BEIJING, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Indulging in the superiority as the world's superpower, the United States habitually claims itself as the "defender of international law", blames unscrupulously other countries and slaps arbitrary sanctions on them under the pretext of safeguarding international rules.
However, the United States in fact makes its selfish political gains first and puts its national law above international laws. The self-righteous country willfully breaks treaties and withdraws from international organizations, changing like a weathercock.
Under the pretense of democracy and human rights, Washington constantly interferes in other countries' internal affairs, blatantly wages wars to encroach upon other countries' sovereignty, flagrantly undermines international order, and poses a grave threat to international security.
What the U.S. has done has severely violated international rules including the United Nations (UN) Charter. The U.S. attempt to press other countries to "abide by rules" is in fact nothing but force them to yield to a unipolar world order dominated by the United States.
1.INTERFERENCE IN OTHER COUNTRIES' INTERNAL AFFAIRS, VIOLATING OTHER COUNTRIES' SOVEREIGNTY
◆ The principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs is an important principle of the UN Charter and the basic norm governing international relations. However, the U.S. government, under the guise of so-called democracy and human rights, has long interfered in China's internal affairs on issues related to ideology, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.
Through arm sales to and official contacts with Taiwan, and with statements or acts that connive at "Taiwan independence", the U.S. government has been creating obstacles to the reunification of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. After China resumed exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong, the United States colluded with a fraction of opposition forces in Hong Kong and incited social unrest there. It also wantonly smeared China's policy of governance in Xinjiang, as well as the central government's counter-terrorism and de-extremism efforts in the region, viciously slandered Xinjiang's human rights situation, and imposed unilateral sanctions on related Chinese individuals and entities.
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff of former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, personally admitted that the so-called Xinjiang Uygur issue is nothing but a strategic plot of the United States to destabilize and contain China from the inside.
◆ Being a co-sponsor of the 1267 counter-terrorism committee of the UN Security Council to list the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organization, the U.S. flip-flopped on the UN designation in November 2020 by removing the ETIM from its list of terrorist organizations, and brazenly whitewashed the terror group. For years, the United States has been providing shelter to forces like the so-called "pro-democracy movement," the ETIM and Falun Gong, which have conspired to destabilize China. U.S. politicians also met with people from those forces for multiple times as a gesture of endorsement, which exposed their real purpose of meddling with China's internal affairs in the name of "democracy and freedom."
◆ It is an international consensus that the principle of state sovereignty applies to cyberspace. But the United States, with its advantage in information technology and cyber military power, has time and again intruded and attacked other countries' cyber systems, which violated their sovereignty. In June 2013, the PRISM scandal systematically revealed the fact that the United States had long been hacking into other countries' network systems, and conducting massive network surveillance and espionage.
◆ The United States and other Western countries have been preaching and peddling the so-called system of freedom and democracy by promoting "color revolutions" across the world. The Arab Spring backed and engineered by the U.S. has created continuous turmoil in many countries in West Asia and North Africa. The United States has also long been carrying out intelligence infiltration and subversive activities in Venezuela, Panama and many Middle East countries, and has assisted opposition forces in those countries to plot coups, which seriously interfered in other countries' internal affairs.
◆ The United States is a signatory to international conventions such as the Hague Evidence Convention (also known as the Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters), the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. It has also ratified 69 criminal judicial assistance treaties with foreign countries. However, under the pretext of avoiding low efficiency and excessive restrictions in judicial assistance procedures, the United States established a subpoena ad testificandum system through domestic legislation and judicial precedents to conduct frequent extraterritorial evidence collections, which has been exercised via the Patriot Act Subpoenas and the Bank of Nova Scotia Subpoenas, and seriously undermined the judicial sovereignty and legal dignity of other countries.
◆ Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, there have been a number of abusive lawsuits in the United States seeking compensation from the Chinese government for the COVID-19 impact. According to international law experts, the U.S. courts' acceptance of these lawsuits against the Chinese government violated the principle of sovereign equality of states enshrined in the UN Charter and the principle of sovereign immunity in international law, and gravely infringed on China's national sovereignty and dignity.
2.VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL RULES, THREATENING PEACE AND SECURITY
◆ The United States has long disregarded the fundamental principle of international law that prohibits the unlawful use of force or threat to use force, and has brazenly launched wars against other sovereign states.
In 2003, the United States used a bottle of white laundry detergent as the alleged evidence of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction and launched an attack on the country without UN authorization, which caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and displaced more than 1 million people.
In 2018, some countries, including the United States, Britain and France, launched airstrikes on Syria, causing casualties and displacement to tens of thousands of innocent civilians. A 2019 UN report concluded that the United States and the Western coalition forces might not have directed their attack targets at a specific military objective or failed to do so with the necessary precaution, which thus may constitute war crimes.
