Editor's note: Fiona Sim is a London-based freelance political commentator and public sector worker. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In his annual report, Daniel Nadel, director of the U.S. State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom, stated that the Chinese government has converted "the entire region [of Xinjiang] into an open air prison". The timing of this comment could not be more audacious when Gaza has been under siege for the past week.

Palestine and Israel

The settler colonial project of Israel and its occupation of Palestine has been a site of international dispute since the State of Israel's inception in 1948, with countries supporting an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in line with the 1967 borders and human rights organizations reporting on Israel's crimes of apartheid.

Most recently, there has been uproar in the wake of the forced evictions of Palestinians living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood by Israeli settlers and enforced by Israeli police. This has been pointed out by critics as a violation of the fourth Geneva Convention.

On the last Friday of Ramadan, at Islam's third holiest site al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Palestine, Israeli police fired stun grenades at those in prayer and stormed the mosque to disperse worshipers inside. At the end of Ramadan is joyous celebration of Eid, but Palestinian Muslims have not been able to celebrate freely with their loved ones. Instead, they - alongside Palestinians of Christian, Jewish and other faiths - have had to suffer the bereavement of loved ones killed in air strikes and evacuate their homes.

The past week has seen over 100 civilian casualties, including dozens of children, and thousands of Palestinians displaced after having their homes bombed as part of military action taken by the Israeli Defence Force. There have been reports of attacks on Palestinian families on extremist Israeli settlers in what may be considered ethnic cleansing and religious persecution.

The United States has single handedly blocked the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) from issuing a statement and an emergency meeting addressing the escalating situation in Israel-Palestine where religious sites have been a target of Israeli state aggression. 14 out of 15 other UNSC members voted in favor; only the U.S. voted against.

The Xinjiang issue

Despite the above, a cursory search of the words "open air prison" on Western search engines only brings up Western news articles and images of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, rehashing previously debunked accusations of concentration camps and repression of the Islamic faith. It is telling that the media doesn't show the dozens of videos shared on Chinese social media of Eid celebrations outside Id-Kah mosque and other places of worship around China.

Instead, CIA-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) has purported outlandish theories that residents of Xinjiang are being paid to celebrate and it is all staged. RFA has previously used Adrian Zenz's research to suggest that Muslims in Xinjiang are being prevented from practicing their faith. So, my question to these propagandists, is China suppressing or forcing religion onto its citizens in Xinjiang?

Perhaps the truth of the matter is unfathomable to these Western propaganda outlets: that a region of the world with a high Muslim population is able to thrive without threat of war, violence, or foreign intervention.

Moral Corruption of the United States

In addition, RFA ought to interrogate United States' President Biden's refusal to condemn Israel's acts of terror on the indigenous Palestinian population and the annual $3.8 billion dollar package in military assistance to Israel. This is more than the funding into climate change projects.

Then, for him to single out Hamas as the sole perpetrators of violence ignores United Nations resolution 37/43 stipulates the Palestinian right to armed resistance for "struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle".

The "homemade" rockets of the militant wing of political organization Hamas versus the U.S.-funded billion dollar state-of-the-art weapons system of the Israeli Defense Force cannot be compared. The amount of civilians killed and displaced in Gaza compared to Tel-Aviv over the past week speaks for itself.

Just yesterday the Israeli Defense Force used air strikes to topple the building tower which had been home to Associated Press and Al-Jazeera with just one hour's warning to evacuate. 

69 percent of Palestine's population is under the age of 29. This percentage of the population has experienced a lifetime of war and violence. More harrowing still, 49 percent of the population in the densely populated Gaza strip are children, meaning entire childhoods have been entrapped in an "open air prison".

This term has been popularized as Palestinians are not allowed to enter or leave Gaza due to an ongoing illegal blockade by the Israeli state. Living conditions include limited hours of electricity; inability to access medical care outside of Gaza; and limits on the number of COVID-19 vaccines allowed entering.

Despite all of this, the United States has remained steadfast in its denial of the Palestinian people's sovereignty and has even opposed an investigation by the International Criminal Court into Israel's war crimes against Palestine.

In its contradictory approach to China versus Palestine, the political agenda of the United States becomes crystal clear. It is not one concerned with morality and upholding human rights but one that relies on a U.S.-based, unipolar world order in which it decides who lives and who dies based on its allegiances.

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