Equality and no double standards urged on human rights issues

Experts on Friday stressed the importance of equality and no double standards on human rights issues.

Speaking at a side-event during the 56th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, Zhang Yonghe, head of the Chongqing Centre for Equal Social Development, highlighted the issue of inequality in concepts.

In recent years, inequality through discrimination and hostility can be seen everywhere, said Zhang.

Based on prejudice and imagination, for instance, some politicians, media, and even so-called scholars tend to label other countries or nations with stigma, he said. "And China is one of the biggest victims."

Zhang said there have been even supply chains, from content production and concept shaping to rule exporting, in the building of an order of inequality, with each link reinforcing the others.

All this should be changed, he said. "We need fairer rules and should abandon double standards."

The side event, hosted by Chongqing Center for Equal Social Development at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, was themed "Global Inequality and Its Adverse Impacts on Human Rights."

Hernando Calvo Ospina, a journalist for Le Monde Diplomatique, a French newspaper, expressed his concerns about the monopoly and manipulation of information by mainstream media in the United States and the West, and accused them of being the mouthpiece of their governments.

They selectively ignore human rights issues in the U.S. and Western countries and at the same time exaggerate facts and fabricate lies to make the public believe that sanctions and aggression against certain countries are justified, he said. "A grain of sand can be rendered into a beach of lies."

David Lopez, the International Association for Human Rights and Social Development's permanent representative to the UN, noted that the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) carried out several military interventions without the authorization of the UN.

This violated the UN Charter and caused regional turmoil and humanitarian disasters in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other places, said Lopez.

He accused the U.S. and the European Union of using NATO to maintain global hegemony, saying they are obviously showing double standards.

Lopez called for the need to build a new international order based on mutual respect and equality and ensure the fair application of international law in order to achieve true peace and justice.