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UNITED NATIONS: The United States accused China on Friday (March 19) of committing “genocide and crimes against humanity” against Uighur Muslims and other minorities, and China accused the United States of discrimination, hatred “and even savage murder of people from Africa and Asia”. offspring”.
The confrontation occurred in commemoration of the UN General Assembly of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and was sparked by a line in the speech of the American ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, who spoke about being a descendant of slaves and growing up in the segregated South. , and surviving racism, including being called an “N-word.”
It came after top U.S. and Chinese diplomats concluded two days of contentious talks in Alaska, the first high-level face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office. In rare public comments, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi exchanged very different views on each other’s country and world.
Thomas-Greenfield was unusually frank about American history, saying, “Slavery is America’s original sin.”
“It has woven white supremacy and black inferiority into our founding documents and principles,” he said.
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Thomas-Greenfield said that slavery has existed in every corner of the world, “and sadly it still exists today,” as does racism, which “remains a daily challenge wherever we are.”
For millions, he said, it is even deadly, including in Myanmar, where Rohingya Muslims and others “have been oppressed, abused and killed in staggering numbers.”
“Or in China, where the government has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Uighurs and members of other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
China’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dai Bing, who was not on the original speaker list, took the floor near the end of the commemoration to reject what he called the politically motivated US accusation, calling it “an act of propaganda of rumors from beginning to end and a blatant lie ”.
He accused the United States of interfering in China’s internal affairs, saying “lies are just lies and the truth will prevail eventually.”
Referring to Thomas-Greenfield’s speech about his African ancestry, Dai said the US envoy, “in one rare case, admitted his country’s ignoble human rights record, but that does not give the country a license to get on the horse. and tell other countries what to do. “
Dai had a piece of advice for the United States: “Get rid of your ideological bias” and stop using human rights for political purposes and provoking political confrontations and disrupting international cooperation on human rights.
“I suggest that you take practical steps to end an ongoing stream of incidents of discrimination and hatred against, and even savage killings, of people of African and Asian descent that are ongoing,” Dai said.
And the United States “would better serve the international cause of human rights by putting more effort into practical and constructive action,” he said.
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Thomas-Greenfield also had some advice on how to deal with racism.
“We need to dismantle white supremacy at all times,” he said.
“This also means looking at other kinds of hate,” said the US ambassador, pointing to FBI reports of an increase in hate crimes in the past three years, recently to a level not seen in more than a decade, ” particularly against Latin Americans, Sikhs, American Muslims, American Jews and immigrants ”.
“The mass shooting in Atlanta is just the latest example of this horror,” he said, referring to the alleged murder of eight people by white men, six of them Asian and seven women.
“It is very important that we stand together, we stand together, against this scourge,” said Thomas Greenfield.
“We have failures, deep and serious failures. But we talk about them. We are working to address them, ”he said of the United States.
Referring to China, Myanmar and other countries, Thomas-Greenfield said: “We can do the same at the multilateral level. Let’s expose endemic racism and racial discrimination in all societies, around the world. “
