Photo taken on Feb. 28, 2022 shows the U.S. Capitol building, seen through a barrier fence, in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
URUMQI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The ongoing 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is certainly good timing for the United States to evaluate and reassess its discriminatory human rights standards against itself and others.
When historians evaluate Washington's integrity in the future, they are likely to discover a mortal wound inflicted by the blatant double standards of the United States on human rights.
The instances of morally reprehensible conduct of the United States are far too numerous to list, and the term "double standard" is an understatement, as it often stoops to multiple standards.
Take Xinjiang as an example. This Uygur autonomous region in northwest China has in recent years become the target of a vehement U.S. smear campaign, exposing Washington's sanctimoniousness and chilling the world to the bone.
When the United States makes bogus claims of "ethnic genocide" in Xinjiang, some legitimate questions arise.
Has the United States forgotten its own genocidal crime of butchering Native Americans, whose population nosedived from 5 million in 1492 to 250,000 at the beginning of the 20th century? Doesn't it understand such an allegation is nothing but an outright lie when the Uygur population in question has increased more than twofold since early 1950s?
When the United States erroneously accuses China of perpetrating "forced labor" in Xinjiang, many people must wonder: Doesn't the United States recall its tragic history of slavery, as well as the persistence of modern slavery on its soil, including child labor?
When the United States accuses China of "cultural genocide" in Xinjiang, one must ask these questions: Has the United States forgotten that during the 19th and 20th centuries, it used so-called "boarding schools" as cultural cleansing weapons against Native Americans, rounding up hundreds of thousands of indigenous children? Isn't it aware of China's enormous efforts to improve education for children of all ethnic backgrounds and to preserve ethnic minority groups' traditional arts?
Washington, as well as the rest of the world, knows the answers. However, it appears as if Uncle Sam deliberately wants to be in a state of oblivion. The United States is barreling toward a moral abyss and its double standards are very evident.
The latest example came this week, when the White House, which has incessantly criticized China's reasonable military budget expansions, unveiled a budget plan for the fiscal year 2023 calling for an increase in U.S. military spending.
This move by the U.S. administration marks the continuation of a dangerous trend of America's relentless drive to boost its military capabilities and presence around the globe.
Under the hood of those shifting standards, as many observers have pointed out, lies one single agenda -- the United States wishes to maintain its hegemony. However, history teaches us that acting without scruples almost always results in the reverse of what one desires.
Policymakers in Washington require some solid history lessons -- not those allowing them to bask in the euphoria of what Charles Krauthammer called "the unipolar moment" or what Francis Fukuyama described as "the end of history," but the ones enabling them to learn from the long arc of history.
To put it in a nutshell, the long arc of history does not bend toward unscrupulous empires. ■
