On August 26th 2022 as the US-NATO directed counter-offensive against the Donbass Republics and other Ukrainian regions resisting the NATO installed Nazi friendly regime in Kiev began to take place, the NATO states, led by the United States and Britain, escalated their aggression against China.
The Donbass Republics and Russian forces broke the Kiev offensive in Kherson and inflicted heavy losses on the Kiev regime as they did in the past several days in the Kiev attack in the Kharkov region. Western propaganda was awash in claims of a Russian defeat, but they were the same type of claims made by the Germans in 1944-45 as they rushed headlong to their destruction; claims made in desperation, which led them to sabotage the North Stream Pipelines and the Crimea Bridge, which then literally blew up in their face on October 10 and 11.
At the same time, the US and its allied states, as if the war in Ukraine is not enough to satisfy their lust for power and world hegemony, and oblivious to the severe consequences their actions and sanctions have caused themselves and their citizens over the past few months, engaged in provocations against Iran, North Korea, and Syria, even Turkey, but, most importantly, against China; with several visits of US and European political figures to the Chinese province of Taiwan, despite Chinese warnings, with the US increasing the supply of weapons to the Taiwanese secessionists, with sabre rattling using US aircraft carriers in the Pacific and by stirring up Japan to menace China, as if their defeat in 1945 had been erased from history.
Some time ago I wrote about the CIA-MI6 backed anti-China “ Uyghur tribunal” that was set up in London in July 2021 and headed by Geoffrey Nice, the British lawyer who gained notoriety for trying to frame up President Milosevic of Yugoslavia at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, the ICTY. He failed miserably when Milosevic and his defence team, (of which I was proud to be a part) tore his claims into shreds and proved that it was NATO that had committed war crimes and atrocities in their unprovoked aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999.
But most relevant to China, Milosevic raised in his trial the fact that US and NATO planes attacked China at the same time, by launching several cruise missiles at the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing a number of Chinese officials. That attack proved that the USA and its allies consider themselves above the law, and beyond all morality. It proved them to be colonialists and imperialists to the core, and open enemies of the people of China.
Mr. Nice failed to charge any NATO officer or official or head of government for this war crime against China, as he refused, along with Canadian prosecutor Louise Arbour, to charge any NATO officials for their war crimes committed against the people of Yugoslavia.
Since then the USA has continued its aggression with economic warfare, disguised as revisions of trade agreements, as sanctions, along with cyber attacks, sabre rattling over Taiwan, a failed attempt to form a military alliance in southeast Asia against China, by agreeing to provide nuclear submarines to Australia to be aimed at China, and encouraging the Japanese to build up their armed forces for the same purpose.
It has also begun an intense propaganda campaign in all the western media, especially Voice of America and its Asia affiliates, and in the Rupert Murdoch controlled media. One of the most notorious elements of this campaign was the kidnapping, by Canadian authorities, on American orders, of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was detained in Canada for several years while the US tried to get their hands on her. That attempt finally collapsed and she returned home, but the smears of China continue.
The most persistent elements of their propaganda are the false allegations that China is committing “genocide” in its province of Xingjian against the Uyghurs, a Turkic, mainly Muslim population living there. In Europe, the Falun Gong, another CIA front group, is notorious for standing on streets and handing out anti-Chinese pamphlets containing these lies and slanders. It amounts to criminal slander, but no one is prosecuted.
In Britain, the London Uyghur tribunal, led by Geoffrey Nice was set up to conduct “hearings” about the claims. I discussed this in an earlier article. It was a failure in terms of immediate propaganda. Most of the western press ignored it and it seemed to fade away into irrelevancy. But the World Uyghur Congress, the CIA-front group that arranged and helped to finance the London tribunal and presented many of the staged “witnesses” and concocted ‘evidence” has since used the tribunal “findings” to harass China in other places.
In September 2021, the European Centre For Constitutional and Human Rights, mislead by the London tribunal and the World Uyghur Congress made allegations that certain European companies were using “Uyghur forced labour” to manufacture their products. The companies denied these claims as did China and as does most of the Moslem world, but that did not matter to the ECCHR. The big splash in the press was what they wanted and is what they got. They cited the London tribunal in support of their fake claims.
On December 14, 2021 the World Uygur Congress and its allied organisation, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, based in Washington, D.C. announced the engagement of British barrister, Michael Polak, to file a claim in Argentina, against China, for crimes against Uyghurs, basing their ability to do so on Argentina’s laws that grant it universal jurisdiction over crimes of “genocide.” Polak is chair of another anti-China propaganda group, Lawyers for Uyghur Rights.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project is funded by the US government, through the National Endowment For Democracy. It also has connections to US anti-Chinese Senators Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumacher and was nominated by other US congressmen for the Nobel Prize in order underline its efforts.
As the legal action was announced, lawmakers in Washington advanced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, intended to block the import of goods into the U.S. produced by “forced labor” in Xinjiang and authorize sanctions on foreign individuals and entities found responsible for rights abuses. Polak was also used by the World Uyghur Congress to complain to the International Olympics Committee about the issue to try to ruin the Winter Olympics of 2022 held in China.
