Beijing, Macau refute US accusations of city facing human rights issues

The SAR government and the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Macau have expressed their “strong opposition” to the recent human rights report of Washington, describing the report as “baseless.”

The US Department of State’s 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices claims Macau faces “significant human rights issues, including credible reports of: serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom including censorship; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; and the inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections.”

In the statement, the Macau government “urges the US to respect objective facts, and to abandon a ‘double-standard’ mentality.”

“The US should adhere to the principles of international law and the basic norms of international relations. It must stop interfering in Macau’s internal affairs and China’s domestic affairs on the pretense of human right issues,” the statement added.

The Washington report also said Macau’s citizens 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.” 

According to the report, Macau’s laws “do not fully protect members of racial or ethnic minority groups against violence and discrimination.”

Within the executive summary, it also claimed that there were “serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; and trafficking in persons.”

Meanwhile, the SAR noted the amendments to the SAR’s Law on Safeguarding National Security have been “meticulously crafted.”

“They draw extensive references from legislative experience in other jurisdictions while fully considering Macau’s legal traditions and social realities, and they strictly adhere to international human rights conventions,” the local government said.

The 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report published by the US Department of State also shares a similar critique of the local government.

According to that US report, the local government “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts, if any, to do so even considering the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.” The report also mentioned that the government had not convicted a trafficker since 2019 and has never identified a victim of forced labor in Macau.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Macau has criticized the US, stating it claimed to be a human rights defender but “ignored and destroyed human rights itself.”

In 2022, Beijing published a report called “The State of Democracy in the United States,” which described the US as having a vicious cycle of democratic pretensions, dysfunctional politics and a divided society. The report noted problems such as money politics, identity politics, social rifts, and wealth inequality in the US.

It accused Washington of behaving with a sense of superiority and lecturing other democracies despite its own mounting problems at home. Staff Reporter