The evidence of the so-called use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government turned out to be a staged video directed by the White Helmets, an organization funded by the U.S. and British intelligence agencies.
In January 2020, the U.S. forces conducted the targeted killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, in violation of the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention's provisions on the use of military force.
◆ The United States has been upgrading its nuclear arsenal, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, using the so-called "trilateral negotiations" as a pretext to evade its special responsibility for nuclear disarmament, and even entertain the thought of resuming nuclear tests.
The United States has deployed anti-missile systems in the Asia-Pacific region and Central and Eastern Europe, and is seeking to deploy land-based intermediate missile systems in the Asia-Pacific and European regions in an attempt to strengthen its military presence and establish absolute superiority.
◆ The United States has stood alone in opposing negotiations on a verification protocol of the Biological Weapons Convention and impeded international efforts to verify the biological activities in member countries and has thus become a "stumbling block" to the process of biological arms control.
The United States has secretly set up biological laboratories in many places around the world and engaged in biological militarization. The link between the U.S. military laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and the spread of the novel coronavirus remains suspicious. As the only country with stockpiles of chemical weapons in the world, the United States has repeatedly postponed destroying its chemical weapons and dragged its feet toward fulfilling its obligations, making itself the biggest obstacle to achieving "a world free of chemical weapons."
◆ By establishing the U.S. Space Force and the Space Command, the United States has been accelerating space weapons tests and military exercises, threatening space security and contradicting the principle of peaceful use of outer space.
In 2015, the country enacted a law allowing the commercial exploration and exploitation of space resources on celestial bodies such as the moon, violating the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which stipulates that "outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
◆ The South China Sea is more than 8,300 miles away from the continental United States, yet the U.S. side has established multiple military bases with offensive weapons and equipment deployed around the area. It has frequently sent aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the South China Sea and deployed a large number of military aircraft and warships there on a regular basis, and even impersonated civil aircraft by using other countries' transponder codes, which violates international aviation rules, disrupts the aviation order and safety in relevant airspace, and threatens the national security of countries in the region.
◆ On June 27, 1986, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the United States' actions of financing and training the Nicaraguan opposition, and planting offensive weapons in the relevant waters of Nicaragua violated the sovereignty of Nicaragua and the principle banning unlawful use of force or military threats.
3.UNILATERAL BULLYING & SANCTIONS IN PURSUIT OF SUPREME DOMINATION
◆ According to data published by U.S. legal firm Gibson Dunn, under former President Donald Trump's administration, the United States took more than 3,900 distinct sanctions actions, a record frequency of about 3 times a day.
◆ Based on its own Trade Act of 1974, the United States abandoned the basic norms of international exchanges, such as mutual respect and equal consultation, practiced unilateralism, protectionism and economic hegemony, and launched the Section 301 Investigation against China. In July and August 2018, the United States separately imposed additional tariffs of 25 percent on Chinese imports worth 50 billion U.S. dollars, and the tariff measures have been escalated since then. On Sept. 24, 2018, the United States started imposing an additional 10-percent tariff on 200 billion dollars worth of Chinese products, which seriously violates the basic principles and spirit of the World Trade Organization.
◆ Contrary to the principles of market competition and international trade and economic rules it has always touted, the United States has generalized the concept of national security and abused its national power and went all out to suppress specific Chinese companies. To date, it has listed 382 Chinese companies and institutions on its Entity List and 44 Chinese companies as "Communist Chinese military enterprises." It published a "Military End User List" that includes 73 Chinese companies and enacted the so-called "Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act" with provisions that clearly discriminate against Chinese companies.
◆ To suppress Huawei, the United States abused the criminal justice process and the U.S.-Canada extradition treaty to hold Huawei's Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou hostage on trumped-up charges as a means to pressure China.
◆ The United States has imposed several rounds of sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 project, which links Russia with Germany, in the past few years because the United States believes the project will impact the U.S. gas industry and its geopolitical interests in the Eurasian region. The United States has also abused its "long-arm jurisdiction" to target foreign companies such as Deutsche Bank and France's Alstom, posing a serious threat to the economic sovereignty of other countries.
◆ The United States has pursued a strategy of "maximum pressure" on Iran and prevented the UN Security Council from lifting the conventional arms embargo and travel ban on Iran on time in accordance with Resolution 2231 on the Iranian nuclear issue. In 2020, the United States pushed for the extension of the arms embargo on Iran in the UN Security Council, called for the activation of the "snapback" mechanism, and unilaterally announced the reinstatement of sanctions against Iran. The U.S. moves have failed due to the opposition of the vast majority of the UN Security Council members.
◆ The United States announced unilateral sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in September 2020 because the ICC approved and authorized the chief prosecutor to launch investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity by Taliban, Afghan security forces, and U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan. After U.S. President Joe Biden took office, the United States withdrew the relevant sanctions but still refused to face its own problems. (more)
