Speakers at forum urged the media of China and Pakistan to enhance cooperation in countering fake news to promote regional peace, stability and development. What is your response? Hua Chunying: Thank you for your attention on this forum. Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Nong Rong attended and addressed the forum.
You mentioned that participants of the forum called on the media of the two countries to strengthen cooperation and jointly combat fake news. I think this is very necessary and urgent under the current circumstances because we can see that certain countries and individuals have fabricated and spread malicious disinformation with the political purpose of meddling in other countries' internal affairs, endangering their national security and smearing their image.
Such malicious disinformation is the common enemy of mankind, as it causes confusion, undermines solidarity, undercuts mutual trust and hinders cooperation. Chinese and Pakistani media should cooperate in cracking down on disinformation. Moreover, we hope more and more countries will understand the harm of disinformation and join hands to combat it, and create a healthy, rational, objective and friendly environment for international public opinion, where people can have correct mutual understanding, friendly exchanges and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Kenneth McKenzie said he took full responsibility for the August drone strike in Kabul which killed ten Afghan civilians. The Afghan Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said the the US had sent drones in the airspace of Afghanistan, violating its sovereignty and international laws. He also warned the US of bad consequences if the US continues to operate drones over Afghan airspace illegally. Do you have any response to this? Hua Chunying: For a start, Afghanistan is an independent sovereign state.
The US should earnestly respect Afghanistan's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. In the past two decades of the US presence in Afghanistan, there were repeated tragedies of countless innocent civilian deaths and displacement. As you mentioned, on August 29, the US military staged an airstrike on a civilian residence in Kabul, killing 10 civilians, including many children. This is just the tip of the iceberg of all tragedies and misdeeds the US made in Afghanistan.
According to reports, in , US troops attacked a village in Herat province, which killed nearly a hundred civilians including 50 children and 19 women. Reports said during its military's presence Afghanistan, the US has implemented a project to create a drug laboratory on a global scale there. The production of opiates has increased more than 40 times.
The International Criminal Court ICC also pointed out that the US troops may have committed war crimes and crime against humanity in Afghanistan through the "cruel or violent" interrogation of detainee and human rights violations including "torture and cruel treatment" between and You may all know that in response, the US government last year announced sanctions on the personnel of the ICC who participated in the investigations of relevant crimes, triggering opposition from the international community.
The US troops irresponsibly and hastily withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving behind misery and suffering as well as serious challenges in livelihood and the pandemic to the innocent Afghan people. The Afghan people now finally have a new window of opportunity for their country's peace and reconstruction. On the basis of respecting Afghanistan's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, the international community should support the Afghan people in taking the future in their own hands, and help Afghanistan to maintain stability, forestall turbulence, and achieve sound development.
In the face of widespread doubts and condemnation from the international community, the US, as the culprit of the Afghan issue, should show its responsibility as a major country, make sincere apologies, conduct thorough investigations, do some soul searching and make full reparations.
More importantly, the US should stop habitually imposing wanton military intervention and forcing its own will on others, and avoid repeating the tragedies of plunging people into misery and suffering. Hua Chunying: China noted the relevant report and the latest moves of all parties related to the Korean Peninsula. We hope relevant sides can keep in mind the big picture of peace and stability on the Peninsula, stay cool-headed and exercise restraint, meet each other halfway, follow the "dual-track" approach and the principle of phased and synchronized actions, and find an feasible solution to address each other's concerns in a balanced manner, in order to jointly advance the political settlement of the Peninsula issue.
Since Yonhap News Agency pays much attention to the situation on the Korean Peninsula, I would like to elaborate a little bit. We also noticed that a senior official of the US State Department said recently that the US reached out directly to the DPRK to initiate dialogue and stands ready to meet without preconditions.
No matter how the situation evolves, China holds that parties should exercise restraint, meet each other halfway, build mutual trust, and settle the issue through dialogue and consultation. Under the current circumstances, the key to breaking the stalemate and restarting dialogue is taking seriously and resolving the DPRK's legitimate concerns. The US should avoid repeating empty slogans, but rather show its sincerity by presenting an appealing plan.
It is imperative to invoke the rollback terms of the Security Council's DPRK-related resolutions as soon as possible and make necessary adjustments to relevant sanctions, especially those relating to provisions on the humanitarian and livelihood aspects.
This is conducive to resuming the dialogue and maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and is in line with the spirit of the resolutions. It is said that three M howitzers regiments has been deployed on the border with China. Hua Chunying: The Indian side has long pursued the "forward policy" and illegally crossed the LAC to encroach on China's territory, which is the root cause of tension in the China-India border situation.
