On Friday, the State Department issued its global human rights report for 2017 in which it called China, Russia, Iran and North Korea “morally reprehensible” governments and accused them of violating human rights within their borders on a daily basis.
Acting Secretary of State John Sullivan, who said these countries were “forces of instability,” also singled out Syria, Myanmar, Turkey and Venezuela as nations with poor human rights records, while pointing to improved human rights in Uzbekistan, Liberia and Mexico. He said that as a result, they were global “bright spots.”
The governments of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea “violate the human rights of those within their borders on a daily basis and are forces of instability as a result,” Sullivan said in a preface to the report that documents human rights in nearly 200 countries and territories, Reuters writes.
The Secretary of State further noted that these countries restrict freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, permit and commit violence against religious, ethnic and other minority groups and undermine the people’s fundamental dignity and as such “are morally reprehensible and undermine our interests.”
He added that Russia’s government “continues to quash dissent and civil society, even while it invades its neighbors and undermines the sovereignty of Western nations.”
He once again called on Moscow “to end its brutal occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, to halt the abuses perpetrated by Russian-led forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region, and to address impunity for the human rights violations and abuses in the Republic of Chechnya.”
Sullivan continued by saying the United States seeks to lead other nations by example.
Meanwhile, Michael Kozak, a senior State Department official who helped oversee the report, said he was confident that policies by President Donald Trump’s administration on issues such as freedom of the press, refugees, and the rights of sexual minorities did not undermine the report or left the U.S. open to accusations of hypocrisy.
“I think we make quite a distinction between political leaders being able to speak out and say, ‘That story was not accurate,’ or using even stronger words sometimes, and using state power to prevent the journalists from continuing to do their work,” Kozak told reporters.
“I think the report is very clear about the kinds of things that we consider to be inappropriate restrictions on freedom of the media … using the legal system to go after members of the press, using physical force and so on. It doesn’t go to the nature of discourse in a country,” he added.
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