West's weaponizing of human rights a cynical hijacking of the cause: China Daily editorial

The indignation Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to display when responding on Tuesday to China's call on the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978 served to show how sensitive he is about Canada's human rights record.

Sure, Canada has set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission but only to whitewash its "terrible mistakes of the past" — the appalling treatment of the native inhabitants by the white settlers.

That Trudeau sought to present Canada's expiatory efforts for its human rights abuses against the country's aboriginal peoples in the same breadth as he accused China of such abuses against the Uygur population in Xinjiang simply exposes his ignorance of the essential differences between the two issues.

Trudeau's overweening pride in portraying a Canada that has faced up to the mistakes of the past and his palpable air of self-importance in highlighting the role Canada played earlier in the week in urging the UN Human Rights Council to probe into Beijing's practices in Xinjiang has driven home how he has so easily been hoodwinked by the lies peddled by Washington on Xinjiang, and why he is so willing to act as its pointsman in the coalition it has forged to wage a human rights offensive against China.

That is not a surprise given the extent to which Ottawa has gone to sacrifice its proud judicial independence to shamelessly detain Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, while she was transiting through Vancouver two and a half years ago at the behest of the previous Donald Trump administration. Attacking China on alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong has become a primary pressure tactic of the Joe Biden administration as it seeks to put an iron curtain around China, claiming it is a necessary cordon sanitaire to protect the international community from the malign practices of China.

Happy that Canada can serve as the vanguard for such a noble mission, Trudeau preened in the media spotlight while rehashing the unfounded allegations about the situation in Xinjiang that have been fabricated by the anti-China forces in Washington and the secessionists and extremists who they trot out in support of their falsehoods.

The white paper on the practices of the Communist Party of China in respecting and protecting human rights in China published on Thursday details not only the progress China has made in human rights protection, but also how much work it has done to promote exchanges and cooperation on the cause, suffering heavily due to the deficits in understanding in the process.

The shame is on Canada, for being a marionette of the US, for attempting to downgrade the UN Human Rights Council into a geopolitical tool, and for weaponizing the cause of human rights, which as a long-term endeavor of human civilizations should not be cynically exploited as a political expediency.