The Macao government has responded forcefully to allegations of human rights violations made by the US State Department in an annual survey of rights in the territory.
Dismissing the report as “baseless commentary”, the government accused Washington of having “an axe to grind” and of making a “brutal attempt to intervene in Macao’s internal affairs and China’s domestic affairs”.
Washington’s 2022 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in China says there were “credible reports” in Macao last year of what it calls “significant human rights issues”.
It says these included: “serious restrictions on journalists’ freedom to conduct newsgathering; substantial interference with the right of peaceful assembly; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation, including the disqualification of pro-democracy candidates in elections; and trafficking in persons”.
The report also says that in 2022 “government and employers did not respect collective bargaining and freedom of association” and noted that the “government excludes persons with disabilities and domestic workers from the minimum wage law”.
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However, the State Department concedes that the Macao government “took steps to prosecute and punish officials who committed human rights abuses or engaged in corruption” and noted that “The law prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention and provides for the right of any person to challenge the lawfulness of his or her arrest or detention in court, and the government generally observed these requirements”.
It also remarked that “The law provides for the right to a fair public trial, and an independent judiciary generally enforced this right”, while noting that “The law provides that all residents shall be equal before the law and shall be free from discrimination”.
In its response, the Macao government said that it was “dedicated to law-based governance”, and emphasised that residents “enjoy extensive rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, and the Basic Law of Macao”.
Washington and Beijing routinely trade barbs over human rights and their respective political systems. In a report published Tuesday – entitled The State of Democracy in the United States: 2022 – China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the US was plagued by a “vicious cycle of democratic pretensions, dysfunctional politics and a divided society”.
It noted that “Problems such as money politics, identity politics, social rifts, and the gulf between the rich and poor worsened” in the US last year and accused Washington of continuing “to behave with a sense of superiority” and act as a “lecturer of democracy”, despite “mounting problems at home”.
