Human Rights. Not for George Bush

8 August 2008

Sometimes international diplomacy is just hilarious.

Out-going US president George W. Bush is in China for the opening of the Beijing Olympics, but on his way to China, he made a stopover in Bangkok and gave a speech in which he expressed his deep concerns about China’s religious freedom and human rights.

China took umbrage at this. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman rebuked the president, not for what he had to say, but for the fact that China considered his statements a form of ‘interference’ in its affairs. In other words, China chided the US President for speaking out.

In the same rebuke the spokesman made a statement that said that China was “dedicated to maintaining and promoting its citizens’ basic rights and freedoms’.

Many people around the world, including the US president, the Australian prime minister and quite a few Tibetans would query this last statement.

The irony comes when you that consider China’s claims of being a promoter of human rights comes in the same statement that is telling the leader of the free world to, effectively, shut up.

I don’t think the irony will be lost on the rest of the world either.

– Phil