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After a long silence, China has commented on the Bucha massacre for the first time. A state-controlled newspaper indirectly blamed the United States.
Update from April 6, 2022, 9.30 a.m.: For the first time, China has commented on the massacre in the Ukrainian Bucha. Beijing’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun said Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council: “The reports and images of the deaths of civilians in Bucha are deeply disturbing.” The “incident” should be “reviewed”; all allegations must be based on facts. Zhang called “attacks on civilians unacceptable,” but said “all sides must exercise restraint and avoid baseless allegations” until “the big picture” is clear. Zhang avoided mentioning or even condemning Russia in connection with the massacre.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi accused the UN Security Council of failing. The president, who was connected from Ukraine, described the atrocities that had been committed in Bucha in drastic words and spoke of “war crimes”.
The state-controlled Chinese media also mentioned the massacre for the first time on Tuesday, albeit with extreme caution. So far, the state news agency Xinhua has only broadcast a brief report on the incident, in which it reproduced Zelensky’s allegations, but also gave a lot of space to the Russian claim that the massacre was staged.
The English speaking one Global Times also reported on the atrocities and called violence against civilians “unacceptable”. However, “riots and wars are always accompanied by such harrowing tragedies,” the editorial said. Instead of condemning Russia for the crimes, the newspaper indirectly blamed the US for the massacre. Washington would further aggravate the situation in Ukraine through sanctions instead of actively striving for peace.
Immediately after the first reports of the massacre became known, China’s media still hushed up the incident. There were initially no comments from Chinese politicians either. The foreign broadcaster CGTN and the Hong Kong- and Shenzhen-based broadcaster Phoenix TV were the first Chinese media to report.
Bucha massacre: China’s loud silence
First report from April 4, 2022: Munich/Beijing – Sunday evening, 7 p.m. local time: Presenters Bao Xiaofeng and Pan Tao welcome their viewers to the main Chinese news in their television studio in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. Xinwen Lianbo is the name of the half-hour program that is broadcast every evening by several television stations in China* is broadcast at the same time, making it one of the most-watched TV programs in the world. As the theme tune blasts through millions of Chinese homes, the world has known for hours what happened in Bucha, Ukraine, around 6,500 kilometers west of Beijing*. The images of the many bodies found on the streets of the small town, some with their hands tied, cause worldwide horror*.
However, another message is more important to the Chinese state television CCTV. “General Secretary Xi Jinping* stressed that protecting the rivers and lakes is a matter of people’s well-being and the long-term development of the Chinese nation,” announced moderator Pan. A three and a half minute report follows, in which a few polluted, but above all very clean Chinese waters can be seen, plus Xi Jinping in various archive recordings. A water official speaks of the Chinese leader’s “important and revolutionary” policies.
Of the “Ukraine conflict*“, as the war in China is called belittling, is only on the program a few minutes before the end of the show. The Russian troops have withdrawn from Bucha, one learns there. The massacre they left behind is not mentioned.
China: No word on the massacre in Bucha
In return, viewers see two-day-old images of a demonstration in London directed against rising energy prices. And they learn that the US has increased its gas exports. Then the show shows Irish MEP Mike Wallace railing against the US in the European Parliament. Wallace had called for the abolition of NATO two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and praised the Chinese government system in an interview in 2021. Beijing likes to quote such China friends from other countries to suggest that other countries also think Chinese policy is the right one. At the end of the article, the Italian economist Umberto Triulzi emphasizes the blessing of world trade. “We still depend on each other,” he says.
The other Chinese media have also not mentioned the massacre so far. the Renmin Ribao, the Communist Party’s propaganda paper, instead quotes Xi Jinping on its front page as saying that “China’s open door will not be closed, only opened wider and wider.” The state news agency Xinhua is silent, as is the English-language one Global Times. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Foreign Ministry shared a video of the cherry trees blossoming on the Great Wall of China on Twitter.
Only on social media, such as Weibo, do you find out anything about Bucha’s war crimes. While some users are shocked, others are spreading the Russian narrative that the massacre was carried out by the Ukraine* was only staged. The Chinese censors have apparently not yet decided which of the two versions they should take action against.
China and Russia: “rock-solid” friendship
Since the start of the Ukraine war, Beijing has been performing a bizarre balancing act. On the one hand, the government emphasizes Ukraine’s sovereignty, but at the same time underlines its “rock-solid” friendship with Russia. At the Visit of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in China* A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that “Sino-Russian cooperation” is “borderless.” And President Xi pushed on Friday at the EU-China summit* blame the Europeans for the war. “The root cause of the Ukraine crisis is the regional security tensions in Europe that have built up over the years,” Xi said, according to an official statement. He also again refused to condemn Russian aggression.
World trade is suffering from the “special operation” in Ukraine and energy prices in Europe have been rising, Beijing has been saying for weeks; the USA, on the other hand, are the big war profiteers. And on an almost daily basis, the Chinese propaganda machine peddles Russian claims that the US government is running secret bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine. “If Ukraine and Russia are reconciled, the US will not be able to make Russia bleed to the last drop of blood,” she said Global Times a Chinese foreign policy expert in a recent editorial. A friend” Wladimir Putin*who left a trail of blood in Ukraine, doesn’t really fit into the picture. (sh) *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
Rubric list image: © Felipe Dana