Chinese diplomat in Brazil slams Australia over parliamentary sex scandals

China’s hypocritical “wolf warrior” diplomats demand a probe into Australia’s sex scandals in retaliation for our COVID origins push.

China’s loudmouth “wolf warrior” diplomats have taken aim at the sex scandals engulfing Canberra, claiming that “international investigations” need to be held to hold parliament to account.

Li Yang, China’s consul-general in Rio de Janeiro and one of Beijing’s most shouty commentators on international affairs, last weekend tweeted, “The cases of sexual crimes happened in the Australian parliament are shocking! This relates to the protection of women’s human rights. Australia should accept unrestricted international investigations into those cases.”

Li’s tweet comes amidst growing questions about China’s human rights abuses of its Uighyur population, and is believed to be a not so veiled swipe at Australia’s push for an international investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.

The cases of sexual crimes happened in the Australian parliament are shocking! This relates to the protection of women's human rights. Australia should accept unrestricted international investigations into those cases. pic.twitter.com/m9ph2l64L0

— Li Yang (@CGChinaLiYang) March 24, 2021

It also comes just four months after a major diplomatic stoush between China and Australia prompted by another of Beijing’s diplomats publishing a photoshopped image of an Australian soldier holding a knife to an Afghan child’s throat.

“Who knew? Officials in the Chinese Communist Party have a sense of humour,” said academic and author Clive Hamilton when shown Mr Li’s tweet.

“I wonder if the women being raped in Xinjiang’s concentration camps agree?”, he asked.

Chinese wolf warrior diplomat Li Yang

China’s totalitarian dictatorship, meanwhile, has become notorious for its human rights violations and lack of transparency.

After bowing to pressure from Australia and other nations, China earlier this year allowed a carefully stage managed WHO delegation to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, which have still not been conclusively determined.

At the time the delegation’s initial report was published Dominic Dwyer, an Australian microbiologist who was part of the investigation, told the press that Chinese officials had not followed “standard practice” in sharing data with the team.

“Why that doesn’t happen, I couldn’t comment,” he said.

“Whether it’s political or time or it’s difficult... But whether there are any other reasons why the data isn’t available, I don’t know. One would only speculate,” referring to China’s failure to provide raw data on 174 early Covid cases from Wuhan dating back to December, 2019.

This is not the only case of China, which considers any discussion of human rights to be meddling in its affairs, refusing international scrutiny.

Protestors attend a rally for the Uyghur community at Parliament House earlier this month. Picture: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

The Chinese Communist Party has also refused access to United Nations investigators wishing to visit Xinjiang province, where the regime has been accused of cultural genocide and other horrific against the local Uyghur Muslim population.

While scant details are available in the West, in February the BBC detailed a system of “oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilisation” being deployed against the ethnic minority group, as well as the systematic rape of women held in Chinese concentration camps.

“The last thing that a Chinese official like Li Yang would enable is any kind of open investigation into Chinese government actions – whether or on its actions in the early days the pandemic, into any corruption case involving senior officials and CCP members, or into its mass human rights abuses or arbitrary detentions,” said Michael Shoebridge of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

The falsified image China posted of an Australian soldier slitting the throat of a child.

“In fact, senior CCP members are investigated by the Party, not the Chinese courts, and only handed over to the courts if the Party so decides. We saw this with the case of the Chinese government official who was appointed the head of Interpol – he disappeared without trace and it was only much later that Chinese authorities informed Interpol and the world that he was being charged with corruption back home, with no transparency about what was happening and why,” he said.

“So, Chinese government agencies and officials who come from a highly controlled authoritarian state that values opacity, repression and information control in the name of ‘state security’ are not able to be taken seriously when they call on others to be open and transparent. They must first remove the log from their own eyes before pointing out the splinter in others.”