US should stop acting like God's 'spokesperson'
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E-mail People's Daily, August 3, 2012
On July 30, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton submitted the 2011 International Religious Freedom Report to the Congress. The report said that in the aspect of government respecting and protecting religious freedom, China's situation has obviously worsened in 2011 and China was listed into the “countries of particular concern”. Many other countries, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are also on this special list made by the United States.
In 1998, the U.S. Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act. According to this act, the U.S. State Department established the International Religious Freedom Office led by a minister without portfolio appointed by the U.S. President. The office is in charge of drafting the annual International Religious Freedom Report.
Regarding these actions by the United States in recent years, people seem to have such queries:
First, since nation-state became the major player in the international community, it has been a fundamental principle of international relations to respect each other's sovereignties and territorial integrities and to not interfere in each other's internal affairs.
Second, the idea of "religious freedom" is nothing but a stick that the United States uses to hit others. Within the United States, there is no absolute and unlimited "religious freedom” either.
Third, in recent years, the United States has been fighting against terrorism all over the world, and one of its slogans is to crack down on religious extremism.
The United States has been playing the “soft power” game very actively for many years, trying to escalate internal contradictions and issues of other countries and make internal forces of other countries fight against each other so that it can benefit without a fight. It is a wisdom called “to win without fighting” coming from Sun Tzu's “The Art of War.” Actually, the United States conducts this strategy under the name of “justice and virtue,” but what it is doing has nothing to do with “justice and virtue.”
