Macao continues to face “significant human rights issues” including “serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom including censorship” as well as “substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association” according to the US Department of State’s 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
The report also said that citizens in Macao were unable “to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections” and accused the local government of imposing “serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation.”
It added that Macao “significantly restricted public statements that it contended would undermine ‘social harmony’ or ‘endanger’ national or public interest.”
The local government responded with a statement yesterday expressing its “strong opposition” to the report, which it described as “baseless.”
[See more: Macao defends its human rights record]
Accusing Washington of having a “double standards mentality,” the government urged the US to “adhere to the principles of international law and the basic norms of international relations, and stop interfering in Macao’s internal affairs, and China’s domestic affairs, using as an excuse human right issues.”
A spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Macao said while the United States claimed to be a “human rights defender,” it had long become a “negative example” and itself ignored and destroyed human rights.
In 2022, Beijing published The State of Democracy in the United States, describing the US 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.”
