Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said on Tuesday that the United States should look to its own problems and examine how to improve its own human rights situation, rather than meddling in the internal affairs of other countries under the pretext of concern about human rights.

Condemnation from ordinary citizens was even harsher.

"How can Americans convince others if they themselves behave so badly? The United States, like an ostrich that buries its head in the sand, is trying to fool itself by releasing a gilded report," wrote a netizen nicknamed Fuzi.

Another netizen, called Feiyang, believes that human rights have become America's last fig leaf and also an instrument of hegemony. "While trying to pass itself off as the world human rights guard, the United States has trampled on the basic human rights of Iraqi prisoners and ordinary people, but its authorities only care about their own political futures."

Entitled "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The US Record 2003 - 2004," the report summarizes in 270 pages America's activities in 101 countries to promote freedom and end abuses. Those abuses include torture, the very crime American soldiers stand accused of in Iraq.

The US State Department postponed the report's publication for 12 days after the abuse scandal triggered a global uproar.

Chinese college students also found the report outrageous. "It is out-and-out shameless," said Dong Bo, a student majoring in computer science at Xi'an Jiaotong University in the provincial capital of Shaanxi, northwest China. "The United States always wants to play the role of redeemer. However, wherever it declares a war, it messes up the human rights conditions there. The photos of prisoner abuse show us the truth."

Yin Heling, a senior majoring in sociology at the prestigious Peking University, considers it ironic that the US insisted on issuing the report, which actually slapped its own face with the abuse scandal.

While denouncing the US soldiers' maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners as "a deadly insult to the whole Muslim world," Muslims in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region found the report all the more irritating.

"The US government is still making indiscreet criticisms of the human rights situations in other countries. Look at what Americans have done to Iraqis! Their evil conduct has severely violated Islamic canons," said Abdurekefu Damaolaaji, vice president of the Islamic Association of China.

Academics regard the persistent US posture on the issue of human rights as a tool it uses to seek profit, and a spin-off of the Cold War mentality.

Lin Bocheng, vice president of the China Foundation for Human Rights Development, noted that the United States is the only country to publish a human rights record every year to condemn or pressure other countries concerning human rights problems.

"Its true attempts to interfere in and even to trample on human rights and internal affairs of other countries, under the veil of promoting 'democracy and human rights,' will never be accepted by the international community," Lin said.

Feng Jiancang, director of the Ministry of Justice's human rights research office, noted it was a waste of time to attempt to reduce or weaken the negative impact of the abuse scandal by issuing the human rights record.

"The dirty mistreatment committed by US soldiers sounds horrific and constitutes crimes by violating international human rights conventions and international humanitarian laws. One or two reports full of distortions and camouflage cannot erase this shame from its human rights history," Feng said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 21, 2004)