China blasts Trump over his response to US unrest
Beijing calls president a hypocrite for criticising rioters while supporting Hong Kong protesters
A man stands in front of burning vehicles following protests in Seattle on Sunday night © Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty
Tom Mitchell in Singapore and Xinning Liu in Beijing
June 1, 2020
Chinese officials and state media outlets have savaged the Trump administration’s response to violent protests raging across the US, describing the president as a hypocrite after he supported Hong Kong’s demonstrations.
In a tweet directed at US state department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, who said the Chinese government had “flagrantly broken its promises to the people of Hong Kong” with its plan to impose a new security law in the territory, her counterpart at China’s foreign ministry, Hua Chunying, wrote “I can’t breathe”.
Those were the final words uttered by
George Floyd, the African American man whose death while being detained by Minneapolis police officers sparked violent confrontations in dozens of US cities.
“After just three days of rioting in Minneapolis President Trump threatened to shoot protesters,” a commentary in the nationalist tabloid Global Times observed, in a reference to the president’s tweet that “when the looting starts the shooting starts”.
The newspaper added that in more than six months of often violent demonstrations in Hong Kong, just one protester had been shot when he allegedly struck the arm of an officer who had drawn his service revolver in self-defence. In fact, three protesters have been shot during the course of Hong Kong’s unrest, none fatally.
“Why does the US refer to black-clad rioters as ‘heroes’, but label its people protesting against racial discrimination as ‘thugs’?” Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesman, asked on Monday. “Why did the US have so many problems with restrained law enforcement by the Hong Kong police but have no problem at all with threatening to shoot at its domestic protesters?”
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