Unspun

Unspun‘s unofficial and illegitimate correspondent-at-large Qvut filed this posting yesterday:

On Wednesday New York-based Human Rights Watch launched a new report which exhaustively documented abuses of the rights of migrant construction workers building the “New Beijing” of the 2008 Olympics.

The Associated Press asked the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Qin Gang for comment on the report at a press briefing:

AP: When asked about the report ahead of its publication, China’s
Foreign Ministry questioned the credibility of Human Rights Watch.
“I believe that everybody is well aware that Human Rights Watch
has some problem with its sight. It is biased. It has some problems
with its eyes. It has weakness in seeing things properly,” Foreign
Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters Tuesday.

[people present said he ended off with “don’t ask me such questions in future”]

On Thursday China’s official state news agency Xinhua had a series of stories on the Chinese government’s annual report on human rights in the United States citing  – ta da! – Human Rights Watch, ie.

(U.S. Human Rights Record) Workers’ right to unionize restricted in U.S.
159 words
13 March 2008
Xinhua News Agency <javascript:void(0)>
English
(c) Copyright 2008 Xinhua News Agency
BEIJING, March 13 (Xinhua) — A report released on Thursday by the Information Office of China’s State Council said the United States restricted workers’ right to unionize.

The union membership fell by 326,000 in the United States in 2006, bringing the percentage of employees in unions to 12 percent, down from 20 percent in 1983, said the report entitled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2007.”

“Workers’ right to unionize has been restricted in the United States,” it said.

Employer resistance stopped 53 percent of nonunion workers from joining a union, the report cited the New York Times as saying.

According to a report by the Human Rights Watch, when Wal-Mart stores faced unionization drives, the company often broke the law by, for example, eavesdropping on workers, training surveillance cameras on them and firing those who favored unions, the report said.