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Media Ignores US & Australian Human Rights Abuses  The US, UK, France, other Western nations and the Western mainstream media have been castigating China over asserted human rights abuses in Tibet.
Because of the absence of outside reporters it is difficult to assess what is actually happening in Tibet. Thus according to a March 30 News.com report: “Exiled Tibetan leaders have put the death toll from the Chinese crackdown at between 135 and 140 Tibetans, with another 1000 people injured and many detained”. The highly respected organization Amnesty International has very properly criticized China over human rights abuses in Tibet in a recent statement to the UN Human Rights Council. In short, Amnesty International recognized the right and duty of China to protect all citizens from violence but expressed concern over past abuses (including lethal force and torture of detainees), the exclusion of independent human rights monitors from Tibet and its fears for human rights abuses in Tibet. The Amnesty International statement said in part, “Amnesty International is deeply concerned at human rights violations during recent events in the Autonomous Region of Tibet and neighbouring regions. Initial protests by Tibetans in these regions appear to have been peaceful and suppressed in violation of protesters' right to freedom of expression, association and assembly, including through excessive use of force. Amnesty International is aware that protests later turned violent, with individuals apparently attacked solely for their ethnic identity, resulting in death, injury and damage to property. Amnesty International condemns such attacks unreservedly, and acknowledges the Chinese authorities' right and duty to protect all individuals against violence. However, Amnesty International is concerned that in restoring order, the Chinese authorities have resorted to measures which violate international human rights law and standards. These have reportedly included excessive use of force, including lethal force and arbitrary detentions. Amnesty International has previously documented a pattern of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees in Tibet by China's security forces, especially those accused by the Chinese authorities of "separatist" activities. Moreover, China has long banned independent human rights monitors from Tibet, and the region is now virtually sealed. For these reasons AI fears for the safety of those recently detained. Amnesty International calls on the Human Rights Council to address the human rights situation in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and in the neighbouring provinces which have experienced unrest … Beyond these immediate concerns, Amnesty International calls on the Council to urge the Chinese authorities to address Tibetans' long-term grievances, including restrictions on religious practice, persecution for exercising their freedoms of expression, association and assembly, government policies that have weakened their culture and ethnic identity, and perceived exclusion from the benefits of economic development.” For a detailed analysis of the historical and contemporary Bush American anti-China agenda read Larry Chin’s article “Is the CIA behind the China-bashing Olympics protests?” . In short, an economically and militarily failing Bush America is prosecuting an anti-China geopolitical agenda aimed at introduction of US and NATO forces to stop China oil and other economic interests in Africa, notably in the Sudan; involvement of India in a US anti-China front; and continuation of longstanding US opposition to China’s very territorial sovereignty in Tibet and Taiwan. Larry Chin states: “A full-blown superpower conflict is underway. China is being simultaneously used as the labor engine for the world’s capitalist economy, while being geo-strategically and militarily encircled. China is also in the process of being financially seized and gutted by the World Trade Organization. Every move made by the Beijing government, particularly for its own stakes in oil and gas, have been violently contested by the Western powers. China’s attempted rise to the world stage, out of decades of isolation, is headed off by rapacious US-led machinations. Today’s anti-Chinese Olympics protests are simply the latest manifestation.” This primitive view has been ameliorated in recent decades by increasing trade with Asia, and Asian immigration to Australia after the abolition of the notorious White Australia Policy (1901-1973). However the US Alliance is the sine qua non of Australian politics – according to William Blum’s “Rogue State” the US CIA helped oust the reformist but Centrist Whitlam Labor Government in 1975. The right-wing Labor leader Mark Latham was destroyed in the 2004 Australian elections through blatant US intervention for stating that he would take Australia out of Occupied Iraq. China is a major destination for Australian iron ore and coal. Currently Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and the Developed World’s worst annual per capita greenhouse gas polluter. However despite the electoral ousting of the of Bush-ite, climate sceptic Coalition Government in 2007 and Rudd Labor Australia’s subsequent signing of the Kyoto Protocol (leaving the US as a notorious stand-out non-signatory), Australia helped the US and Canada wreck the Bali Climate Change Conference, resolutely refuses to act substantively on its world-leading greenhouse gas pollution and remains firmly committed to its Planet-threatening coal industry. In a remarkable testament to entrenched media lying in Australia, public debate in Australia largely ignores the reality that on a per capita basis Australia is vastly worse than China in greenhouse gas pollution. Thus for Australia the “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 production” is 19.2 tonnes but Australia is also the world’s biggest coal exporter. If we include the CO2 from Australian coal exports in the picture, then the figure for Australia (2004 US Energy Information Administration data) becomes 40.3 tonnes per person per year as compared to 20 (the US), 20 (Canada), 4.2 (the World), 3.7 (China), 1.0 (India), 0.7 (Pakistan) and 0.25 (Bangladesh) (see MWC News). Under the new Rudd Labor Government’s terracidal CO2 pollution policy of “60% reduction by 2050”, Australia’s per capita CO2 pollution figure will reach 65 tonnes per person per year by 2050 – 18 times the 2004 China figure.
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Commentary 