ON August 26, 2022 he and others finally filed a case against China in Argentina, stating, that the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), have filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Criminal Court in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 16, accusing Chinese officials of “genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim ethnic groups.”
China reacted through its Washington embassy spokesperson, Lui Pengyu, to a Voice of America question. Lui stated that,
‘Over the past 60-plus years, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang has grown from 2.2 million to about 12 million.’
“The accusation of ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang is a flat-out lie of the century,” Liu told VOA in an email. “Whatever ploys are used; a lie repeated a thousand times is still a lie.”
Of course he is absolutely correct. But the USA and its propagandists for hire care nothing for the truth. They care only about creating an impression, of creating hostility towards China, and they are doing this in order to discredit and justify war against China.
Theses groups have not stopped at national courts and fake tribunals. On December 15, 2020, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court rejected consideration of their allegations filed with the ICC about China and their claims about the Uyghurs, on the basis that since China is not a signatory to the Rome Statute creating the ICC and accepting its jurisdiction the ICC cannot act as it has no jurisdiction to do so. In any case, as we have observed with the fake evidence presented to the London ‘tribunal’ and the Argentine court, there is nothing to investigate.
In fact we remember that just in May of this year, Michele Bachelet, former President of Chile, and High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN visited China and reported that she did not find evidence to support the claims being made against China. She immediately suffered a series of slanderous attacks in the western, especially British and American, media and reported that she was under enormous political pressure to issues a report the west had expected from her. She seems to have been forced out of seeking to continue her term of office due to this pressure. And to add insult to injury the British House of Commons refused to allow Chinese diplomats to attend the ceremonies and lying-in-state of Queen Elizabeth in London, on the pretext of the Uyghur claims.
It is about time these propagandists be held accountable for their actions, for manufacturing hatred and hostility towards a nation that has brought its people out of the poverty imposed on them by the west during the colonial period and which the west wants to impose again. It is a monstrous crime against the truth and against China.
At the Nuremberg Trials the Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher, was hanged for putting out propaganda about Jews and inciting hatred leading to genocide. At the Rwanda Tribunal the members of a radio station were convicted of genocide for allegedly making false reports on events that the prosecutors claimed instigated hatred that led to genocide. Hate speech is proscribed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other treaties.
Is this not what Nice, and Polak, the ECHHR, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, such as Fox News and his British media, the World Uyghur Congress and its affiliated partners in crime are doing; trying to instigate hatred and hostility to justify war, to justify harming and killing Chinese? Is this not where it all leads? Is this not a crime against humanity? Are not they the real criminals?
Propaganda is a threat to peace itself. It is not only necessary to eliminate nuclear weapons and armies. It is also necessary to eliminate the psychological weapons that are used to justify, provoke and prolong war.
I wrote what follows before but it bears repeating for those that have not read it.
A Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations of November 3, 1947 denounced war propaganda;
“The General Assembly condemns all forms of propaganda, in whatsoever country conducted, which is either designed or likely to provoke or encourage any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”
A Soviet draft definition of aggression presented to the General Assembly in 1957 defined war propaganda as ideological aggression. Their draft stated that a state has committed ideological aggression when it “encourages war propaganda, encourages propaganda for the use of atomic or other weapons of mass extermination and stimulates Nazi-fascist views, racial or national superiority, or hatred and disdain for other peoples.”
But before that the Supreme Soviet on March 12, 1950 passed a law on the defence of peace that stated:
“The Supreme Soviet of the USSR is guided by the high principles of the Soviet peace policy, which seeks to strengthen peace and friendly relations between the peoples, recognises that human conscience and the concept of right of the peoples, who, during one generation suffered the calamities of two wars, cannot accept that the conduct of war propaganda remain unpunished, and approves the proclamation of the Second World Congress of the Partisans of Peace, who expressed the will of the entire progressive mankind concerning the prohibition and condemnation of criminal war propaganda.
“The Supreme Soviet decrees,
To recognise that war propaganda under whatever form it is made, undermines the cause of peace, creates the threat of new war and is the graves crime against humanity.
To bring to court person guilty of war propaganda and to try them as having committed a most grave criminal offense.”
The western powers blocked a Russian UN resolution at that time to denounce war propaganda even though it was in accord with the principles of the United Nations Charter, which makes it a duty of all member states to preserve the peace. The west relied on arguments of “free speech,” arguments that do not hold water since war propaganda is not designed to enlighten people but to twist their minds into thoughts of hatred and war.
Those who are taking part in the western propaganda campaign against China claim to be for justice but are in actuality tools of injustice. They claim to be acting for victims of oppression but the truth is they are agents of western oppression. They claim to be for peace but are in truth advocates of war. They claim to be founded in law but in fact reject all law. Reject them. Better yet, expose them. The facts, and history, will condemn them.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.