Another Great Joke

Yossi Schwartz of the ISL, the section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 20.06.2022

We are informed that Israel joined a 47-country bloc that denounced China’s forced imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

It’s the second year in a row that Israel has signed onto such a statement. Last year, the initiative to highlight China’s human rights abuses was led by Canada, with the support of the United States and many European countries. This year it was spearheaded by the Netherlands.

At the UNHRC on Tuesday numerous extensively researched and credible reports indicate that over a million people have been arbitrarily detained.

Dutch Ambassador Paul Bekkers read out the statement during the second day of the UNHRCC’s 50th session in Geneva. Bekkers’ statement spoke of the abusive treatment of the Uyghur Muslims but did not mention the word genocide.

Dutch Deputy Minister, Alvin Botes delivers a National Statement at the Annual High-Level Panel on Human Rights Mainstreaming under the theme “Thirty years of implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: challenges and opportunities”, at the UNHRC, Geneva.

There were other reports of ongoing widespread surveillance, discrimination against Uyghurs and other persons belonging to minorities as well as of severe restrictions on Uyghur culture and the exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to freedom of religion or belief.

Bekkers urged China to comply with international law and to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. He also called on all countries not to force people at risk to return to China.” [i]

So last year it was Canada that led the campaign against China. The same Canada that its inhuman treatment against the Indians is well known. This year it is Dutch that its colonization wreaked havoc from Asia to Africa. Dutch colonization was known for the thousands of slaves the Dutch colonized many parts of the world — from America to Asia and Africa to South America; they also occupied many African countries for years.

Free men and women were kidnapped and then sold to markets in Europe and America. From the 17th century onwards, the Dutch started to colonize many parts of Africa, including Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Angola, Namibia and Senegal. The Dutch exploited natural resources as well as human resources in African countries. People were slaughtered and many were abducted to be used as slaves in America and Europe.

Makaziwe Mandela, daughter of Nelson Mandela, told Anadolu Agency, our ancestors lived without facing any problems until the English and the Dutch came to this part of the world. Mandela said: “Our ancestors living in South Africa were expelled from here when the mines in the continent were discovered. The Dutch also carried out massacres to enslave the Khoikhoi tribe in Cape Town in 1659 and 1673 and between 1674 and 1677. The massacres of the Khoikhoi people by the Dutch is the most well-known of the Dutch colonial traces in Africa” [ii]

But this was in the past and the Dutch has changed, some apologists will say. Really? Rembrandt’s magnificent full-length portraits of Oopjen Coppit and her husband Marten Soolmans are two of the most prized possessions in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam – the Netherlands’ prestigious national arts and history museum. Dressed in elaborate finery and painted in a way only the richest could afford, the couple are the embodiment of the era of economic prosperity and artistic flourishing commonly referred to as “the Dutch Golden Age”. But delve deeper and these portraits also tell a more complex and disturbing tale, for Solmans derived his wealth from refining sugar produced by an enslaved workforce on plantations in Brazil. You only have to look at the annual Saint Nicholas Day parades, where white men and women appear in blackface make up as Zwarte Piet (Black Peter). According to Van Stipriann, for decades the Dutch have convinced themselves that “we can’t be racist because we’re tolerant… it’s just a joke, it’s our tradition”. To be sure you have just to ask yourself, has the Dutch paid compensation to its victims?

And Israel the most racist country in the world and the last apartheid state has the cynicism of condemning China for the same crimes it commits.

The real danger in this cynical game is that it is leading to WWIII!

For humanity to survive, all imperialist states must die!

Endnotes:

[i] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-709426

[ii] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/dutch-colonization-wreaked-havoc-from-asia-to-africa/1075570#:~:text=From%20the%2017th%20century%20onwards,African%20continent%20from%20West%20Africa

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