Chinese envoy criticizes Australia, U.S. for 'double standards' on human rights

While Australia, the U.S. and a handful of other Western countries turn a blind eye to their severe human rights issues at home, in the meantime they point their fingers at other countries, which says a lot about their hypocrisy on human rights, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Wednesday, in response to over 100 countries who have voiced support for China in various ways and opposition to interference in China's internal affairs under the pretext of human rights at the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly.

"We urge Australia, the U.S. and a handful of other Western countries to face up to and address their own severe human rights problems, stop the wrongful moves of politicizing human rights issues and using them as tools, and play a constructive role in international cooperation on human rights," Lin said.

Australia and the U.S., among a few others, reached new lows in their practice of "double standards" in front of the world, by downplaying the situation in Gaza, while smearing against China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region over human rights issues, said Fu Cong, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, at the Third Committee of the 79th session of the General Assembly, on Tuesday, according to the official website of the Permanent Mission of China to the UN.

This reveals, once again, the true intentions of Australia and the U.S. to use human rights as a pretext to interfere in China's internal affairs and curb its development, and to broadly suppress developing countries that adhere to an independent and autonomous foreign policy, Fu noted.

If the death of more than 40,000 civilians in Gaza and the starvation and the displacement of millions of women and children are not enough to awaken the conscience of a few Western countries, and is not enough for them to stop sending weapons and ammunition that have claimed the lives of countless Palestinian civilians, then "their so-called protection of human rights of Muslims is nothing but the biggest lie," said the Chinese envoy.

In terms of human rights issues, Australia and the U.S. among a few others have no qualification to criticize other countries as they have their own severe human rights issues at home, but they always find reasons to point fingers at others, Li Haidong, a professor from the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

In the Gaza Strip, the actions of certain Western countries are clearly fanning the flames. However, they criticize China for human rights issues, which is absurd because such criticism is heavily colored by bias, Li said.

It is clear to the whole world that China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Xizang Autonomous Region have remained stable and prosperous, where all ethnic groups live together in harmony. The so-called assessment report on Xinjiang is fraught with lies and deception. It is purely a product of coercion of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) by the U.S. and a few others, Fu said.