In the article transmitted below, my distinguished recipient Alex Lo shines a bright light on a particularly egregious example of Western hypocrisy.
While the U.S. and U.K. governments, as well as several other Western governments, have formally declared that China's deradicalization/reeducation program in Xinjiang constituted "genocide", even though no intentional "cides" (killings) were even alleged to have occurred during this program, they continue to deem it outrageous to apply the term "genocide" to Israel's continuing program of indiscriminate mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
If one wishes to find indisputable evidence that Western governments have no genuine concern for "human rights" but simply use that term selectively as a club to beat up countries that it dislikes for other reasons, the Xinjiang/Palestine dichotomy provides it.
NOTE: The 15 countries denouncing China's human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council are exclusively from the "Global West", of which Japan, whose people were formally deemed "honorary whites" by the former South African apartheid regime, forms a part.
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
in Toronto
A Palestinian man searches amid the rubble of a house levelled in an Israeli strike in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 10, 2024. Photo: AFP
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 Council.
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.
On Sunday, Israeli air strikes on northern Gaza killed another 30, 13 of them children. Another day, another routine operation by the world’s “most moral” army. I hate to know what the Israeli army considers “immoral”.
But you say, it’s all Israel and American-made bombs. Actually, it’s not just them, but several leading Western powers are also criminally involved to varying degrees. They all belong at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, if it weren’t actually run by the Western powers to only target non-Western war criminals.
Australia and New Zealand have sent troops to the Red Sea to support the US-Israel military axis against Yemeni civilians; refused to join the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice; and shared military and other intelligence during Israel’s destruction of Gaza. The Australian government has rejected about 7,000 Palestinians fleeing Gaza. By contrast, it previously granted more than 11,000 Ukrainians temporary visas and offered 6,000 additional places over three years to Afghan refugees under its humanitarian programme.
We now know Britain has flown secret aerial missions over Gaza to provide data and intelligence to the Israeli military. Last week, a German freighter arrived at Alexandria in Egypt carrying hundreds of thousands of kilograms of explosives destined for Israel. I wonder what they are for. How about some of that “transparency and openness”?
Of course, all these Western countries and much of their dominant media – with a few honourable exceptions – have provided diplomatic cover for Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people, society and state, including arresting legal protesters, banning peaceful protests, firing academics and journalists who dare criticise Israel, and otherwise fabricating a general crisis of antisemitism to crack down on any anti-Israel criticism.
But it’s not just Palestinians. Muslim lives are worth little in the public and political discourses of the West, whether by its politicians or media pundits and reporters. The deaths of hundreds of thousands 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.
When it comes to China, very little evidence is needed to claim atrocities and genocide were committed. But with Israel, no amount of overwhelming evidence proving atrocities and genocide will suffice. If irrefutable, well, just suppress it, and denounce and discredit those who come up with it as antisemitic.
The West’s rise to global dominance was achieved on the back of a long series of genocides on five continents. Today, as we witness its decline and the end of its hegemony, it’s tragic irony that it is, again, back to its own tricks, in support of the last colonial-settler project of Western civilisation.
It won’t succeed. Unfortunately, many people will have to die first – thanks to the West’s utter disregard for those humans who unhappily belong to the wrong race or political cause.