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Top US diplomat Rex Tillerson breaks tradition, doesn’t attend launch of human rights report

Rex Tillerson declined to unveil the report in person, breaking with precedent established during both Democratic and Republican administrations

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The US State Department released its annual report on human rights around the world on Friday but the release was overshadowed by criticism that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave the report little of the traditional attention or fanfare. File photo: Reuters

Low-profile US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came under attack for failing to appear in public to launch his own department’s annual human rights report.

US President Donald Trump’s chief diplomat, who has all but dropped from public view since taking office a month ago, penned a brief preface to the survey of the rights record of 199 countries. He has however held high level meetings, including one with China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi on Tuesday in Washington.

But there was no event or news conference to mark the report’s launch, and the State Department provided only an anonymous “senior administration official” to respond to reporters’ questions.

The report itself paints a bleak picture of the situation in many countries, but there is no attempt to draw out a global theme or to say whether things are generally getting better or worse.

The report doesn’t rank or compare countries, though its sections on some individual countries indicate areas of the most concern:

China: “Repression and coercion” of those involved in civil and political rights remains “severe,” the report says. It adds that tens of thousands of political prisoners remained incarcerated despite the government’s denial it holds any. Other serious human rights abuses included arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life, executions without due process, illegal detentions at “black jails,” torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and detention and harassment of journalists, lawyers, dissidents and petitioners.

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