OPINION / EDITORIAL
Usurping UN’s name won’t help US slander Xinjiang: Global Times editorial
Published: May 13, 2021 04:03 PM
Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

Illustration: Chen Xia/GT



The US, the UK, and Germany hosted a virtual UN event regarding China's Xinjiang on Wednesday. An absurd scene appeared once again: The US, the country that has killed the most number of Muslims across the world, has ganged up with some allies saying they are attempting to protect the human rights of Muslims in Xinjiang. 

But the Islamic countries, as members of the UN, have not endorsed the event. Only Turkey, which has occasionally attempted to meddle with Xinjiang affairs, was mentioned in some media reports about the event. Around 20 countries participated in the event - far less than the total number of US allies. More importantly, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights did not attend the event.

This was evidently an event that misappropriated the UN premises. Islamic countries' absence can be seen not only as an irony, but also a slap in the face for the organizers of the event. It is widely known that Western countries and the Islamic world have long been incompatible with each other. The US anti-terrorist war in the Greater Middle East has triggered widespread resentment among Muslims. The US' and other Western countries' so-called human rights claims over Xinjiang are extremely discreditable to Muslims globally.

Over the past two years, the US and its allies have repeatedly ganged up to slander Xinjiang-related human rights affairs. However, Islamic countries have kept distance from the US in this regard. The US has only managed to gather certain allies in the West to support its malicious attempts. Washington is trying to veneer such a small group of countries as representatives of the international community, and even the UN. Such a farce cannot hold up. 

Recently, armed conflicts surged again in the Gaza Strip, in which Washington once again stood on the opposite side of the Palestinians. Earlier, many in Afghanistan died in suicide bomb attacks due to increasing instability in the country caused by US decision to completely withdraw troops from the country by September 11.

Many Westerners don't know that Afghanistan borders China's Xinjiang. Nobody in China believes that the US really cares about the welfare of the Uygur people in Xinjiang. Instead, people tend to believe that the US and its main allies expect to turn Xinjiang into another Afghanistan that is troubled by war. The West has actively intervened in some developing countries' affairs in recent years, and look at what these nations have become: There is bloodshed everywhere, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, to Syria. China's Xinjiang doesn't want to become the next victim.

The US released on Wednesday its 2020 International Religious Freedom Report, which is full of vicious attacks on Xinjiang. Upon this, a senior official of the US State Department openly smeared that Xinjiang has become an "open-air prison." However, the fact is that peace and stability have been restored in Xinjiang. Moreover, thanks to the effective COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control measures, since last year people in the region have enjoyed more freedom than people in most US states. Those states in the US have become real "open-air slaughterhouse" where masses of people get killed by the epidemic. 

Xinjiang suffered enormously from terrorism. If the US-led Western elites hold different views about the path on how terrorism and extremism should be ended there, the fact that today's Xinjiang has resumed normal life and people of all ethnic groups enjoy a peaceful life should waken their "result-oriented" mentality. But they are just a group of people pretending to sleep.

Anyone with common sense can tell what rights the people in Xinjiang want most. They don't want to be bombed to death or stabbed to death. They don't want to be haunted with fear or become jobless because of social chaos. Only when these risks and misfortunes are excluded can they get what they dream of. The so-called human rights the US and the West advocate are in stark contrast to the true demand of people in Xinjiang. The selfishness has made Washington a geopolitical fanatic rather than a sincere guardian of human rights who respect real local conditions.

The ruling group of the US has staged its hysterical hatred toward China and its "care" about human rights in Xinjiang and the whole China in recent years. How could the US mind be so divided? The US' twisted logic in Xinjiang affairs fully exposes its hypocrisy. Washington's crazy move did not expand its mobilization capability. It instead trapped itself into a quandary. Xinjiang is becoming a waterloo of US soft power.