Racism stain of shame on 'world democratic paradise'

In the 51st Regular Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council from Sept 12 to Oct 7 in Geneva, the Chinese representatives, along with representatives of some other countries, expressed their deep concerns over the United States' discriminatory law enforcement against minorities, urging the US to face its own racism and racial discrimination, so as to avoid the tragedy of George Floyd from happening again.

The US administration has apparently not drawn its lessons from it, as more than 200 African Americans have been killed by police officers during law enforcement over the year following the death of Floyd. These tragedies have again and again exposed the hypocrisy of human rights in the US and made people see clearly that the US society is not the so-called "world democratic paradise" that its politicians boasted of, but instead a sick society in which even the basic rights of human survival are at stake.

In addition to African Americans, Asian Americans, Muslims and other ethnic minorities have also been marginalized due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the discriminatory policies of the US government. When US politicians failed to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, they openly scapegoated ethnic minorities and fueled racial conflicts and hatred to absolve their own responsibilities.

In the US, ethnic minorities are only given symbolic attention when election politics demand it. The politicians have no interest in improving the social soil in which racism breeds and the various institutional flaws that reinforce it.

In August this year, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination criticized the deeprooted problem of racial discrimination in the US when reviewing its implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The US should not pretend to be deaf to the criticism of the international community. It should take concrete actions to comprehensively review and change its discriminatory laws, policies and measures, and thoroughly investigate cases of violent law enforcement. Before it intervenes in other countries' internal affairs under the name of human rights, the US should first mend its own tattered human rights cloak.