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US complains about China's human rights record
By MATTHEW LEE,Associated Press AP - Friday, February 27
WASHINGTON - Just days after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested human rights would take a back seat to broader concerns like the global financial crisis, the United States criticized China for numerous human rights abuses last year.
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A State Department report released Wednesday covers 2008 and was largely drafted during President George W. Bush's administration, but Clinton signed off on the findings.
In the report on the state of human rights around the world, the department singled out China for numerous violations while noting a general deterioration in conditions in other countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.
The report noted some improvements in Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries where American troops are fighting insurgencies. The document also made clear that the Obama administration welcomes comments about U.S. human rights practices, an oblique reference to international criticism of the United States' own treatment of prisoners taken in those conflicts.
The State Department accused China of stepping up "severe cultural and religious repression" of minorities in Tibet and elsewhere as well as increasing its detention and harassment of dissidents.
"The government of China's human rights record remained poor and worsened in some areas," the State Department said. The report noted that Chinese authorities continued to limit citizens' right to privacy, freedom of speech, assembly, movement and association. It said authorities also committed extrajudicial killings and torture, coerced confessions from prisoners and used forced labor.
The report said the abuses peaked around high-profile events like last year's Olympic Games in Beijing and unrest in Tibet, and that toward the end of last year the government began harassing activists who signed a petition calling for respect of human rights.
China's communist authorities had no immediate statement on the report, but China's official Xinhua News Agency said the report interfered in the country's internal affairs and ignored China's achievements in human rights, which Beijing defines mainly as improvements to living standards.
"It willfully ignored and distorted basic facts, groundlessly assailing China's human rights conditions and making random and irresponsible remarks on China's ethnic, religious and legal systems," said Xinhua, which generally serves as the government's mouthpiece.
The report, issued every year since 1977, is used by Washington as "an excuse to interfere with others' internal affairs," Xinhua said.
Clinton was criticized by human rights groups for saying on a trip to Asia last week that while the Obama administration is deeply concerned about human rights in China, the matter could not be allowed to interfere with attempts to cooperate with Beijing on the worldwide economic meltdown and fighting global climate change.
Clinton said a continuing debate over human rights with the Chinese government was not necessarily productive, drawing fire from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as several Republicans in Congress.
She said the Obama administration would work with both government and private organizations to improve human rights conditions throughout the world. "We must rely on more than one approach as we strive to overcome tyranny and subjugation that weakens the human spirit, limits human possibility and undermines human progress," she said.
During her trip, Clinton also questioned whether the current U.S. policy on military-ruled Myanmar, which relies heavily on sanctions, was effective in attempting to restore democracy. The State Department report said Myanmar's military regime committed "severe human rights abuses" and "brutally suppressed dissent" through a campaign of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture.
In its section on the U.S. human rights record, the State Department said the Obama administration would "hear and reply forthrightly to concerns about our own practices."
The report noted that President Barack Obama has pledged to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of the year and has barred harsh interrogation techniques of prisoners. Critics said some of the interrogation methods used during the Bush administration constituted torture.
In Afghanistan, where many Guantanamo inmates were captured, the report said rights conditions had continued to improve since the 2001 fall of the Taliban. But the report noted that the country's record "remained poor" because of a weak central government and the ongoing insurgency.
In Iraq, the report said a substantial improvement in security and easing of sectarian tensions had resulted in some progress.
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