A detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily time outside, at Camp 5 maximum security detention prison, Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base, on December 5, 2006. Photo: VCG

The establishment of "black sites" by the US around the world serves as a typical illustration of its disregard for the rule of law and human rights, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday, adding that the US side should genuinely reflect on the crimes it has committed in violating human rights, apologize and compensate the victims, and hold accountable those responsible for authorizing and implementing torture.

The US government continues to subject the 30 men held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment", the first UN human rights investigator allowed to visit the camp since it was set up 20 years ago has concluded.

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin was granted unprecedented access as an independent UN monitor, spending four days at Guantánamo in February and meeting a range of the 34 prisoners who were then detained, according to the Guardian. The number held has now fallen to 30, including the five prisoners accused of plotting the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

"After two decades of custody, the suffering of those detained is profound, and it's ongoing. Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention," Ní Aoláin seared words for the treatment of detainees, and for what she described as the continued failure to face up to the US torture program unleashed in the wake of the 911 terror attacks.

Mao Ning, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, expressed that Guantanamo Bay prison has repeatedly been embroiled in scandals of prisoner abuse, causing immense outrage in the international community over the past 20 years. Despite the US government' repeated promises to close this prison, it continues to detain dozens of individuals, with only a few of them being charged or convicted.

Over the years, under the pretext of the so-called "war on terror," the US has established "black sites" in at least 54 countries and regions, where individuals suspected of terrorism are secretly detained. This has involved arbitrary detention and coercive interrogation methods, with Guantanamo Bay prison being just the tip of the iceberg, Mao continued.

China earlier published a report revealing truth and facts about the arbitrary detention the US conducts at home and abroad, and Chinese Foreign Ministry said the report ripped apart the disguise of the US in terms of the said issue.

The fact that the US has arbitrarily detained illegal immigrants at home and set up a large number of "black sites" abroad to create cases of arbitrary detention reflects its deep-seated hegemonic and unilateralist thinking and violent political culture, the report noted, emphasizing the arbitrary detention the US conducts at home and abroad has laid bare its hypocrisy and double standards with regard to human rights.

It called on the US to face up to and reflect upon its own serious human rights violations, stop politicizing human rights issues, and stop undermining the human rights of people of other countries. Global Times