JOHN DLUDLU: Chinese ambassador’s strident attack on US breaks with tradition
Lin Songtian’s accusations of human rights abuses — on the eve of trade talks — signal a more assertive and vocal Beijing
31 July 2019 - 05:15
Lin Songtian, China’s ambassador to SA, penned a strong letter on Tuesday, accusing US secretary of state Mike Pompeo of “lying through his teeth and politicising [the] human rights issue”.
The trigger for the letter, published in this newspaper in the form of an advertorial, was Pompeo’s accusation that China is “in a league of its own as a human rights violator and … one of the worst human rights countries that we’ve seen since the 1930s”. This was regarding the so-called re-education camps and “persecution of religious minorities” by the Chinese government in Xinjiang...
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