A demonstrator holds up an image of George Floyd following the sentencing of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin outside Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Friday. Chauvin was sentenced to 22 years and six months in prison for murdering Floyd, a videotaped killing that triggered the most profound racial upheaval in the US since the civil rights era. Photo: VCG

The latest United Nations human rights report of the US reflectes the general concern of the international community over the continuing deterioration of human rights of minority groups in the country. It also exposes US' double standards and hypocrisy, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Thursday.

The report was delivered by Fernand de Varennes, the UN special rapporteur on minority issues, as he was concluding his two-week visit to the US. "It is becoming unfortunately apparent that it is almost a tyranny of the majority where the minority right to vote is being denied in many areas," Varennes told a media briefing, Reuters reported on Monday.

Varennes briefed on the systemic discrimination against minority groups in a number of areas including electoral rights, education, religion, criminal justice and hate crimes. It noted that antisemitism, anti-Asian speech, Islamophobia, derogatory slurs against the Latinx community and anti-immigration xenophobia are on the upswing, sometimes at record levels, in the whole country.

Commenting on the report, Zhao Lijian, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said at Thursday's press conference that the US is full of contradictions when it comes to human rights issues. 

"On the one hand, the US commits genocide against the Indians, leaving the Floyds breathless, treating foreign nationals as second class, and ignoring the fears of minorities who live in severe threat of hate crimes. While on the other hand, the US is keen on the political manipulations with the so-called human rights diplomacy, where it uses the rhetoric as a tool to interfere in other countries' internal affairs," Zhao said.

The US issues human rights reports every year, yet it says nothing about its own conditions, fully exposing its double standards and hypocrisy, Zhao noted. 

While in fact US' human rights conditions are already "riddled with holes," Zhao said, urging the US to face up to its own problems and mind its own businesses instead of accusing and pressuring others at every turn. 

The UN report came after the US was included for the first time on a list of "backsliding" democracies, in part due to a slew of state legislation passed in recent months that make it harder for some voters to cast their ballots, Al Jazeera reported. 

Global Times