(注7) Crime down in U.S. and Phila:but the decline in violentcrimehere still center the city with the highest numbers among the10biggest cities,in:http://www.lexisnexis.com.
(注34) Jails bulging with people with mental illnesses,thehomelessand people detained for immigration offenses;costingcountiesbillions,in:http://www.justicepolicy.org.
BEIJING: The Chinese authorities reacted caustically Thursday to the release of an annual U.S. State Department report on global human rights that called China's respect for rights not just "poor," but worsening in its persecution of ethnic minorities and dissidents.
The official Xinhua news agency called the report's section on China groundless and irresponsible, saying it "willfully ignored and distorted basic facts" about human rights conditions and the country's ethnic, legal and religious systems.
"The report turned a blind eye to the efforts and historic achievements China has made in human rights that have been widely recognized by the international community," the Xinhua statement said. It called the annual report an American pretext for interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries.
The State Department document was issued just days after Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her first visit to China as U.S. secretary of state, said publicly that American concern over China's human rights practices would not impede cooperation on strategic issues like the economic crisis and global warming.
Human rights groups and some others expressed dismay at her remarks, which they said undercut the United States' ability to influence both China's human rights policies and its treatment of dissidents and other individuals who have been persecuted.
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At the release of the report Wednesday, the State Department's senior human rights official said that the document's pointed criticism of China's record neither ran counter to Clinton's remarks nor was likely to damage cooperation between the two nations.
"Human rights problems were raised, have been raised in the past, were raised by the secretary in China," the official, Karen Stewart, the acting assistant secretary for human rights, said at a news briefing. "We will continue to express our concern."
As for China's reaction, she said, "I think we'll have a full dialogue with the Chinese on all areas" of policy.
The response Thursday by China, while sharp, did not significantly differ from its reaction to the human rights assessment delivered by the Bush administration a year ago. Xinhua's five-paragraph statement largely repeated, sometimes word for word, its 2008 response to the American report.
Since 2000, the Chinese government has immediately followed the State Department document with its own sharply critical analysis of human rights in the United States, but there was no word Thursday as to when or whether the Chinese report would be issued.
The State Department document singled out China, Russia, Zimbabwe, Egypt and a handful of other countries in its introduction as states where human rights conditions had deteriorated during 2008. It said Russia had "continued a negative trajectory" in domestic rights matters and accused Zimbabwe of a campaign of terror against the government's political opponents that has led to the torture, disappearance or deaths of hundreds.
The 44-page section on China particularly criticized the government's treatment of its Tibetan and Uighur minorities and what it termed "increased detention and harassment of dissidents and petitioners."
"The government's human rights record in Tibetan areas of China deteriorated severely during the year," it stated, saying that Tibetans suffered torture, arbitrary arrests, killings and the repression of basic freedoms at the hands of the Chinese authorities. The report especially criticized China's handling of demonstrations by Tibetan monks and dissidents last March, which erupted in violence after police officers used force to arrest some protesters.
The document stated that as many as 218 Tibetans died in the violence, far more than the 21 civilian deaths claimed by the Chinese authorities, and it cited "numerous reports that the government or its agents committed unlawful or arbitrary killings" during the protests.
It also referred to reports that as many as 1,100 Tibetans had disappeared after the violence, their whereabouts still unknown, including one "highly revered" Tibetan Buddhist leader, Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche of Kardze, a Tibetan town where protests occurred. Among others who have vanished are two men who had produced a film documentary about Tibetan views of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
The report also charged that China had stepped up repression of dissidents and petitioners, especially near the time of the Olympics, and that it muzzled both the state-controlled press and potential critics to silence any negative portrayal of the government during the Games.
But it also offered scattered instances of approval of Chinese human rights policies. The number of nongovernmental organizations in China rose more than 9 percent in 2007, the last year for which records are available, despite harsh restrictions on the groups, the department stated.
China also "experimented with various forms of public oversight of government," from phone hotlines to public hearings on proposed legislation, in an effort to give citizens some say in policies.
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