BEIJING, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- It seems Washington's obsession with weaponizing human rights shows no signs of letting up.

Right after its so-called "Summit for Democracy," the United States issued a joint statement with Australia, Denmark and Norway on an Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative, clamoring to stem the flow of key technologies to what they claimed as "authoritarian" governments.

Once again Washington has staged another clumsy show to politically manipulate and economically bully others under the cloak of "human rights."

The country has long abused the concepts of "democracy" and "human rights" as weapons to suppress the rise of other countries and as a fig leaf to disguise its despicable history and morbid obsession with supremacy.

In fact, linking export controls with human rights is merely a ploy from Washington's old playbook. It wants "like-minded" states to use export controls to prevent the proliferation of software and other technologies used to enable what it believes are serious human rights abuses.

He who excuses himself accuses himself. The more Washington seeks to attack others as a self-proclaimed human rights "preacher," the more it exposes itself as a de-facto human rights violator from within and without.

Instead of waking up to its bleak reality at home of rampant gun violence, a widening wealth gap, deepening racial divisions and a failed COVID-19 response, Washington has chosen to shift the focus onto the human rights records of other countries.

Most recently, the U.S. administration went to great lengths to win an extradition appeal against Julian Assange, a whistleblower who exposed U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and who is an Australian citizen living on British soil.

Lurking behind Washington's impulse to accuse other countries of human rights violations while paying scant attention to its own shortcomings at home is a Cold War mentality and hegemonic mindset.

China hawks in Washington fear the Asian country's rise. They regard China as a main rival, advocate a continuous hardline policy to exert pressure across all fronts and constantly interfere in China's internal affairs, all in a bid to curb China's development and modernization.

These hawks have grown increasingly adept at using "democracy" and "human rights" concerns to fool the American public and much of the world into believing that China is a threat to global peace and stability while bolstering its own hegemony.

As suggested by French website Le Grand Soir, democracy has long become a "weapon of massive destruction" for the United States to attack countries with different views.

Human rights are "now being used as a cudgel, as a pretext" for the West, and especially the United States to "dominate the globe," Daniel Kovalik, human rights expert and lawyer at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has warned.

Washington seeks to whitewash power politics with "democracy" and "human rights" and stifle reason and justice with hegemony and self-interest, laying bare a deep-rooted political bias and mentality of Western-centrism.

With its international credibility on the decline, gone are the days when the United States could flaunt its human rights or tout itself as a "beacon for democracy."

Such attempts to demonize other nations are manipulative and divisive at a time when unity across the world is needed the most. Washington should quit using human rights as a pretext to assault other countries and focus instead on rectifying its own human rights abuses at home and abroad. Enditem

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