On Tuesday, March 6th, the U.S. State Department issued its annual Human Rights Report, where it took China to task for a number of human rights abuses. On Thursday, China’s Office of the State Council issued it’s own annual report on abuses of human rights by the U.S. In reacting to the U.S. report, China implied that the Bush administration shouldn’t criticize other countries on human rights in light of its own record: “We urge the U.S. government to acknowledge its own human rights problems and stop interfering in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of human rights.”
But the New York Times reported (registration required) that “unusually, the State Department acknowledged in the report that the United States, too, had fallen short of international standards in its handling of terrorist suspects. ‘Our democratic system of government is not infallible, but it is accountable,’ the report said.”
I took the time to go through both reports (thick skin required) looking for mentions of health care related issues amongst the ubiquitous mutual accusations of torture, beatings, illegal incarcerations and the rest. Here are some of the highlights in health care from the reports.
- The U.S. report on China included accounts of incarcerated persons who were denied medical care; persons in psychiatric hospitals given medicine, injections and electric shock treatments against their will. Also included in this litany were complaints of forced sterilization of women, and forced abortions: “During the year officials in Chongqing municipality and inFujian Province reportedly forcibly sterilized women. In June Western media reported that a woman fell to her death while fleeing Anhui authorities who were trying to force her to abort twins.” (It should be noted that Chinese law prohibits the use of physical coercion to compel persons to submit to abortion or sterilization.)
- With regard to persons with disabilities, the report stated that misdiagnoses, inadequate medical care, stigmatization, and abandonment remained common problems. This includes persons with HIV and Hepatitis B although the report allows for progress.
- Although transparency in Chinese health care has improved following the SARS outbreak in 2003, according to the U.S. report, concerns were expressed over delays in reporting outbreaks of human and animal cases of avian influenza.
- Probably the most controversial issue were reports of accusations of government harvested organs from executed prisoners, and prisoners who were members of Falun Gong without their consent.
In China’s report on U.S. government human rights abuses, the health problems of incarcerated persons were also a focus.
- The emphasis here was on the high prevalence of mental illness, HIV and other contagious diseases. Deaths frequently occurred from these mental disorders left undiagnosed, and contagious diseases left untreated, according to the report. There were also complaints of pregnant women prisoners being “kept in chains and leg restraints into the third trimester of their pregnancies; some had been shackled even while in labor.”
- The Chinese report singled out one special case example: “In March 2006, Chen Xucai, a woman from China’s Fujian Province, was arrested in New York for selling fake brand name handbags. She was later found pregnant in jail. The jailers not only mistreated her rudely but also stopped her medication, resulting in her abortion in prison.”
- A fair amount of attention was paid to the 46.6 million Americans who are uninsured.The report criticized the high cost of health care and that more and more people in the U.S. are unable to afford basic care. In this context, the report pointed to low-wage mothers who have had to give up necessary medical care, and the rising proportion of Hispanics and Blacks without health insurance.
It’s clear that in the relations between nations, health care matters. The question is whether it matters more than just being fodder for the national propaganda cannons.
