.C. respects the sovereignty of nation-states and that’s why it’s negotiating with the separate nation-states. The government of the United States of America (U.S.A.) supports the New World Order which advocates doing away with national sovereignty, led by the U.S.A. That’s why the U.S.A. wants the nation-states around the China Sea to negotiate as one group. Doesn’t anyone see through the lies of the U.S. State Department. Let me put it this way: The P.R.C. doesn’t want to conquer any one or nation.
One other thing. Taiwan claims to be the only legitimate government of mainland China. It therefore, adopts all of the P.R.Cs. foreign policies, including those concerning the China Sea. Because Taiwan is the exact same as the P.R.C. in its foreign policy, the P.R.C. is the same as Taiwan. So, there’s no difference in the legitimacy of the two governments, according to Taiwan.
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