Press salon discusses U.S. human rights violations in the Middle East

BEIJING, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Some 70 journalists of Chinese and foreign media outlets from a dozen of countries and regions, joined by several Chinese scholars, attended here a press salon Monday to discuss human rights violations in the Middle East by the United States.

The press salon was hosted by the All-China Journalists Association, following a recently released China Society for Human Rights Studies report, which reveals a series of crimes committed by the United States in the Middle East and surrounding areas that seriously violated international law.

The report, titled U.S. Commits Serious Crimes of Violating Human Rights in the Middle East and Beyond, has resonated strongly with the international community.

Wang Lincong, co-writer of the report and deputy director-general of Institute of West-Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said that the United States has been the most frequent, longest-lasting, most destructive and most serious violator of human rights in the Middle East since the end of the Cold War.

Wang noted that the United States violates human rights in the Middle East and elsewhere in at least three ways.

Firstly, the United States has wantonly suppressed non-compliant countries and organizations in the Middle East, and coercively promoted American values in the region. It has not only destroyed the political, social and life order of those countries, but also obstructed their reconstruction by encroaching on local resources and imposing sanctions, which have led to serious violation of those countries' right to peace and development.

Secondly, since the end of the Cold War, Washington has been involved in almost all major conflicts and wars in the Middle East and surrounding regions, causing direct, serious and lasting damage to local people's right to life and survival, Wang said.

Thirdly, the United States has created "clash of civilizations," spread the "Islamic threat theory," and violated freedom of culture and human dignity in the Middle East.

Dai Ruijun, senior fellow at the CASS Institute of International Law, pointed out that human rights violations committed by the United States in the Middle East are serious international crimes.

She added that the United States has committed crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention, abuse of torture, torture of prisoners, and indiscriminate unilateral sanctions in the Middle East and surrounding areas.

Wu Haotan, assistant professor at the Institute of International Strategic Studies of National Academy of Governance, said that under the disguise of its so-called "human rights" and "anti-terrorism," the United States has waged wars in the Middle East, causing huge casualties and displacing a large number of people. It has always applied international law in a selective way as regards counter-terrorism, which reflects its pursuit of double standards in human rights policy.

Wu, based on her field research on Syrian civil war and Syrian refugee crisis, said the United States staged a proxy war in Syria, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of people, the displacement of tens of millions of people, and more than 6 million refugees fleeing to neighboring countries or Europe.

The experts also underlined that instead of reflecting on its own human rights problems, the United States used human rights as a tool to promote its foreign policy and maintain its hegemony, a testament to its double standards on human rights.