BEIJING (AP) - China expressed "strong opposition and dissatisfaction" Tuesday over U.S. accusations of religious repression and discrimination against the country's Muslim Turkic minority.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan denounced the claims made in the State Department's annual human rights report as an "attack on China's legal system, nationalities policies, and human rights situation."
The report, released Monday, "fabricates facts and substitutes falsehood for reality," Kong said at a regularly scheduled news conference. "The Chinese people and government express strong opposition and dissatisfaction."
In its report on human rights practices worldwide for 2001, the State Department accused China of continuing a harsh crackdown on underground Protestant and Catholic groups, Turkic Muslim Uighurs and Tibetan Buddhists, an issue raised by President Bush during his visit last month.
The report accused China of labeling Uighurs who it said are campaigning peacefully for greater civil and religious freedoms as terrorists, and of sentencing some to death.
China was also accused of crushing all political challenges to the Communist Party's monopoly on power and of severely restricting free speech and publication and the right of workers to form independent unions. Coercive policies on birth control, arbitrary arrest and detention and the use of torture by police to gain confessions were also criticized.
Kong reiterated Chinese claims that "East Turkestan terrorists," Beijing's terminology for Uighur radicals, are part of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Washington should not display "double standards" in the fight against terrorism, he said.
"We call on the U.S. side to respect the basic principles of international relations, correct their wrong approach and stop using the so-called human rights issue to interfere in China's internal affairs," Kong said.