China urges U.S. to face up to its own human rights violations

UNITED NATIONS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Friday refuted U.S. attacks on China's human rights record and urged it to face up to its own human rights violations.

Dai Bing, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, accused U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield of abusing a commemorative meeting of the General Assembly on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

As a gesture of respect for the host country, or the United States, its representative was invited to speak alongside representatives of regional groups in the meeting, Dai noted.

However, the United States, without regard for its own credibility, has gone so far as to use the meeting to launch political attacks, smearing China and many other countries with respect to their internal affairs, said Dai.

"Act like this makes a sad mockery of its status as the host country," he said.

The U.S. accusation of the so-called "ethnic genocide" and "human rights violations" in China's Xinjiang is an outright lie of the century and a vicious political scheme orchestrated and staged by none other than the United States, which China firmly opposes and sternly rejects, Dai said.

"The truth will surely give the United States and its malicious and blind followers a resounding slap in the face," he said, adding that the United States knows genocide the best.

Since the founding of the United States, the U.S. government had developed policies to slaughter and plunder American Indians in an intentional and systematic way, decimating their population to 250,000 at the beginning of the 20th century from 5 million in 1492, Dai noted, adding this is an original sin that the United States cannot shake off.

According to a Lancet report published in October 2021, Dai noted, about 30,800 people in the United States died from police violence from 1980 to 2018, and non-Hispanic Black Americans were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to die from such violence than non-Hispanic white Americans during that period.

Anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States, instigated by U.S. politicians, have been surging ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dai said, noting that such crimes in New York City rose 361 percent in 2021 compared to 2020.

"May I ask the U.S. representative: When will you give the American Indians an explanation? When will you be able to give the ethnic minorities a real sense of fairness and justice? When will you ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women? When will you offer genuine safety and protection to Asian women who are victims of hatred and violence?" Dai said.

He urged the United States to put away arrogance and prejudice, abandon double standards, and stop pointing an accusing finger at other countries as soon as possible.

"We all know very well what the human rights situation is like in the United States. I hope that the United States will come around to face up to its mistakes and correct them, rather than knowingly leaving them be," said Dai.