First responders work at a nearby street after a shooting took place at a subway station in Brooklyn, New York, the United States, on April 12, 2022. At least five people were shot and 13 were injured on Tuesday morning at the subway station in Brooklyn, local media reported, citing law enforcement sources.(Photo: Xinhua)

As New Yorkers experienced a horrible shooting incident again on Tuesday, the US State Department released a new report on the human rights situation in other countries including China, and the accusations made by the US were based on the same disinformation which serves its hegemonic diplomacy, said analysts.

On the same day, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also listed US abuses on human rights inside and outside America, including failed gun control, discrimination against immigrants, war crimes in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the terrible handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that caused more 985,000 deaths of American people, in response to the Washington's report.

Chinese analysts said that playing the card of human rights is an old and pointless trick played by the US to attack the countries who disagree with Washington's policies or those who refused to submit to US hegemony, and the report released by the US has nothing to do with human rights. 

With the decline of US national strength and its problematic economic performance, the US record on human rights within or outside America will keep worsening, and the more US authorities play the card of human rights, the more it would backfire on Washington, as more and more people will find the US hypocritical, and the self-dramatizing fairytale of "the US is a beacon of democracy and human rights" will be a joke and mocked by other countries again and again, experts said.  

NYPD officers patrol the subway platform at the 36th Street subway station on April 13, 2022 in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. A manhunt is under way for a gunman who critically injured more than 20 on the train during Tuesday's morning rush hour. Photo: AFP

Hypocritical report

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the same groundless accusations with disinformation against China on Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Xizang (Tibet), and also criticized the human rights violations of multiple countries that have strategic conflicts or diplomatic divergences with the US   at a press conference on the release of the 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on Tuesday.

The US human rights report and remarks made by Blinken "neglect the facts, call white black, and are full of political lies and ideological bias," said Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson of Chinese Foreign Ministry, at Wednesday's routine press briefing. 

Zhao listed US human rights violations including having the highest COVID-19 infections and deaths despite having the most advanced medical equipment and technology, indulging hate crimes and racial discriminations against Asian, Latin and African immigrants in the US, ignoring gun violence and using human rights to cover up its hegemonic actions externally, secret prisons worldwide, creating more than 20 million refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria and 900,000 deaths of civilians in the US launched so-called "global war on terror."

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the US narrative of accusing the Chinese human rights situation remains boring and ridiculous, and the report is not even worth serious analysis. 

"For instance, US officials clamor about Xinjiang year by year, but US media like CNN can't even identify Xinjiang on the map, and those US elites dare to pretend that they care about Xinjiang. So why would we pay attention to their report about Chinese human rights?" Lü noted.

Zhao said the Chinese people have their judgment on China's human rights situation, and the international community has witnessed the Chinese government's governance capability, and these will not be smeared by a US report or a few words from some US officials. "The US used the so-called human rights report to stigmatize China and attack many countries and regions worldwide year by year, to shape the image as 'human rights judge' or 'human rights example' for itself. This just exposed the hypocrisy and double standards of the US." 

Just look at the terrible credibility and reputation of many mainstream Western media in China. Chinese people already treat them like fake news producers or propaganda machines with no neutrality but only ideological bias, and these have proven that the US narrative on human rights is not convincing to the Chinese public, Lü said.

Also on Wednesday, a man in New York set off smoke grenades in a crowded Brooklyn subway car and then opened fire, the local police said. At least 29 people were injured, according to US media. 

"Tragedies like the mass shooting at a subway in Brooklyn are repeated, as a result of the proliferation of firearms. Such violence has become the most serious human rights malady," Zhao said. 

"At least 10,362 died of gun violence, including 131 mass shootings in 2022," according to data provided by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit research group on US gun violence, Zhao noted. "Wasn't those alarming numbers worth noting? Weren't lives and the security of its own people worth nothing?" Zhao said, while commenting on US arrogance to point a finger at others on human rights.

The public security situation in the US has deteriorated in recent years and violent crimes abound. There were 693 mass shootings in 2021, up 10.1 percent from 2020. More than 44,000 people were killed in gun violence, according to the Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2021 released by China's State Council Information Office on February 28. 

The report also highlighted the country's growing discrimination against ethnic minority groups, especially people of Asian descent with around 81 percent of Asian American adults saying violence against Asian communities is rising.

'Human rights' for hegemony

According to the website of the US State Department, the US has released such a report annually in the past five decades, and the report for 2021 covers 198 countries worldwide, but the US itself is not included. 

And the report is nice to US allies but harsh and aggressive toward countries that have divergences or conflicts with the US, such as Russia and China, with analysts saying that this proves that the report serves US hegemonic diplomacy and has nothing to do with human rights.

For example, the Biden administration labeling Russia with "genocide" without an independent investigation is a typical US tactic, which was also used in the Kosovo War, said Jia Chunyang, an expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

By doing so, the US aims to take a moral high ground to justify its political and economic sanctions on Russia, turning the complex Russia-Ukraine conflict into a simple "division of camps" by a US-set standard, Jia told the Global Times.

According to Reuters on Monday, Blinken said the US was monitoring what he described as a "rise in human rights abuses" in India by some officials, in a rare direct rebuke by Washington of New Delhi's rights record. 

"We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values (of human rights) and to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials," Blinken said on Monday in a joint press briefing with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and India's Defense Minister Rajnath Singh.

Lü said "The US is being selective to criticize other countries' human rights records, and the reason why Blinken named India openly in the face of Indian senior officials is that the US was very unsatisfied with India's position on the Russia-Ukraine crisis. So this just proves once again that the US is using human rights as a card to pressure other countries, while it pretends to be blind to its horrible human rights abuses worldwide."