TEHRAN – Tehran has slammed Washington for interfering in China’s internal affairs after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill for sanctions against Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

In a statement on Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi referred to the United States’ genocide of native Americans, the enslavement of African Americans, massacre of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine and Yemen, and pardoning war criminals, saying with such shameful record, the U.S. is not qualified at all to make comments about the ethnicities, races and Muslims.

“The repetition of such brazen violation of the well-recognized principles of international law is simply a reminder that interference in the internal affairs of other nations has become a tenet of the U.S.’s norm-violating foreign policy,” he said, according to the Iran Front Page.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry says the U.S. is not qualified at all to make comments about ethnicities, races and Muslims.

The spokesman further denounced the recent bill the U.S. House of Representatives passed against China, warning the international community against a growing trend in such measures which threaten the global peace and stability.

Mousavi also advised independent countries to react to the U.S. government’s recurrent violation of norms and its unbridled unilateralism.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would require the Trump administration to toughen its response to China’s alleged crackdown on its Muslim minority in Xinjiang, drawing swift condemnation from Beijing.

The Uighur Act of 2019 is a stronger version of a bill that angered Beijing when it passed the Senate in September. It calls on the president, Donald Trump, to impose sanctions for the first time on a member of China’s powerful politburo even as he seeks a trade deal with Beijing.

In a statement released shortly after the Uighur Act of 2019 was passed, China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday condemned the move, saying the bill “wantonly smears China's efforts to eliminate and combat extremism.”

“We urge the U.S. to immediately correct its mistake, to stop the above bill on Xinjiang from becoming law, to stop using Xinjiang as a way to interfere in China’s domestic affairs,” said the statement.

MH/PA