Last week, the United States and 11 other countries hammered China on its appalling human rights record at the United Nations, particularly the current crackdown on dissidents and human-rights activists. China struck back on Monday, accusing the U.S. of hypocrisy and lambasting American society for rape, murder, racism, and plunder.
Last week’s criticism of China included U.S. Ambassador Keith Harper expressing concerns about China’s “deteriorating human rights record, notably the arrests and ongoing detention of rights activists, civil society leaders and lawyers” to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Harper further noted that many of the detainees “have not been granted access to legal council or allowed visits by family members” and pointed out such actions “are in contravention of China’s own laws, and international commitments.”
The United States was backed by Australia, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
In response, Beijing arranged a press conference at which “four academics at government-run bodies lambasted the United States for what they said was hypocritical criticism of China and others,” as reported by Reuters.
The Chinese panel blamed Europe’s Muslim refugee crisis on the U.S., claiming that American military involvement in the Middle East was forcing people to leave their “beautiful homes.”
“Think about it: certain extremist groups that now exist, including Islamic State, wasn’t it the Americans who first off promoted them from behind?” asked Liu Hainian, director of the so-called “Human Rights Institution” at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Apparently news of the bloody rebellion against murderous dictator Bashar Assad has not reached the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences yet, nor have they gotten a look at those “beautiful homes” after their Extreme Civil War Makeover.
Liu also picked up on the American Left’s talking points to complain about the “terrible problem with racism” in the U.S. and police killing too many “people of color.”
Perhaps while Liu is taking his eye-opening tour of the beautiful homes of Syria, he could chat with the current occupants of some abandoned neighborhoods, who just happen to belong to an oppressed minority from China. They might have some interesting things to say about the state of race relations in their former homeland.
Maybe China is fuzzy about the nature of the Syrian crisis because they adamantly refuse to take in refugees themselves, while loudly demanding the United States should accept more.
Diplomat Fu Cong also complained the United States is “notorious for prison abuse at Guantánamo prison, its gun violence is rampant, racism is its deep-rooted malaise,” according to the UK Guardian.
“The United States conducts large-scale extra-territorial eavesdropping, uses drones to attack other countries’ innocent civilians, its troops on foreign soil commit rape and murder of local people. It conducts kidnapping overseas and uses black prisons,” Fu continued.
Fu threw in a few jabs at Japan for joining the U.S. statement against China’s human rights record, complaining that Japan has “refused to take responsibility for conscripting 100,000 ‘comfort women’ in Asian countries during the Second World War,” as the Guardian put it.
Most amusing were the Chinese academics’ criticism of American politics, where they claimed, “there are fewer and fewer opportunities for ordinary people to participate in elections,” because the system is “increasingly controlled by Super PACs, committees well-funded by corporate interests.”
They offered these remarks in the midst of a hotly-contested American presidential primary with record levels of turnout, where the frontrunner from one party has spent virtually nothing on political advertising, because he doesn’t have to. Also, whatever failings super PACs might have, they cannot arrest you in the middle of the night on trumped-up charges and hold you incommunicado, as the Chinese government is wont to do.
Of course, Beijing’s academic hit squad did not want to talk about that and seemed comically surprised they would be asked such inconvenient questions at a press conference.
Their grimly amusing evasions included claiming that China’s authoritarian control over television and online media was “done for the sake of protecting the country’s young people from pornography, gambling and drugs,” with Liu moaning that he was worried about his grandchildren, so he supported censoring the Internet to keep their minds healthy.
Asked about the way Chinese media would never be allowed to criticize their own government the way he was blasting the United States, Liu tried to turn it around by claiming American reporters have a slanted view of the communist regime, because “their reports on China are very few and very negative.”
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