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April 1999

Issues in China China responds to Human Rights attacks

Every year the battle of criticism erupts again regarding the human rights situation in China, however, this year, the Xinhua News Agency, the government news agency in China, fought back, citing human rights abuse in the US.

Before Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's arrival to China in the end of February 1999, the State Department in Washington made public its annual human rights report covering various countries, including criticism of China's recent human rights abuses. According to the report, Chinese officials in November began to impose new regulations on the Internet, the publishing industry and social organizations. Meanwhile, killings, torture of prisoners and forced confessions remained common tools of the Chinese state, the report said. The report also criticized China for not providing a comprehensive and credible accounting of those missing or detained in connection with the democracy uprising in 1989.

Xinhua, on the other hand, on March 1, 1999, reported cases of human rights violations in the United States, referring to Proposition 209 in California and a court case in Texas, citing the lifting of preferential treatment for members of ethnic groups enrolling in graduate schools. Xinhua said this led to a sharp decline in the number of students from ethnic groups at the country's two biggest and most famous public universities in 1997. In the autumn of 1997, enrollments of black Americans and Hispanic Americans in the University of California and the University of Texas law school were down 80 percent from the previous year, resulting in the smallest number of enrollments since 1970. They also reported an “obvious racial barrier” in health care.

Xinhua said, “In recent years, racial discrimination has grown in the United States along with incidents of racial violence. According to a report of the Southern Poverty Law Center on March 3, 1998, the number of organizations promoting racial discrimination increased 20 percent in 1997 from the previous year and there are now 474 such organizations in the country.” They said arson of black American churches has increased and, “a majority of the acts of arson are committed by Caucasians.”

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