By Paul Eckert
BEIJING (Reuters) - China stepped up its attack on Sunday against a U.S. report alleging worsening human rights in the country, with state-run media turning the tables and criticizing American racial problems, poverty and violence.
In a yearly tit-for-tat that follows the release of the annual world human rights report issued by the State Department, the Information office of the State Council, China's cabinet, accused Washington of double standards.
"The U.S. report also criticizes almost every other country for its human rights situation, but is silent about the human rights problems in the U.S.," said the statement, published by the state-controlled Xinhua news agency.
The State Department report issued Friday said China's human rights record "deteriorated markedly" in 1999. It cited suppression of religion, jailings of dissidents and political purges in Tibet.
The report focused on China's exhaustive campaign to destroy the Falun Gong spiritual movement, saying thousands of members had been detained and others interned in psychiatric hospitals.
It said China has tortured Christian leaders, intensified pressure on Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs as part of a clampdown on "separatists," and had virtually wiped out the China Democracy Party -- an unofficial group that challenges one-party rule.
Turning Tables
In response, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao accused Washington of distorting facts and ignoring its own record.
"China is strongly displeased with and firmly opposed to the United States' action of distorting other countries' human rights situations," Xinhua quoted him as saying.
The Chinese report, drawn almost entirely from Western media reports and U.S. government or U.N. documents, cataloged American problems ranging from school gun violence to widening income gaps to racial and sexual discrimination and police brutality.
It also took the United States to task for jailing Japanese-Americans during World War Two, spraying defoliant chemicals during the Vietnam War and the recently uncovered massacre of Korean refugees by U.S. troops in 1950.
"The American government needs to keep an eye on its own human rights problems, mind its own business, and stop interfering in the internal affairs of other countries by utilizing the human rights question," the State Council said.
Wto Fallout
The U.S. report will likely provide ammunition for congressional critics seeking to block President Clinton's initiative to extend trade relations with China and bring the country into the World Trade Organization.
In a bid to keep human rights from dominating he WTO debate, Washington has announced it will sponsor a resolution critical of China at a meeting in March in Geneva of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
All attempts by the commission to censure China have failed since 1990, the first session after the killings of student protesters in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
China has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees basic freedoms of religion, speech and assembly. It has yet to ratify the pact and must harmonize its legislation to meet international norms.
The China-U.S. spat comes just days before U.N. rights chief Mary Robinson visits Beijing to discuss technical cooperation to help China revise legislation before ratifying the rights pacts.
Robinson, will also raise various human rights concerns with Chinese officials during her March 1-2 stay in Beijing, according to spokesman Jose Diaz.:
