A report issued by the State Council, China's cabinet, slammed the rights record of the United States in retaliation to a State Department global human rights report this week that skewered China for its gross violations.

"The United States is following unilateralism in international affairs and has frequently committed blunt violations of human rights in other countries," said the long-winded eight-part report carried by Xinhua news agency.

On the Iraq war, the United States "has openly violated the purpose and principles of the UN Charter, has caused casualties of innocent Iraqi civilians and serious humanitarian disasters."

During the 2002 war in Afghanistan the Americans dropped "nearly a quarter million cluster bomblets" causing more than 3,000 civilian casualties, it said.

"Hundreds of thousands of US troops are stationed overseas, and such troops have committed crimes and human rights abuses wherever they stay."

The preamble to the report said, "with the United States pretending to be the 'world's judge of human rights'... it is necessary to make known to the world the human rights violations in the United States."

It portrayed the United States as a "democracy of the rich," steeped in rising crime, police brutality, racism, poverty and bumbling gun laws and maintaining double standards on human rights as it wages wars around the world.

The report also blasted a loss in civil rights and a rise in rascism in the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

"By the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, approximately 60 percent of Muslims had experienced in person or witnessed acts of discrimination against Muslims including public harassment, physical assault and property damage," it said.

SPACE.WIRE