China issues report on US human rights

An activist from advocacy group Avaaz wearing a mask of former US spy agency NSA contractor Edward Snowden waves behind boxes of signatures, during a delivery of a petition to the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia February 13, 2014. The activists said they were delivering over a million signatures from 200 countries to authorities, requesting asylum for Snowden in Brazil. [Photo/Agencies]

BEIJING - China on Friday responded to the United States criticism and irresponsible remarks of its human rights situation by publishing its own report on the US human rights issues.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013 was released by the Information Office of China's State Council, or the Cabinet, in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013 issued by the US State Department on Thursday.

China said in the report that there were still serious human rights problems in the US in 2013, with the situation in many fields even deteriorating.

Posing as "the world judge of human rights," the US government "made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks" on the human rights situation in almost 200 countries and regions again in its just-released reports, the report says.

"However, the US carefully concealed and avoided mentioning its own human rights problems," it adds.

The report calls the US tapping program, code-named PRISM, which exercises long-term and vast surveillance both at home and abroad, "a blatant violation of international law" and it "seriously infringes on human rights."

The US also faces rampant gun violence, according to the report. "In 2013, 137 people died in 30 mass killings, which caused four or more deaths each, in the US."

The report also cites figures to show that frequent drone strikes by the US in countries including Pakistan and Yemen have caused heavy civilian casualties.

The US has carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, causing deaths of up to 926 civilians, according to the report.

"The US still faces grave employment situation with its unemployment rate remained high," the report says.

Rates of unemployment for the lowest-income families have topped 21 percent. The homeless population in the US kept swelling and it had climbed 16 percent from 2011 to 2013, it added.

"There are also a large amount of child laborers in the agricultural sector in the US and their physical and mental health was seriously harmed," the report says.

To date, the US remains a country which has not ratified or participated in a series of core UN conventions on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, according to the report.