MSNBC Producer Provokes Backlash Describing China’s Human Rights Violations as ‘Alleged’: ‘You Absolute Clown’

Rudy TakalaDec 27th, 2021, 3:17 pm
 
Xi Jinping

Feng Li/Getty Images

An MSNBC producer provoked backlash from a legion of critics over the Christmas weekend with his suggestion that China’s human rights violations were merely “alleged.”

“Japan has decided not to send senior officials to the Beijing Olympics in February — a move that will align it with the U.S. diplomatic boycott over China’s alleged human rights abuses,” producer Kyle Griffin wrote in the Sunday missive on Twitter.

Japan announced Friday it would follow the United States’ lead in keeping its senior diplomats home from the 2022 Winter Olympics scheduled to take place in Beijing in February. The move is an effort to shame China for its abuse of Uighurs in the province of Xinjiang, where it keeps more than 1 million members of the ethnic minority incarcerated in “reeducation” camps.

Former detainees have detailed being interrogated, tortured, sexually abused, and forcibly sterilized, while a 2020 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that 82 Western companies benefited from their forced labor — among them Apple, BMW, Gap, and Nike. Documents leaked from the Chinese Communist Party and published in full last month, meanwhile, revealed the unusually involved role that Chinese President Xi Jinping plays in overseeing the Uighurs’ oppression.

Critics scornful of Griffin’s Xi-friendly message were quick to rebuke the hapless producer.

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