The State Department's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 offers the expected criticism of remorseless government violence against democracy activists in Iran, totalitarian strictures on North Koreans and religious discrimination from Egypt to Italy.
Laurent Fievet, AFP / Getty Images
The Obama administration has already been clashing with China over a broad spectrum of issues, including unfair trade practices, cyberattacks and international efforts to curb climate change. Here, protesters tear a picture of Obama with their feet during a demonstration in Hong Kong in October.
Thursday's report, a comprehensive country-by-country look at human rights practices, also points fingers at alleged widespread voter fraud in allied Afghanistan, extrajudicial killings by the U.S.-backed government in Iraq, and the torture and disappearances attributed to authorities in Pakistan, one of Washington's most important if historically checkered partners in the fight against terrorism.
But Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, seemed to go out of his way to castigate another usual suspect for human rights violations, China.
In his description of the report at a State Department news conference, Posner said China's human rights record is "worsening in some areas, including increased cultural and religious repression of ethnic minorities," the repression that continues in Tibet, and the increasing detention and harassment of democracy activists and human rights lawyers.
Then, once he had answered reporters' questions, Posner returned to the subject of China, mentioning two cases by name.
"One is the case of Liu Xiaobo, who was found guilty in December of subverting state power; sentenced to 11 years. His crime is that he helped write a petition, called Charter 08, which is basically a petition calling for an expansion of human rights and democracy," Posner said. "The second is a case of a human-rights lawyer called Gao Zhisheng, who was picked up by the police, is thought to be in detention, though his family doesn't know where he is."
Posner didn't say why he chose to highlight abuses in China, but the country also gets more mentions than any other in the printed introduction to the report.
Why now?
The Obama administration has been clashing with China over a broad spectrum of issues, including international efforts to curb climate change. The U.S. is unhappy with China over its currency controls and unfair trade practices and cyberattacks on Google and U.S. government computers. China resents U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's decision to meet with the Dalai Lama.
But in recent weeks the administration's Chinese relations have seemed more focused on courting Beijing. The U.S., Britain, France and Germany are spearheading a push for biting new U.N. sanctions against Iran to pressure Tehran to halt the enrichment of uranium, a key step toward atomic weaponry. China, as a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, remains a resistant and decisive obstacle to new sanctions.
Renewed American criticism of China's human rights record, viewed as an internal matter by Beijing, is only bound to inflame U.S.-Chinese tension, especially coming -- as this year's report does -- while the Communist Party-led National People's Congress is holding its annual lawmaking session.
It may be that the Obama administration figures it won't get China's support at the United Nations anyway. Neither the State Department nor the White House addressed the issue.
Religious Discrimination
The State Department also suggested that persecution of religious minorities is on the rise worldwide.
It noted that Egypt has failed to confront government practices that discriminate against Christians; that discrimination against Muslims has increased in Europe, where Switzerland instituted a ban on the construction of minarets; and that 2009 saw a surge in anti-Semitism.
"Traditional and new forms of anti-Semitism continued to arise, and a spike in such activity followed the Gaza conflict in the winter of 2008-2009," the report said. "Often despite official efforts to combat the problem, societal anti-Semitism persisted across Europe, South America, and beyond and manifested itself in classic forms."
