The Chinese Foreign Ministry officially demanded the United Nations investigate “human rights problems” in America on Monday, shortly after U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet absolved China of genocide charges and applauded its “tremendous progress” in human rights this weekend.
Bachelet, officially the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, traveled to China last week after years of extensively documented evidence showing that the Communist Party began a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim-majority ethnic groups in East Turkistan, an occupied region China refers to as Xinjiang. Bachelet reportedly visited a concentration camp, which China refers to as “vocational and training centers,” and claimed that it had been decommissioned.
Bachelet did not use the term “genocide” to refer to abuses in the region. In her remarks from Guangzhou, the former socialist president of Chile also failed to address the “Xinjiang Police Files,” a massive document packet published by researcher Adrian Zenz and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation this month featuring thousands of “mug shots” from China’s concentration camps, speeches including genocidal language by Communist Party officials, and photos of police training operations.
During Monday’s Chinese Foreign Ministry press briefing, spokesman Zhao Lijian applauded the U.N. human rights office for absolving China of its crimes and urged Bachelet to travel to America and investigate mass shootings perpetrated by criminal individuals as if they were state-orchestrated human rights abuses.
“The recent malicious shooting at a school in Texas is particularly heart-wrenching. The right to life of ordinary people, including children and teenagers, cannot be guaranteed in the U.S.,” Zhao told reporters, referring to a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last week.
Zhao then listed several alleged American human rights abuses completely unrelated to the Uvalde shooting, including “military operations in about 80 countries in the name of counter-terrorism,” the use of the American facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and “systemic racial discrimination.”
“We ask the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to conduct investigations into and submit reports on US’ human rights problems,” Zhao said.
Zhao also dismissed the evidence of genocide in East Turkistan – including multiple eyewitness accounts, satellite photos of concentration camps, and the government documents in the Xinjiang Police Files – as “lies and rumors” and applauded Bachelet for allegedly obtaining “a deeper understanding and recognition of China’s path for human rights development.”
Zhao’s call for an investigation into America shortly after a poorly executed U.N. visit to explore violations by the Chinese government echoes his response to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.)’s visit to Wuhan in early 2021 to explore the origins of the Chinese coronavirus. The visit – hampered by government limits of investigating key locations, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology – resulted in no significant conclusions or revelations. Zhao proclaimed that the report based on the W.H.O. visit indicated that the Chinese coronavirus actually originated in the United States and public health experts should investigate biological laboratories there, instead. No reliable evidence indicates that any cases of Chinese coronavirus were documented in the United States before the first cases appeared in Wuhan.
Following Zhao’s remarks on Monday, the Chinese government propaganda newspaper Global Times published an editorial on Tuesday echoing Zhao’s demand for a human rights investigation into the United States.
“We call on the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to launch an investigation into human rights problems in the US as soon as possible, so that the US-style hegemony cannot cover up its bad deeds,” the Global Times proclaimed, echoing Zhao almost verbatim.
“The number of shootings in the US is increasing, like black ants gathering around rotting flesh,” the propaganda outlet condemned. “Living a normal life after the gunfire should be called ‘American characteristics.’ And the American people can only dodge the bullets that come at any time by luck.”
The editorial applauded Bachelet for ignoring the East Turkistan genocide, describing it as the “lie of the century” and instead addressing shootings in America during her last press conference in China.
Bachelet’s visit to China, which has prompted global condemnation, ended with a press conference in Guangzhou where she insisted that her visit “was not an investigation” and that her goal in visiting China was “to hold direct discussions – with China’s most senior leaders – on human rights, to listen to each other, raise concerns, explore and pave the way for more regular, meaningful interactions in the future.”
“Poverty alleviation and the eradication of extreme poverty, 10 years ahead of its target date, are tremendous achievements of China,” Bachelet proclaimed in the press conference, held on Saturday. “The introduction of universal health care and almost universal unemployment insurance scheme go a long way in ensuring protection of the right to health and broader social and economic rights.”
On the East Turkistan genocide, Bachelet stated that she visited a “vocational and educational training center” and that the Chinese Communist Party claimed that all centers – the system of upwards of 1,200 concentration camps for non-Han ethnic group members – had been “dismantled.” Bachelet did not address the widespread evidence of systemic gang rape, forced sterilization, and organ harvesting at the camps.
The Chinese government, one of the world’s most prolific human rights abusers, regularly publishes “reports” accusing the American government of gross human rights abuses. The most recent, in April, listed “failed gun control, discrimination against immigrants, war crimes in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the terrible handling of the [Chinese coronavirus] pandemic” among America’s alleged abuses.
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