U.S. unworthy of title "human rights defender"

In just eight weeks, the number of fatalities in America from the COVID-19 pandemic has exceeded the casualties suffered by the U.S. army in the Vietnam War. Mortuaries and crematoriums in New York are already overloaded, and ordinary people can’t even afford medical expenses.

Medical staff transport a patient in a hospital in New York on April 19, 2020. (Photo/Xinhua)

The tragedy that is happening in America is actually a humanitarian crisis resulting from the incompetence of the U.S. government in dealing with the pneumonia outbreak.

While lives and families in America are being put in danger, what are the politicians doing? Donald Trump, President of the U.S., retreated to Camp David for a weekend, while U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated his claims that he had a lot of evidence the novel coronavirus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, but failed to provide any of it.

It took the U.S. less than 100 days to go from one confirmed pneumonia case to 1 million. During this period, American officials were slow to order quarantine, claimed that the novel coronavirus was not as serious as the flu and delayed large-scale nucleic acid testing.

Trump even bluntly said during one news conference that a final US coronavirus death toll somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 people would indicate that his administration had “done a very good job,” showing a blatant indifference to life.

While turning a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis in their own country, some Americans have tried to stir up trouble in other countries.

Under the guise of human rights, some U.S. politicians have stigmatized China, trying to make the country a scapegoat for its own incompetence amid the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the US has frozen funding to the World Health Organization and is determined to continue imposing sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, obstructing the anti-epidemic efforts of these countries.

America is skilled at destroying men without violating the laws of humanity, as referred to in the book Democracy in America written by Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political theorist. In fact, it seems that the country didn't even bother to pretend to respect humanity during the outbreak.

This is not rare in American history. Examples can be cited from the Native Americans, who were removed from their lands and slaughtered by white people, the black people who were enslaved and oppressed by the white people as recorded in the Chicago History Museum, and the Black Lives Matter campaign against violence and racism towards black people.

Both history and reality have exposed the nature of the American view of human rights, which is to deprive others of rights for the sake of its own desires.

It should be obvious to anyone with a conscience that the U.S., which treats lives with indifference, is not qualified to be called a "defender of human rights." The attempts of some American politicians to start rumors, scapegoat others and gain political interests will never withstand the test of humanity.