China Lashes Out at US Racial Bias in Human Rights Report

BEIJING (AP) — Racial discrimination and police abuses are rife in the United States, China’s Cabinet said Friday, in a report intended as a counterpoint to U.S. criticism of Beijing’s own human rights record.

The report issued by the State Council Information Office cited the killing of black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and other cases in which African-Americans were shot and killed by white police officers.

Such cases “exposed the feature, gravity and complexity of human rights problems in the U.S.,” the report said. America’s institutionalized racial discrimination continues to negatively impact law enforcement and the judicial system, it said.

“Police killings of African-Americans during law enforcement have practically become ‘normal’ in the U.S.,” the report said.

Lu Kang, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a daily briefing Friday that Washington failed to conduct dialogues on human rights on the basis of mutual respects and equality.

“Therefore, we would like to make some comments about what happens in the U.S. as well, as the principle of fairness,” Lu said. “It may also be regarded as an equal action.”

Other issues cited in the report included domestic violence, wage discrimination, poverty, homelessness, income inequality and human rights abuses by U.S. forces and government agents abroad. The report mainly used as sources official U.S. government figures, media reports and data from the United Nations.

China began issuing such accounts several years ago in response to annual reports by the U.S. government on human rights concerns in China and other countries demanded by Congress.

U.S. reports generally focus on China’s restrictions on freedom of speech, assembly, religious observation and political participation, mainly citing information collected by its own diplomats and independent monitoring groups.