China opposes any arms race in the disputed border areas for the purpose of competition over control. We have always been firm in safeguarding national territorial sovereignty and security, and committed to peace and stability in the China-India border areas. The US has kept smearing and slandering Huawei and other Chinese companies, but is unable to present any solid evidence to support its accusations.
The so-called "national security" is only a clumsy excuse of the US to impose "national bullying" and practice trade protectionism. We don't mind that the US is restless in making domestic policies. But the US should immediately correct its mistakes and stop abusing state power and trying all means to hobble Chinese companies.
The Chinese government will continue to firmly defend the legal rights and interests of Chinese companies. Sanctions have become the go-to solution for nearly every foreign policy problem, which do not work but exact a humanitarian toll. Hua Chunying: This professor of Tufts University is of great ingenuity.
For a long time, the US has been abusing its financial hegemony and technical advantages to adopt frequent unilateral bullying practices, impose long-term sanctions on Cuba, the DPRK, Iran, Venezuela, among other countries, willfully wage "trade wars" with multiple countries and wantonly hobbles foreign high-tech companies in the name of national security. The US not only imposes sanctions on countries it sees as enemies or adversaries, but also adopts illegal, unilateral long-arm jurisdiction on third parties with exchanges with these countries, even without sparing entities and individuals of its allies.
The US abuse of sanctions severely undermines sovereignty and security of other countries, affects their national interests and people's livelihood of countries concerned, violates market economy principles and international trading rules, and disrupts security and stability of global industrial and supply chains.
This, in turn, also harms the US own interests. Some in the US are still talking about coercion. Already there has been a dramatic reduction of drone attacks and other types of airstrikes, which once reached thousands a year. Until Biden took office, the U. No truly reliable figures exist, especially for drones, since for most of its existence the drone program has been shrouded in secrecy.
In his final year in office, President Barack Obama briefly opened the window, revealing that during his term drone strikes, conventional airstrikes, or cruise missiles used outside conventional war zones like Afghanistan had killed as many as civilians. But other independent monitors put the figures much higher. The cutback in drone strikes is one element of a much bigger rethink. The Biden administration, he said, is now focused on demoting the Islamist terrorist threat on the priority list of U.
Some activist groups are mildly optimistic. Sullivan and other senior Biden officials are particularly intent on involving every major government agency in their review—another recommendation of the Finer memo—in an effort to forestall the kind of bureaucratic pushback that Biden confronted when he made his decision on Afghanistan.
Bureaucratic resistance remains strong, especially in the Pentagon, intelligence community, and national security offices of the Justice Department. They are ludicrously over-resourced and overstaffed, and the table is wildly disproportionate in favor of people pushing these counterterrorism concerns. And senior Biden appointees are gradually moving in—like Abizaid, who also signed off on the Finer memo, and who was recently confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Though terrorist activity is creeping back in places like West Africa and Syria, the main targets appear to be regional and local forces, not the United States. An April report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that the proportion of domestic attacks and plots inspired by a Salafi-jihadist ideology fell to 5 percent in —a sharp decline compared to recent years.
Biden is also determined to avoid the frustration he saw his former boss, Obama, go through. According to the United Kingdom-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Obama launched a total of strikes, mostly by drones, targeting Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, compared to 57 strikes under President George W. The use of armed drones, particularly to conduct targeted killings outside formal war zones, remains highly contentious.
It has broug ht to the fore questions on civilian casualties, the rule of law, secrecy and lack of accountability , among others. As governments fail to make adequate information publicly available on the use of drones, criticisms abound over how a lack of transparency might hinder democratic accountability.
Lack of transparency also leads to doubts over whether European countries do enough to safeguard t he rule of law. Many of the values and functions of transparency and accountability rely on adherence to the rule of law, or are adjacent to its being respected and enforced. When these three elements are balanced, they result in a functional level of legitimacy of operations, benefiting military operators, militaries, coalitions, states and ultimately the internati onal community.
With an interest in supporting a rules-based international order and defending democratic values, European countries have an opportunity to play an important role in shaping the norms on how drones are used in future, and should work to develop pathways for achieving this. This includes addressing long-standing calls for greater transparency and accountability for the use o f armed drones.
By demonstrating their willingness to address the implications of drone use, European states would keep those issues on the political agenda and could potentially exert some pressure for positive change.
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