MOSCOW, August 20. /ITAR-TASS/. The detentions of reporters in Missouri show Washington's unwillingness to air TV reports that could affect the country's image, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official said on Wednesday.

"We are again dealing with Washington's human rights 'double standards' when we keep hearing [US] vociferous calls for all countries and nations on the necessity to ensure freedoms of speech, expression and media," Konstantin Dolgov, the ministry's human rights commissioner, said accusing the US authorities of the ill-treatment of American journalists.

The statement comes after several journalists were detained while covering ongoing protests in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed black teenager was shot dead by a white police officer. At least 11 journalists were arrested during the riots, CNN reported on Wednesday.

Dolgov also said that protests in Ferguson proved that the United States is still facing race problems.

"These problems are very serious and systematic. They are definitely not limited to a single city or a single state," he said adding that racial tensions emerged in the US from time to time and could become more frequent if the government made no conclusions.

In 1992, riots broke in Los Angeles when four police officers were acquitted after the beating of a black construction worker. The riots left more than 50 people dead.