It was a great pleasure to trawl through 23 pages of China’s human rights retort for the US and witness the Chinese government’s growing awareness of the advantages of a free(r) press.
“Crime Takes Hold of New Orleans”, screamed one headline from USA Today, “Answer to AIDS Mystery Found Behind Bars”, revealed the Washington Post. The whole report is littered with the country’s disgraces as revealed by the US media and damning governmental department reports. Even China’s arch-enemies Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were held up as purveyors of the truth. Behold the mightiness of the pen! Although I did meet an American on Chinese New Year’s Eve who insisted that, when back home in the US, he turned to Xinhua for all his international news, alleging rampant censorship by the US government.
Interestingly enough, the majority of references to newspaper articles in China’s report came around November/December time last year. You can imagine someone in the Information Office of the State Council devoting a few days at the end of the year to furious googling for shooting sprees, bank robberies and the like.
China’s need to issue their own report, something it has done for eight years now, reflects the weakness of the country in terms of pyschology. Why should the United States “lord it” over the world while failing to address in detail their own human rights abuses, China argues. Fair enough - but the tit-for-tat nature of the report is fairly cringe-worthy. Russia seems satisfied with slapping down the US in a sharp-tongued statement. China could learn from that. And it must have bugged China somewhat to hear Condoleezza Rice admit the US’s own shortcomings this year, reducing China’s ammunition. No mention was made of that by China but I suppose the press statements had been set in stone before the US released its report.
If they really feel the report has to be issued every year then they should consider some omissions to save some face. Here are some of the more obvious embarrassments:
In the United States, human rights violations committed by law enforcement and judicial departments are common.
Police abuses are very serious. A Human Rights Watch report issued on Dec. 4, 2006 said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. Department of Justice has used the material witness warrant to imprison without charge at least 70 men.
Nothing short of brazen. I often have a problem with Xinhua crime reports as some journalists - more as a result of the confused nature of China’s judiciary system than lack of awareness - struggle to differentiate between detained, arrested and charged. “So he has been in custody for two months, have they charged him?” I often ask. ”No, he has just been detained.” “So when did they arrest him?” “No, he has just been detained.” Here’s another good line from the report: “Injustice of the judiciary is quite shocking.”
Another dark area for the Chinese government to step into:
Reports show a Pentagon research team monitors more than 5,000 jihadist web sites, focusing daily on the25 to 100 most hostile and active.
Enough said. And:
The U.S. government often produces fake news stories and passes them off as normal news to domestic and overseas audiences.
Please don’t embarrass my employers like that! Clearly there are more but I wouldn’t want to be seen as trying to inflict a series of petty blows.
N8Ma | 15-Mar-07 at 4:16 am | Permalink
Yeah I thought this was pretty ridiculous as well when I read it. Especially since it was probably on the Xinhua site in Arabic, Spanish, etc.
Oh well. The Soviet Union used to show film clips (which I assume they got from NBC or ABC) of police using dogs on civil rights protesters to win over hearts and minds in the Third World. Lot of good it did them.