demonstrators holding an image of dissident Ai Weiwei
(source)
While complaints about respect for human rights in the U.S. are often well-founded, it’s weird when these complaints are issued by the Chinese government:
[T]he US released its annual human rights report last Thursday. And in response, China’s Information Office of the State Council released its own report specifically about human rights in the United States.
In fact, they’ve been issuing reports like this for more than a decade. It’s called “Human Rights Record of the United States.”
That report points out–without a hint of irony–the US government’s so-called “woeful human rights situation.”
For example, it berates the US for how police have arrested “Occupy Wall Street” protesters–with no mention of how in China, police can detain suspects for up to 37 days before formally arresting them, compared to about 2 days in the US.
The Chinese report cites the US government’s, quote, “strict censoring and control over the press … [and] restriction on the Internet”; but China has one of the most restricted and censored Internets in the world. Human Rights Watch puts China’s Internet Freedom ranking in the world’s worst 5%–along with Syria, Iran, and Belarus by the way. America, while not the best, is still in the top 12%. (source)
More here. And here‘s a similar case. More human rights nonsense is here.
