My Take | Western values, what Western values?
The death and displacement of millions of Muslims in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen mean little. But if they are Muslims in Xinjiang, suddenly, their lives take on phenomenal value – propaganda value
Someone sent me a statement signed by 15 Western and allied countries denouncing China’s human rights records in Tibet and Xinjiang at the UN Humans Rights Committee.
Endorsed by Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, it was delivered late last month.
These Western defenders of human rights, freedom and democracy demand “transparency and openness [which] are key to allaying concerns, and we call on China to allow unfettered and meaningful access to Xinjiang and Tibet for independent observers, including from the United Nations, to evaluate the human rights situation”.
China must live up to the human rights obligations it had “voluntarily assumed”, it said, and accept the recommendations of the global community to improve its record.
Global community? What global community? Your 15 countries? Sorry, I don’t think you represent humanity at all. If anything, many of you actually represent inhumanity.
Whatever horrible things Beijing has been doing, such as developing the whole region with modern road and high-speed train connections, at least it doesn’t include helping to physically exterminate tens of thousands of Muslims, including entire families by root and by branch. Nor has it been starving an entire civilian population; bombing them with Western weapons, from north to south and then back again; denying food and medical aid to create famine conditions; destroying all infrastructure – roads, water and food supplies, hospitals, schools and basic shelters, without which basic survival cannot be sustained; and killing UN aid workers and their entire families, and journalists, doctors and nurses.
Yeah seriously, most of those 15 countries are fine with all that. In fact, several actively support such commissions of crimes or else pretend they are not happening.
