If history is any guide, lying is a political tactic frequently used by Washington to achieve and maintain its dominance.
Many American academics, including Stephen Knott, a professor of national security at the United States Naval War College (USNWC), have even concluded that “America was founded on secrets and lies.”
In its never-ending propaganda war against China, Washington has often chosen issues related to China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region as its target. To the surprise of many, Washington has even imposed sanctions on China and disrupted global supply chains solely based on unfounded allegations of “genocide” and “forced labor” against the Uighur population in Xinjiang.
As usual, Washington’s lies are echoed by a handful of its Western allies but are met with deafening silence from the international community as a whole, especially in the Arab world.
Arab countries reject Washington’s disinformation campaign and stand firmly alongside China, supporting China’s policies regarding Xinjiang.
If Washington’s allegations were true, Arab countries would not remain silent as they share the same religion with the sizable Uighur population in Xinjiang. The Holy Quran states that:
”Believers are but brothers to one another.”
During interviews with Xinhua, several Arab experts said that the U.S.’s fabrications about Xinjiang will yield nothing as more and more Arabs see the contradictions and irony in the U.S.’s claims and have completely lost trust in the U.S.’s credibility. Moreover, many Arab delegations have visited Xinjiang firsthand and have seen what is happening there.
Disinformation War Against China
When the anti-China motion on Xinjiang proposed by Washington and its allies at the 51st session of the Human Rights Council (HRC) was rejected, applause resounded in the conference hall of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Arab countries supported China in the vote.
It is not surprising that the Arab world consistently backs China in its quest for justice, said Kamal Gaballa, an Egyptian columnist and member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs.
“Some countries are trying to hinder China’s development, and the Arab people are aware of that.”
The Xinjiang issue is “a political problem provoked by the West, which wants to keep the people (in Xinjiang) living in poverty and ignorance. The West wants to make Xinjiang a focal point of tension and terrorism to affect China’s development,” he said.
To lure more countries into voting on the draft resolution, the U.S. and its Western allies conspired to package the issue as a procedural matter, supposedly neutral without political motives. Other disinformation campaign tactics launched by Washington against China are even more blatant.
One example is Washington’s lies about so-called “genocide” in Xinjiang. U.S. politicians and media continuously hurl horrific accusations to slander China.
In fact, over the past 60 years, the Uighur population in Xinjiang has significantly increased from 2.2 million to around 12 million, with the average life expectancy in the region growing from 30 years to 74.7 years.
“How could there be genocide in Xinjiang when the population is increasing, and the country is striving to improve the economic and social development of its people?” Gaballa said, linking population growth to the Chinese government’s significant efforts to improve housing, healthcare, and education in the region.
For Kawa Mahmoud, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Kurdistan/Iraq Communist Party, some Western politicians seem to turn a blind eye to their own countries’ dark histories when making false accusations against China.
The baseless and absurd allegations of “genocide” against China are part of Washington’s ideological propaganda war against China.
The U.S.’s accusations against China are part of a systemic U.S. strategy to “break the geographical, political, and national unity in other countries” and a tactic to “ignite division among the components of a country,” said Osama Danura, a Syrian political expert and former member of the government delegation for Syrian peace talks in Geneva.
“Washington relies on incitement to provoke hatred and division among citizens, religions, and other ethnic and racial components within society ... as an alternative to direct warfare, especially with the U.S.’s declining ability to engage in conventional wars after several failed (military) adventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and some other countries,” Danura said.
The Dangerous Caldron of Deception
In interviews with Xinhua, Arab experts said that the Arab people would not be easily deceived by U.S. lies about Xinjiang, as the Arab world is well-acquainted with U.S. trickery.
On April 9, 2003, about three weeks into the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. soldiers toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. The whole world now knows that this war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, plunged the Middle East into chaos, and was based on blatant lies.
“Colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources,” said Colin Powell, then U.S. Secretary of State, to the UN Security Council in early 2003. “What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
Justifying the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Powell called Saddam Hussein a major global threat with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The enduring image of that moment is Powell holding up a small vial of white powder, alleged to be anthrax from Saddam Hussein, and telling the world that the U.S. had no choice but to go to war.
The years-long war resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, millions displaced, and cities destroyed. The subsequent occupation and ensuing chaos and insecurity provided a fertile ground for the growth of various terrorist groups, including the extremist Islamic State (ISIS).
That wasn’t the only time Washington lied to launch military interventions in Arab countries.
“Don’t you remember how U.S. forces in 1998 bombed a factory in Sudan on the pretext that it was producing chemical weapons, only to later hear then-President (Bill) Clinton admit that the factory was mistakenly bombed? On the basis of a lie, the U.S. destroyed a factory meant to produce medicines for the Sudanese people and the entire continent (Africa),” said Kamel Mansari, editor of the French-language daily Le Jeune Independent in Algeria.
For the Arab world, “the U.S.’s credibility has been in continuous decline,” Danura said.
Washington has also made extraordinary efforts to “tarnish the reputation of Islam and create a space for Islamophobia among Western societies and a fear of Islam, which has fueled racism against Islamic communities,” he added.
For Egyptian columnist Gaballa, the credibility of the U.S. and its allies has been “questioned and is not welcomed at all by the people of the Middle East.”
“The U.S. knows it is responsible for incitement and provoking escalation in the Middle East,” he said.
Seeing Is Believing
When Algerian Ambassador to China Hassane Rabehi visited Xinjiang, he expressed his admiration for how the rights of people from all ethnic groups are well protected there.
“The fruits here are very sweet, just like the lives of the people here,” he commented at the time.
In recent years, over 2,000 government officials, religious leaders, and journalists from more than 100 countries and organizations, many from Arab countries, have visited Xinjiang.
“Listening to Western propaganda about the situation in Xinjiang would give you the impression that Xinjiang is a ‘hellish’ place, but the reality is very different when journalists, non-politically oriented individuals, and the Algerian ambassador to Beijing visit Xinjiang and share their perspectives on the situation there,” said Mansari, the news director from Algeria.
