(Bloomberg) – China has called on the United Nations human rights chief to investigate the mass shootings in the United States, in an apparent effort to distract from alleged abuses in its region. far west of Xinjiang.
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The Global Times made the suggestion in an editorial on Tuesday, a day after Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular briefing in Beijing that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should produce a report on the problems facing the United States.
“The American system is equally unable, or lacks the interest, motivation and courage, to address these issues in a thorough way,” said the Communist Party newspaper, which added that America’s domestic problems had “intensified its external aggression.
China has stepped up criticism of the US human rights record around a trip to the Asian nation by UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, and a search for fault escalated after the recent murders at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
The party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily, published a commentary titled “Racism Poison Through America’s Body Politic,” referring to the killing of black people in Buffalo, and the official Xinhua news agency and the China Daily in English published similar articles.
The comments appear to be an effort to retaliate against the United States, which along with lawmakers in other countries has accused China of perpetrating genocide in Xinjiang. Beijing calls these accusations the “lie of the century”.
The United States has also criticized China for its handling of Bachelet’s recent trip. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s press office said in a statement that authorities “failed to allow a full and independent assessment of the human rights environment” in the world’s second-largest economy and that it It was reported that people in Xinjiang had been warned not to complain.
Activists say UN rights chief’s China trip whitewashed abuse
Human rights groups have also criticized Bachelet and her six-day trip, which she repeatedly said was not an “investigation” into Chinese practices in Xinjiang or elsewhere. At a press conference marking the end of the visit, Bachelet gave his most detailed response to a question from a Chinese state media reporter about gun violence and racism in the United States.
Bachelet said during the briefing that any action by the Chinese government to counter suspected terrorism and radicalism must not come at the expense of human rights.
Adrian Zenz, a senior China studies fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, later told Bloomberg TV that he viewed Bachelet’s visit to Xinjiang as “a disaster” for his failure to condemn China. He also called on her to resign.
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