Experts criticize some Western countries' hypocrisy ahead of China's UPR review

GENEVA, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Experts have criticized the hypocrisy of some Western countries on human rights issues, saying that those same people who accused China of violating the human rights of ethnic groups are keeping silence towards what is happening today in Gaza.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, former United Nations (UN) independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, made the remarks at a seminar on Monday, the first day of the new session of the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) working group.

China and other 13 states are being reviewed by the UPR working group during the session from Jan. 22 to Feb. 2.

For years, some people from the United States and other western countries keep harping on the idea of "genocide" happening in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, but they never provide any real evidence, de Zayas said.

Saying that the UN Charter is the foundation of the international order, he regretted that some countries often chose not to observe it.

De Zayas said he finds it "very annoying" when he hears the top U.S. diplomat talking about a "rule-based international order." "We already have it, it is the UN charter, the only thing is that some countries are not observing it."

He told the meeting that while the world priority now is peace, some western mainstream media are actually launching the information war by spreading not only fake news but also "fake history and fake law."

"What these western media frequently do is to create caricatures of certain country so as to create a negative perception of that country that makes it far more difficult to have any sensible cooperation," he noted.

The former UN expert also criticized some western countries' "unconventional war" of unilateral measures against counties like Syria, Cuba and Venezuela, which is prohibited by the UN Charter.

"I do not use the term sanctions, because the term sanctions means that you have the moral or legal authority to punish somebody else, and certainly, the United States has no legal or moral authority to punish Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, etc."

Christoph Stuckelberger, president of the Geneva Agape Foundation, said at Monday's seminar that under this weaponization of ideological instrumentalization of human rights, if some people decide to accuse certain countries of human rights violations, they will become somehow blind to facts and figures.

"That means you can give them tons and tons of studies, (but) they just do not convince them," he said.