U.S. foes use unrest to undercut criticism
Iran, North Korea seek to portray America as hypocritical superpower
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES— Standing at a lectern with a backdrop map of the world behind him reminiscent of one at the State Department, the spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry made a point Monday to criticize the U.S. in English amid ongoing protests over police killings of black people.
“To the American people, the world has ... heard your outcry over this state oppression,” Abbas Mousavi told reporters in Tehran.
So, too, have Washington’s adversaries in Iran and elsewhere.
Long the target of American criticism, these countries have used the protests over the killing of George Floyd as an opportunity to hit back at the country held up by U.S. leaders for decades as “the shining city upon a hill.”
By putting forth images of the unrest, they portray the U.S. as a hypocritical superpower unable to secure its own people, as well as normalizing the violence and repression they visit on their own citizens.
That criticism has extended to Twitter, which Iranian officials use extensively despite the website being banned since the protests and crackdown surrounding the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose disputed re-election sparked the 2009 unrest, called Floyd’s killing “disturbing & upsetting.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif offered a rewritten statement earlier issued by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, crossing out
Iran and replacing it with America.
Pompeo responded by tweeting: “You hang homosexuals, stone women and exterminate Jews.”
State-controlled media in China saw the protests through the prism of American views on Hong Kong’s anti-government demonstrations, which China has long said the U.S. encouraged. In a commentary, the ruling Communist Party newspaper Global Times said Chinese experts had noted that U.S. politicians might think twice before commenting again on Hong
Kong, knowing “their words might backfire.”
In North Korea, the country’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported about the demonstrations, saying that protesters “harshly condemned” a white policeman’s “lawless and brutal murder” of a black citizen.
Meanwhile, Germany’s centre-left Social Democratic Party, which is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, on Monday described itself as “157 (years old) and Antifa. Naturally.”
The tweet appeared to be a response to Trump’s assertion that he would designate Antifa, an umbrella description for the far-left-leaning militant groups that resist neo-nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations and other events, “a terrorist organization.”
Across from the U.S. Embassy in Paris, dozens of people knelt in silent protest, urging the French government to take racism and police violence more seriously. Despite a ban on gatherings of more than 10 people because of the coronavirus, they held signs reading “I Can’t Breathe” in English, or “Racism is suffocating us” and “We are all George Floyd” in French.