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Showing posts with label lies by USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lies by USA. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

US may have supported the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, an Ukraine-based neo-Nazi military regiment founded by white supremacist

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A veteran of the Ukrainian national guard's Azov Battalion conducts military exercises for civilians in Kyiv, Ukraine on January 30, 2022 [File: Gleb Garanich/Reuters] `

Profile: Who are Ukraine's far-right Azov regiment? - Al Jazeera

 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine draws attention to ... - USA Today


 

 

The Azov Special Operations Detachment, also known as Azov Battalion, an infamous Ukraine-based neo-Nazi military regiment founded by white supremacists, garnered worldwide attention after its members were seen involved in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia's military operation in Ukraine aimed to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" Ukraine.
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Last week, the Azov Battalion sparked outrage for an insulting and racist video shared by the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) on Twitter, which appeared to show Azov members greasing bullets with pig fat. "Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs," said the NGU account. NGU later deleted the offensive video from its account following criticism by numerous Twitter users.
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Azov Battalion is reportedly a unit of the NGU, backed by Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs. Despite its possible official background in Ukraine, Azov Battalion is known in the West for its extreme neo-Nazi stance, and for its suspected involvement in a number of terrorist attacks and separatist incitement incidents in various countries and regions, including the riots in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2019.
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Ironically, despite being widely regarded as a threat to world security and an enemy of human civilization, Azov Battalion was found to have ties not only with the Ukraine authorities but also with the US. After looking into the public information from the US government and some investigative reports by Western journalists, the Global Times discovered that American politicians, military and intelligence officers were highly likely to have had cooperation with the Azov Battalion, in order to foster extremist forces in Eastern Europe against Russia.
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What is the US behind?
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Since Azov Battalion was founded in 2014, many American media outlets have revealed its potential connections with the US authorities.
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According to a Yahoo News article from January 2022, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been secretly training forces for Ukraine since 2015. The CIA has been overseeing a secret intensive training program in the US "for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel," the article quoted "five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative" as saying.
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The multi-week program includes training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like "cover and move," intelligence and other areas, said the former officials. In addition to the above-mentioned, the CIA also started "traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine to advise their counterparts there by 2015," Yahoo reported.

 Also in 2015, the US Congress removed a ban on funding neo-Nazi groups like Azov Battalion from its year-end spending bill, said an article by The Nation magazine in January 2016. In July 2015, two Congressmen drew up an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations bill that limited "arms, training, and other assistance to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia, the Azov Battalion," but the amendment was removed in November following "pressure from the Pentagon," an insider told The Nation.

"Considering the fact that the US Army has been training Ukrainian armed forces and national guard troops, ... Congress and the administration have paved the way for US funding to end up in the hands of the most noxious elements circulating within Ukraine today," commented the article's author James Carden, suggesting that the US military had also engaged in the training of NGU, which may include Azov Battalion members.
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Not surprisingly, observers reportedly saw American weapons in Ukraine "flowing directly to the extremists of Azov." In December 2017, Richard Vandiver of American weapon manufacturer AirTronic told VOA that its sales of lethal weapons to Ukraine were conducted in "very close coordination" with the US Embassy, the US State Department, the Pentagon and the Ukrainian government. Weeks later, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab confirmed in a January 2018 report that Azov Battalion was a recipient of the transfer.
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There must be some connections between Azov Battalion and the US, especially US intelligence agencies, said Li Wei, an expert on national security at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.
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"Supporting Ukraine's neo-Nazis serves the US' own interests," Li told the Global Times. "By inciting conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, the US has weakened Russia and further pushed Ukraine to NATO; it has also improved its relations with Europe, which has become more strategically dependent on the US. The US is really the biggest beneficiary of Russia-Ukraine tensions."
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In late 2021, the US was one of just two countries to vetoa United Nations (UN) draft resolution "combating the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism." The other was Ukraine. "Both countries have consistently voted against this resolution every single year since 2014," wrote an article of American magazine Jacobin in January 2022.
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With its Cold War mind-set, the US has been fanning anti-Russia flames in Eastern Europe, being very much conniving with the neo-Nazi forces there, international relations scholars criticized.
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"We've seen the US support or assist terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS)," Li said. "The US messes with the world for its own geopolitical interests."
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Evildoings around the world
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In December 2019, some Ukrainian neo-Nazis including Azov Battalion members were seen at separatist riots on the streets of Hong Kong, causing panic among local citizens, Hong Kong media reported.
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It was not the first time that Azov Battalion members were involved in terrorist or violent incidents. In March 2019, 51 people were killed at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in a mass shooting by Australian Brenton Tarrant. Tarrant, who displayed a symbol used by Azov Battalion during the attacks, claimed in his manifesto that he had traveled to Ukraine, according to an article published on the website of the Atlantic Council in February 2020.
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US media in September 2019 reported an attempted terrorist attack by an America soldier who tried to bomb a major American news network. The soldier Jarrett William Smith, arrested by the FBI, said that he "planned to travel to Ukraine to fight with violent far-right group Azov Battalion," ABC News reported that month.
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Inside Ukraine, Azov Battalion is also infamous for its evil in the eastern region. It was accused of displacing residents after looting civilian properties between November 2015 and February 2016, according to a 2016 report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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The report also accused Azov Battalion of raping and torturing detainees in the Donbass region during the period. It violated international law as well as the Minsk Agreements, said the report.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2022

US' human rights situation worsened in 2021: report

 

US human rights 

 

China's State Council Information Office on Monday issued the Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2021. The report said the human rights situation in the US, which has a notorious record, worsened in 2021 as political manipulation led to a sharp surge in COVID-19 deaths, and shooting deaths in the country hit a new record.
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The report revealed that despite having the world's most advanced medical resources, the US has the biggest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths globally. But the US government isn't rethinking its approach and still lacks effective anti-epidemic plans. Instead, it stoked the origins-tracing of COVID-19, and has been keen on passing the buck, shifting the blame and political manipulation.
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The public security situation in the country also deteriorated and violent crimes remained prevalent. There were 693 mass shootings in 2021, up 10.1 percent from 2020. More than 44,000 people were killed in gun violence, according to the report. 

 US human rights violations in 2021. Graphic: GT
US human rights violations in 2021. Graphic: GT

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The report also highlighted the country's growing discrimination against ethnic minority groups, especially people of Asian descent with around 81 percent of Asian American adults saying violence against Asian communities is rising.
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Unilateral US actions created new humanitarian crises across the globe, the report noted. A US drone strike during US' withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children, among which the youngest was only two years old.
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The report pointed out that in 2021, the US public persona of "human rights defender" was totally debunked as the so-called "Summit for Democracy" under the guise of safeguarding human rights became a farce. At the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, many countries blasted the US for being the "biggest destroyer" of human rights in the world and urged the country to address its own human rights violations.
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It's universally acknowledged that the US has a big human rights problem. The problem is characterized by racial discrimination, the lack of respect for the disadvantaged, the disparity between the rich and the poor, and the number of shooting deaths every year, Li Haidong, professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Monday.
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So when the US talks about human rights issues in other countries, it must have a clear understanding of its own human rights situation, Li urged. But the tragedy is that the politicians in the country always turn a blind eye to US' poor human rights record and pretend to be "teachers on human rights" in the international community, said Li. He added that the US has no qualification and pointed out the fact is that chaos on human rights in other countries and regions have often been brought by the US.
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On the human rights issue, the US should learn to communicate with other countries and regions on an equal footing, instead of imposing its own standards on them, Li urged.
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Chinese observers also criticized the US of weaponizing human rights to smear and attack other countries and regions, saying it is a despicable act.

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