As they have since the beginning of the crisis, countries that frequently find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from the U.S. government over their treatment of protesters and ethnic minorities are taking the opportunity to put in their 2 cents on Ferguson.
As the Wall Street Journal’s Charles Hutzler notes, China’s ministry of foreign affairs almost never comments on the internal politics of other countries, but spokeswoman Hua Chunying made and exception when asked about Ferguson by an American reporter:
“The case you mention is a U.S. internal affair. As the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry I will make no comment on that,” she told reporters. Then, she went further.
“But I would like to say that there’s no such thing as perfection when it comes to human rights regardless of whatever country you’re in,” said Ms. Hua. “We have to improve the record of human rights and promote the cause of human rights. We can learn from each other in this area.”
BuzzFeed’s Max Seddon rounds up some reactions from Russian state media to the latest events from the “Afromaidan,” a reference to the “Euromaidan” protests that led to the overthrow Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, earlier this year. Seddon notes that coverage of Ferguson led every news broadcast on Tuesday, and that RT, the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda network, reported live from the scene. Sergei Naryshkin, chairman of the State Duma, said the United States had brought the events on itself by “plunging the world into the chaos of its one-sided diktat.” The pro-Kremlin website Lenta.Ru, with the Russian media’s characteristic racial sensitivity, describes the unrest in Missouri as a “colored” revolution, a reference to the “color” revolutions that broke out in several post-communist countries in the early 2000s and have been a consistent object of derision from the Russian government.
Iran’s Press TV has been devoting heavy coverage to Ferguson as well. So far, though, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei—who has used the Ferguson Twitter hashtag to blast the U.S. for its hypocrisy on human rights—hasn’t weighed in yet.
