Washington uses double standard on human rights

The US-led West's selective and unilateral approach to human rights has exposed the United States' intent of using human rights as a weapon to browbeat other countries. This approach has further divided the world.

Recent years have seen the US and some of its Western allies making baseless allegations of poor human rights conditions in China, especially in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Since developments in Xinjiang are China's internal matter and there is no truth to the Western claims, the country has rightly condemned the West's nefarious attempts to smear China.

Rather than target China in order to fulfill its political agenda, the US should take measures to check the rampant gun violence and racial discrimination at home, and stop triggering and fighting wars abroad, because they are blatant violations of human rights.

In 2018, the Donald Trump administration withdrew the US from the United Nations Human Rights Council in the hope that many other member states would do the same, creating a governance crisis. The administration's move was aimed at sidelining China in the council, but it failed in its design because China continues to be one of the most important members of the council and make huge contributions to human rights protection.

Although the US rejoined the UN organization in January 2022, its 2018 decision made clear its disregard for human rights and penchant for using human rights as a tool to put pressure on other governments and manipulate states. As for China, it recently became the third-largest contributor to the UN. The US, on the other hand, has reduced its contribution－Trump cut US funding for the UN by up to $285 million.

Recently, newly appointed Party chief for Xinjiang, Ma Xingrui, announced a plan to expedite the region's urban and rural development. And the central leadership has asked the local authorities to accelerate efforts to further integrate Xinjiang into the national and global economies, and invited Western politicians and international observers to visit the region to see what the real situation there is like.

While the US claims to be the leader of the "free world", it has never admitted that human rights are randomly violated and freedom is restricted in the country. Global human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have pointed out clear patterns of human rights violations in the US based on race, ethnicity and color.

That liberal democratic norms have declined in the US is evident to all. In particular, the freedom to protest has declined, and social stigmatization and the persecution of human rights defenders and journalists have increased.

The killing of African-American George Floyd by a white police officer, who kneeled on his neck for close to 10 minutes, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020 is just one example of racism in the US.

Besides, gun violence, including mass shootings, has become a public health epidemic in the US. In fact, nearly 40,000 people were killed by guns in the US last year. Yet the gun lobby is strong enough to prevent any change in gun-ownership laws, which would make it difficult for people to buy guns, because the arms industry will lose billions of dollars in revenue.

In the US, it's money above lives.

Even the US judiciary, once famed for its independence and scientific outlook, is now beset with obscurantism, which was evident in the Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade of 1973 that legalized abortion in the country. The power to determine where, how and if abortion is permitted now rests in the hands of individual US states, and more than half of them are expected to severely restrict abortion, if not altogether ban it.

This is a huge blow to women's rights in a country that is one of the only seven countries not to have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, in spite of being one of the first to sign it after the UN adopted it in 1979.

It's time the US did some introspection and took measures to set its own house in order, and stopped making groundless allegations against other countries about human rights violations.

Committed to protecting human rights, China's global development policy is aimed at achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and narrowing disparities around the world. No state or society can claim perfection in protecting human rights, for there is always room for improvement. And, for China, ensuring the people lead a better life is the most important human right.

The writer is founder of the Friends of BRI Forum. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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