U.S. human rights violations: dealing in double standards cannot cover up their own failures

Having recognized that seeking the truth was of no help to themselves, certain U.S. politicians instead chose to fabricate lies and push rumors to mislead the public in line with their own self-interested reality. And when their despicable practices were criticized, these individuals doubled down and started resorting to double standards, confusing right and wrong with a twisted logic of “a robber acting like a cop”.

A homeless man sits on the roadside in Chicago, the United States, Jan. 17, 2020 amid a snowfall. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)

When it came to human rights issues, they pieced together annual reports on other countries' human rights, pointing fingers at the human rights situation in a large number of countries all over the world, including close American allies.

Over the past few months, U.S. politicians have concocted various lies on human rights issues in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, peddling their talking points with the help of official organizations, media outlets, and so-called non-governmental organizations. The rights to life and development constitute some of the most fundamental human rights recognized under international law. Some politicians in the U.S. and other Western countries have turned a blind eye to the real situation in Xinjiang and have championed the claim that human rights are not being ensured there.

In the meantime, the U.S. has made every effort to cover up its own terrible human rights record. Due to its leaders’ ineffective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of COVID-19 deaths in the country is expected to soon surpass the 600,000 mark.

While the virus was spreading uncontrollably throughout the country, more than 41,500 people were violently killed in shooting incidents across the U.S. in 2020, an average of more than 110 deaths a day. For millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of their race is normal in their country and living in fear of being targeted in incidents of gun violence and hate is the everyday reality.

Many countries and regions around the world have been laid to waste, with their people descending into misery due to direct or indirect U.S. engagements in military conflicts abroad, many of which are conducted in conformity with Washington. D.C.’s eternal pursuit of hegemony.

How could these victimized people enjoy any rights if they’ve already lost their lives? The U.S., despite brandishing a bullhorn and accusing other countries of engaging in so-called “genocide”, is in fact the primary international actor that undervalues human life. This kind of double-dealing and downright baneful behavior is a blatant example of the double standards that U.S. politicians have continually had a hand in for.

Although it has been worshipped for decades as a paradise on earth by some people, the U.S., presently the wealthiest country in the world, has seen a widening gap between the rich and the poor. An analysis from Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies indicated that the wealth of the country's billionaires rose to as much as $3.88 trillion as of October 2020.

In the meantime, the number of people living in poverty in the U.S. has grown by 8 million since May 2020, as revealed in a study co-authored by Teachers College economist Jordan Matsudaira and researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty & Social Policy.

The wealth of the 50 richest people in the U.S. alone shot up by another $339 billion at the start of 2020, an amount that is equivalent to the total wealth held by half of the poorest people in the country, data from the U.S. Federal Reserve showed.

How can people possibly fully enjoy human rights and equality when the division between the rich and the poor continues to increase? No wonder so many Americans are so quick to assert that the U.S. is a kind of paradise for the rich.

Social polarization has meanwhile become a malignant tumor in the U.S. that sucks the dynamism and vitality of the wider society, undermining social ethics and so-called “democratic values”. Ever fearful of provoking any serious consequences, U.S. politicians and their backers are eager to evade taking any responsibility for the mess by smearing and stigmatizing others in a self-serving campaign of smoke and mirrors.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have called the violent storming of the United States Capitol Building in Washington. D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 a “riot”. The U.S. and some Western countries had previously condemned the violent separatist protests held in Barcelona, Spain in 2019, saying that it was the responsibility of the Spanish government to punish the rioters according to the law.

However, when events of a much more massive scale took place in China's Hong Kong SAR, the U.S. and Western countries flagrantly emboldened the anti-China forces operating in the territory, having thrown around accusations and even imposing would-be sanctions on China, the latter acting to safeguard its national security in accordance with the law. All these moves are nothing but a farce and provide one of the starkest attestations to the double standards of the U.S.

Double standards on human rights issues, which is extremely detrimental to international order and stability, stems from the high-handed power politics that the U.S. and its leadership has been so keen to exploit to their own advantage. It is the self-centered calculation of the U.S. to pursue hegemony in the world, force its long-arm jurisdiction on others, and interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.

But in the final analysis, dealing in double standards is only an arbitrary and unscrupulous stratagem that exposes the dishonesty and bias of the people who adopt it for their own personal benefit. However, imposing double standards onto China will never become a winning strategy in the end. Living in their own world of lies and self-deception, and with such a dismal state of affairs within their own country’s borders, U.S. politicians ought to mind their own business and meditate on their own behavior.

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