‘Gunshots Behind the Statue of Liberty’: China Declares ‘Human Rights Crisis’ in U.S.

The Chinese government has published its semi-annual human rights report on the United States, condemning America for a variety of alleged “human rights violations” which include widespread gun ownership, “angry” voters in the 2016 elections, and “gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty.”

Multiple Chinese state media outlets, from the more measured Xinhua news service to the belligerent Global Times, published the seven-part report titled, “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2016.” The report repeats many of the concerns of leftist agitators in the United States, emphasizing concerns about race relations and law enforcement while claiming widespread sexism and discrimination against Muslims.

The report does not compare America’s human rights record to that of China, a Communist country which forces women to have abortions as late as eight months into a pregnancy, conducts widespread espionage against its Muslim ethnic minorities (and has banned wearing burqas publicly in Western China), and regularly shuts down media outlets it does not directly control.

Instead, the report – prepared by China’s Information Office of the State Council – condemns the United States for standing up for human rights internationally. “Wielding ‘the baton of human rights,’ it pointed fingers and cast blame on the human rights situation in many countries while paying no attention to its own terrible human rights problems,” the report reads.

“With the gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty, worsening racial discrimination and the election farce dominated by money politics, the self-proclaimed human rights defender has exposed its human rights ‘myth’ with its own deeds,” the report declares.

The report blames “colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality” for the supposedly deteriorating relationship between black and white people in America, while claiming that American “women frequently fell victims to sexual harassment and assault.”

“Muslims suffer increasingly serious discrimination,” the report continues. In accusing America of discriminating against its Muslim population, the Chinese expose themselves post to accusations of hypocrisy. The Uighur population of western China are majority Muslim and greatly inhibited in practicing their religion due to fears on the other side of the country that they are insufficiently loyal to Beijing.

Most recently, China mandated that all cars in Xinjiang, its westernmost and most Uighur-populated province, install GPS tracking devices to allow the government full knowledge of where every car in the region is at any given time. China has previously forced Muslim shops to sell alcohol and cigarettes in the region as a way of diluting Islam in Xinjiang and forced Muslim Communist Party officials in the region to forego the Ramadan fast.

Uighur Chinese nationals abroad have reported incidents of spying and coercion to prevent them from taking advantage of their freedom of expression in other countries to expose abuses against Muslim Uighurs in China.

Nonetheless, the Chinese human rights report concluded America’s population was suffering oppression worth addressing more than their own nationals. The United States “exercised no effective control over guns, law enforcement departments abused their power, and crimes were not effectively contained,” Chinese officials claim, without mentioning that the right to bear arms is ensconced in the nation’s chief governing charter.

The Chinese report also condemns the United States’ recent presidential election cycle, without noting that China is a Communist autocracy that does not allow for popular election of its leaders. “In 2016, money politics and power-for-money deals had controlled the presidential election, which was full of lies and farces,” the report reads. It goes on to claim the fact that voters were “angry” as a human rights abuse and condemn American media, who “published a lot of biased reports and commentaries during the 2016 election, fully demonstrating their failure in staying objective or impartial.”

The Information Office of the State Council concludes that America is “undergoing a ‘human rights crisis.'”

Beijing periodically releases human rights reports of this nature, weaponizing its critiques of the United States in an attempt to diminish Washington’s influence on international human rights norms. In 2014, the Chinese government went so far as to condemn the United States for broadcasting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, a program the Chinese accused of “promoting racial hatred.”

Following the publication of the 2014 report, Chinese media released a report claiming “every aspect of society” in America was racially divided, citing riots in the city of Ferguson, Missouri.