China hits out at US on rights

CHINA has hit back at US criticism of its human rights record, issuing a report that denounced the US for offences ranging from allowing crime and poverty at home to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The report - issued annually in response to the US State Department’s global human rights survey - accused the US military of committing “wanton slaughters,” killing thousands of foreign civilians and torturing detainees.

“The atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the infringement of human rights of foreign nationals by the United States,” said the report, released by the press office of China’s cabinet.

The US State Department report released on Monday accused China’s communist government of persecuting dissidents and religious activists, and said prison inmates were tortured and mistreated.

Washington is likely to again seek censure of China next month at the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Similar motions to censure have been killed by China’s allies on the commission.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the state council report was “an alarm bell to get the United States to be alert to its own problems.”

The report cited census bureau figures saying the number of Americans living in poverty had been rising for three straight years to 35.9 million in 2003.