Washington is the supporter of genocide who sits in judgment of others
Feb 26, 2024
China’s contrasting political repression and economic development in Tibet and Xinjiang does not hold a candle to US-sponsored state terrorism by Israel against the Palestinian people.
Sometimes I wonder whether politicians in Washington are not humanoids preprogrammed by some master alien race to wreak havoc on earth.
It’s simply hard to imagine lawmakers who are real human beings to be so devoid of elementary decency, a sense of shame or at least embarrassment. Not to mention there is the metaphorical blood on their hands and very literally the horrifying amount of blood spilled by devastating US-made weapons deliberately supplied to a genocidal ally.
The appalling irony of the day is that the US House of Representatives has passed legislation to protect Tibetans and Uyghurs in China from human rights abuses. Seriously. These are the same US politicians who have been arming Israel to carry out the vilest and cruellest attacks on Muslims in Palestine.
One of the bills mandates a human rights tsar “for Uygur issues” in the US State Department. Most people around the world would think it’s far more urgent to address “Palestinian issues”, such as the daily massacres against them.
The three bills were sponsored by California Republican Young Kim, and Democrats Jim McGovern and Gregory Meeks.
These are the ones who have shouted loudly – like most of their congressional colleagues – about “Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists”, the actual mouthful name of a resolution passed overwhelmingly by Congress, the same legislature that voted to send weapons to Israel even before it had asked for them.
Sometimes you really have to wonder whether Israel is a client state of the United States in the Middle East, or rather the United States is Israel’s client state in North America.
Some 29,000 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 67,780 injured, in Gaza since October 7 by Israel. So more than 1 per cent of the population are now dead, most of them women and children. Countless children have been maimed for life. But there are even mainstream news articles – which have been fully complicit in dehumanising the Palestinian people for decades – quoting US politicians who warned Israel’s military operations could radicalise the next generation of Hamas terrorists.
That may be so, but not when those children have no legs or arms to work as “terrorists”, or when they are dead. There is a cruel and inhuman logic to Israel’s imposition of a high death toll on Palestinian children – pre-empting their futures as “terrorists”, or poets, doctors, lawyers, librarians, scholars, scientists or comedians. But no, Israel does not distinguish; they are all terrorists.
Kim’s bill authorises new action to protect China’s Uygur populations from human rights abuses. McGovern’s amends the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, the basis of much of US policy on Tibet, to further counter Chinese disinformation about the autonomous region; in other words, more American state-sponsored propaganda to counter Chinese propaganda. At least you know the Chinese media are controlled by the state while the US state-funded media pretend to be independent and objective, and are so far more insidious and dangerous.
The third bill by Meeks aims to set up parliamentary ties with Australia, India and Japan, member states of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad.
Didn’t India a couple years ago amend its own constitution to revoke the autonomous status of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir?
Isolating and terrorising the Muslim population in India? The region has suffered more internet shutdowns and restrictions by Indian authorities than any other place by a foreign government in recent years.
That’s OK. Bombing the Muslim population back to the Stone Age in Gaza? That’s more than OK. It’s Israel’s right to self-defence, which according to former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo during a recent visit to Israel, is also making the world safer from terrorism. That’s the man who overrode his own State Department lawyers’ expert opinions and insisted on declaring China as having committed genocide in Xinjiang during his last days in office.
But those evil Chinese! In the immoral, sorry, I meant immortal words of Kim, “Chairman Xi is trying to rebrand Xinjiang as a business and tourist destination and seeks to erase Uygurs from the international community’s memory.”
McGovern apparently thinks the same about Tibetan culture. Now that’s genocide and human rights breaches, something we can’t stand for.
But wait, how does using indigenous Uygur or Tibetan culture to promote tourism and business erase them from the international community’s memory? Falsifying their authentic culture? Cultural misappropriation as genocide?
Do people like Kim even process what they are saying before making a public statement?
Exploiting them for tourism and forcing them to work in new businesses is so much worse than terrorising or bombing entire Muslim populations to smithereens.
Don’t get me wrong. It must be acknowledged that Beijing has quite a bit to account for in human rights breaches in those autonomous regions. However, it has also built schools, hospitals and mosques for the locals, and infrastructure to develop the economy. And they are still officially autonomous, unlike Jammu and Kashmir.
I would say building is generally less genocidal than bombing and laying a medieval-style siege to induce famine against a particular racial group. It’s just too rich for the US to stand in judgment over China’s treatment of Muslims, or anyone else’s.
Republished from the South China Morning Post, February 19, 2024
Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
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