US Lacks Moral Authority to Judge on Human Rights: China

Following US report criticizing human rights abuses in countries around the world, China hits back

The United States is hardly a bastion of human rights standards and is on poor footing to judge other nations, the government of China stated Friday. The comments were in response to a human rights report released by the U.S. which criticized China amongst other countries for their human rights abuses.

The combination of the U.S. drone assassination programs, a National Security Agency under increasing global scrutiny for its dragnet surveillance practices, rampant gun violence, poor labor standards, and use of solitary confinement in jails shows that the U.S. is hardly without its own human rights abuses, a report released by China, "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013," points out.

Acting as "the world judge of human rights," the report states, the U.S. "made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks" in the State Department's "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013."

In that report, the U.S. said China has taken part in a continued crackdown on activists and political dissent: "China continued its crackdown on human rights activists, increased repression in ethnic Tibetan and Uighur areas, and continued to severely restrict the freedoms of expression, religion, association, and assembly."

"The United States always wants to gossip and remark about other countries' situations, but ignores its own issues," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news briefing. "This is a classic double standard."

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