In a veiled attack on Russia and China at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council today, Secretary of State John Blinken warned that the actions of some powers exemplify the impunity of evil for others. Today’s meeting was chaired by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
China, which holds the presidency of the Security Council in May, convened the meeting to discuss multilateralism at a time when the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, are competing for influence at the United Nations. President Joe Biden sought to reaffirm traditional U.S. leadership in the face of China’s move toward dictatorship, a reversal of former President Trump’s preferred style of unilateralism.
Blinken stressed the need for nations to abide by international commitments, focus on human rights and respect the principle of sovereign equality.
When U.N. member states, particularly the permanent members of the Security Council, violate those provisions and obstruct accountability for those who violate international law, he said, “it sends a signal that other countries can violate those provisions without consequence.”
The United States alleges that the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on Uighur Muslims at a vocational training center in Xinjiang is an act of genocide. The Communist Party denies the allegations of atrocities, claiming it seeks to extinguish extremism, and that the Uyghur Muslims at the Xinjiang Vocational Training Center are not being held accountable.
Brinken said, “Asserting internal jurisdiction does not give you carte blanche to do whatever you want, to enslave and torture people, to make them disappear and impose ethnic cleansing, or to otherwise violate human rights.”
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