US two-faced report on human rights enrages Chinese of all social strata

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-05/20/content_1481580.htm

BEIJING, May 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The US annual report on its endeavor to "improve human rights", mentioning no word about the recent abuse scandal by its own troops in Iraq, has infuriated Chinese people of various social strata and incurred indignant denouncement.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao warned Tuesday that the United States should look more into its own problems and think more of how to improve its own human rights situation, rather than meddling in the internal affairs of other countries under the pretext of human rights.

Condemnation from common people was more harsh.

"How can Americans convince others if they themselves behave so badly? The United States, like an ostrich that buries its head in the sand, is trying to fool itself by releasing a gilded report," said a netizen nicknamed "Fuzi".

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"Its true attempts to interfere in and even to trample on humanrights and internal affairs of other countries, under the excuse of promoting 'democracy and human rights', will never be accepted by the international community," Lin said.

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This is an annual exercise in anti-China colonial arrogance. Never, ever has it been so starkly apparent that the US must look in the mirror instead of lashing out at others. People will never place stock in these reports again in a long, long time.

Instead of saying the accusations are true or false, they change the subject to whether the accuser has a standing to make accusations.

Yes we do violate the human rights of prisoners and not just POW's in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also have democracy problems like disenfranchised and disinterested voters, presidential elections decided contrary to the popular vote and inconsistent and often screwy ballot access laws.

Just because we lack moral high ground doesn't mean we're not intelligent and observant enough to note and remark on the behavior of others.

Unfortunately, our legitimacy in criticizing others for human rights abuses is severely compromised when we ourselves are are perpetrating the same crimes: the whole "Do as I say, not as I do" argument has never been terribly convincing to anyone.