‘Genocide, white supremacy’ and the Five Eyes

China has branded the Five Eyes a bunch of “racists” after they dared to condemn the persecution of ethnic Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province.

The rabid rhetoric appeared in an editorial published by the state-run Global Times about the intelligence-sharing alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Under the headline “Five Eyes today’s axis of white supremacy,” the newspaper peppered the piece with phrases such as “neo-Nazi,” “mafia-style community” and “hooliganism.”

It was in response to the decision by Canada’s parliament to back a motion accusing Beijing of “genocide” in Xinjiang.

“Canada, the UK and Australia, three members of the Five Eyes alliance, have taken action to put pressure on China. They have formed a US-centered, racist, and mafia-style community, willfully and arrogantly provoking China, and trying to consolidate their hegemony as all gangsters do,” Global Times, which is owned by the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, stated in its editorial.

The facts:

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described China’s repression in Xinjiang as “genocide.”
• Up to 1.4 million Uighur Muslims have been held in internment camps, according to human rights groups.
• Media reports containing allegations of “rape, sexual abuse and torture” have horrified the international community.
• President Xi Jinping’s administration has strenuously denied the allegation.
• Human Rights Watch has called for an “independent investigation” in Xinjiang.
• Beijing has blocked off foreign media access to what it describes as “an autonomous territory.”
• China has warned the White House about meddling in domestic “issues” involving Xinjiang.

What was said: “Five Eyes alliance members are all English-speaking countries. The formation of four states, except the UK, is the result of British colonization. Those countries share the Anglo-Saxon civilization. They have a strong sense of superiority … [and have] now become an organization targeting China and Russia. The evil idea of racism has been fermenting consciously or unconsciously in their clashes with the two countries. Such an axis is destined to erode international relations and allow hooliganism to rise to the diplomatic stage in the 21st century,” Global Times said.

A diplomatic nod of approval: “Western countries are in no position to say what the human rights situation in China looks like. There is no so-called genocide in Xinjiang at all,” Cong Peiwu, the Chinese ambassador to Canada, said.

Cutting through the doublespeak: “Although the Chinese government’s use of ‘political education’ camps has led to international outrage, the detention and imprisonment of Xinjiang’s Muslims by the formal justice system has attracted far less attention. Despite the veneer of legality, many of those in Xinjiang’s prisons are ordinary people who were convicted for going about their lives and practicing their religion. International pressure on the Chinese government should be escalated for an independent investigation in Xinjiang,” Maya Wang, of Human Rights Watch, said.

Delve deeper: Global Times and China’s Communist Party are joined at the hip. Like all major Chinese media operations, it has to answer to Xi and the CCP. “All news media run by the Party must work to speak for the Party’s will and its propositions, and protect the Party’s authority and unity,” Xi said as reported by Xinhua, the official news agency of the CCP, in 2016.

China Factor comment: Beijing’s Achilles heel has always been its propaganda-infected state-controlled media. Global Times’ latest shambolic rant illustrates its subservient role inside the Party and the fear of an independent Press. “Media organizations in the US and the UK are capable of dominating global public opinion in English, which increases their insolence to represent the international community and world public opinion.” You can taste the bile as that sentence was punched out.