Commentary: Washington is committing crimes against humanity

BEIJING, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- As global COVID-19 cases crossed the gruesome 200-million mark on Thursday and new variants are fueling fresh surges, Washington is committing crimes against humanity by trying to take the world hostage in the battle to beat the cunning virus.

In recent weeks, the Delta variant has been ravaging Earth like a wildfire. Yet, some U.S. politicians are still seeking to hijack the world's COVID agenda and stage a witch hunt against China.

In their reckless bid to smear China and peddle the so-called "Wuhan lab leak" theory, those Washington politicians have gone increasingly insane.

They appoint intelligence agents instead of scientists to lead a taskforce to search for the origins of the virus; they parrot each other saying there is evidence for their conspiracy theories but always fail to present them simply because there isn't any; and they jump up and down to strong-arm other countries and the World Health Organization into accepting their lies.

Their self-serving calculations are too obvious to miss: to scapegoat China for their immense failure in controlling the outbreak within their own borders, to reject international origin tracing inside the United States, to find another excuse to suppress China and to score cheap personal political points.

The United States should have played a key role in rallying the global community to vanquish the deadly pathogen given the fact that it boasts the world's most advanced medical technologies and facilities as well as top-tier talents. However, under the watch of its political leaders, the world's sole superpower, which has produced the most infections and related deaths so far, has become a major source of infections worldwide, and a disruptor-in-chief of the world's anti-pandemic fight.

Had those politicians shown a little bit of respect for science, facts and, most of all, human lives, the 200-mln milestone could have been delayed or never arrived.

In America, there is a saying that every president is the antidote to the excesses of his predecessor. Many around the world once hoped that the current U.S. administration could shift away from the previous White House that was filled with liars. Yet it seems that Washington is still crowded with hypocrites and doctrinaires.

One case in point is Washington's hollow vaccine promise. While most countries are still struggling to deal with the new virus variants and the unequal distribution of vaccines, the U.S. government has already hoarded vaccine doses enough to cover its total populations several times over. Although the administration has pledged to help other countries with vaccines, its promise has largely stayed on paper.

Without a shadow of doubt, the world as a whole has paid a heavy price for Washington's political manipulation, and is mostly likely to suffer more.

As suspicions and tensions grow among different countries, the hard-won solidarity and consensus of the international community on jointly fighting the deadly pathogen are thrown into real jeopardy.

Meanwhile, with new variants emerging, the spread of this cunning disease is gaining momentum. It took more than one year for the virus to infect 100 million people, and only less than seven months to infect a second 100 million.

"It is a slaughter," William Foege, epidemiologist and former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once said in a letter at the early days of the pandemic, denouncing the U.S. government for politicizing the fight against the deadly pathogen within the United States.

And now, by politicizing the fight against the pandemic on a global scale, the U.S. government is committing crimes against all humanity.

Those Washington politicians should be well aware that their preposterous China lies are dragging the whole world deeper into the abyss of this once-in-a-century pandemic. If they do not take back their manipulative hands fast and call off their viperous political scheme, they will one day be prosecuted for their high crimes against humanity.