Human rights are a “core interest” of the Biden administration’s foreign policy “but not the only one,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday as he launched the annual US country reports on human rights, who criticized China and Myanmar for abuses.
This years reports denounce Beijing again for “genocide and crimes against humanity” against ethnic Uighurs in China, and accuse Myanmar of using “violence to brutalize civilians and consolidate its control,” including killing nearly 3,000 people and imprisoning to 17,000.
But it also delves into human rights abuses at close US allies such as Israel, which is accused of a series of rights abuses including “arbitrary killings” of Palestinians, and Saudi Arabia, which is accused of “extrajudicial killings.” , “forced disappearances” and torture. .
Speaking at the State Department to launch the reports, which are mandated by Congress and provide an analysis of the rights situation in all 193 UN member states, the top US diplomat was asked why the reports’ findings they do not always influence American foreign policy.
“We are not going to mince words with anyone,” he replied. “Sometimes we do it more publicly; sometimes we do it more in private. We are trying to determine in each case how we can be most effective in promoting human rights and human dignity.”
Blinken said his job was to focus on “all of our interests.”
“At the same time, because we are working in different ways with different countries, we have a multiplicity of interests that we are working on,” he said. “Human rights are a central interest of ours; It’s not the only one.”
Genocide and crimes against humanity
The reports identify serious human rights abuses in Asia, including in North Korea, Cambodia and Vietnam, each of which is charged with crimes including arbitrary killings, torture and political persecution, to varying degrees of severity. But his most serious criticism in the region is reserved for the governments of China and Myanmar.
The report again accuses the Chinese government of carrying out genocide against the largely Muslim Uyghur population, most of whom live in the far western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The crimes, the report says, included “arbitrary imprisonment” or detention of more than 1 million civilians, “forced sterilization” and abortions, “more restrictive enforcement” of China’s birth control policies, rape, torture and labor forced, as well as “draconian restrictions” on the freedoms of expression, movement and religion.
Myanmar, listed under the name Burma, is once again accused of carrying out genocide and crimes against humanity, and the report says the human rights situation has worsened since the 2021 coup.
“Deposed State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other leading members of the ousted civilian government and the National League for Democracy party remained in detention,” the report said, noting that “armed opposition efforts” they had “continued to disrupt the regime’s ability to exercise full administrative control.”
“The regime responded,” it says, with “the continued arrest of political opponents, the reported use of widespread lethal violence against unarmed people, torture, sexual violence, and other abuses.”
rohingya
Myanmar has also engaged in “punishment of family members for alleged crimes committed by a relative”, recruitment of child soldiers, arbitrary killing of civilians and religious restrictions, particularly against the mostly Muslim Rohingya on the border with Bangladesh. says the report.
“Limitations on the Rohingya’s freedom of movement in Rakhine State have not changed. Rohingya cannot move freely; they must obtain travel authorization to leave their municipality,” he says, challenging “the pre-coup rule that Rohingya traveling without documentation could return home without facing immigration charges.”
Up to 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine, it says, even after “genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and the forced displacement of more than 740,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh in 2017,” but are not considered a “national ethnic group,” so you remain stateless.
inner reflection
Blinken said he recognized that the United States itself was not perfect on human rights. But he said the difference was that the US system of government accepted such criticism and actively tried to correct the problems identified.
“While this report looks outward, to countries around the world, well, you know, the United States faces its own set of human rights challenges,” he said. “Our willingness to face our challenges openly, to acknowledge our own shortcomings, not to sweep them under the rug or pretend they don’t exist, that’s what sets us apart.”
Blinken’s message was echoed by Erin Barclay, acting assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, when asked at the State Department’s morning kick-off event about a rival report on Human Rights and Democracy in the United States, which was released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday.
In its regular press conference On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin also accused the United States of engaging in “power politics and the law of the jungle” by applying human rights-based economic sanctions to other countries, which , according to him, was “seriously violating the human rights of other countries”. rights.”
US officials “always welcome criticism of the human rights situation in our country,” Barclay responded, “as long as it is credible and based on facts.”
“We don’t sweep our problems under the rug,” he said. “We are ready to enlighten them and work to improve them in our own country.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.