China snorts at Western concern for human rights

[dArKeR]

AFP , BEIJING

China yesterday complained about Western hypocrisy on human-rights issues, including calls for greater democracy in Hong Kong and religious freedom in Tibet.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (???) said after a frank exchange on human rights with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer that China did not need lessons from the West on Hong Kong.

"On this question, we are unhappy with our Western friends," Li told reporters. "Western politicians were silent when, under the British colonial leadership, our compatriots were unable to enjoy democratic rights. They forget to mention that."

He said China had a sovereign right to determine the legal privileges of the citizens of Hong Kong.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2004/07/16/2003179146

Southern Republicans can be as stupid and ignorant as they desire it's their life but when it affects America's influence, status, believability, ability to stand up for true justice... then it's time to jetison the South from the United States.

[Dirk39]

1. How China's views the Human Rights Record of the US

Based largely on US sources and statistics, China has issued the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003 in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2003 issued by the US....


http://globalresearch.ca/articles/PRC404A.html

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[struggle4progress]

5. Thanks, Dirk!

:toast:

[bullimiami]

2. Credibility no more.

Bush trashed any remaining illusion of it.

[bigbillhaywood]

3. Mao more than ever!

[LastDemocratInSC]

4. For the most part, I agree with you, but you misunderstand some things

I live in the South and agree that most southern Republicans are stupid and ignorant, just as you say, and they count on their followers to be the same ... it's a vicious cycle that has been going on for a long, long time. The voters aid and abet the politicians and the poliicians return the favor over and over again.

Having admitted the obvious, it's also fair to say that the United States, north and south, has a terrible and tragic history of human rights abuses that stretches out for 400 years. It's nothing that any American should be proud of.

It's easy, for good reasons, to focus on the abuses of the Southern states. I remember life down south in the 1950s and 1960s because I lived it. I saw it. I was troubled by it as a child. But let's not forget the vicious treatment that European immigrants received in the great migrations of the middle 19th and early 20th centuries. What about the treatment that the Irish received in the Northern states during those times? The words "No Dogs or Irish need apply" come to mind. I think there is plenty of shit to spread around when it comes to overt bigotry.

For example - The high schools and colleges in the South were fully integrated in South Carolina during my teen years in the 1970s but we all watched with horror the incredibly violent and vicious race riots on the "Southy" side of Boston that went on for months when integration was attempted there. I never saw such hatred in the South as I saw among the enlightened Bostonians during those long months. Shame on all of them.

Our nation has an awful human rights record. What has happened here in the South over the years is no different from what happened anywhere else to those who "aren't like us". Don't forget that the Mormons murdered hundreds of California-bound immigrants at Mountain Meadows for the same reasons - they aren't like us - let's kill them.

The eventual history of the United States will focus on the facts that certain groups of people - women, blacks, immigrants - have had to fight, and fight hard and often die for their rights and liberties.

There's not much we have to be proud of, frankly, except our military might, whatever that's worth.