The world is now facing severe economic difficulties because of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by malignant virus.

The International Monetary Fund has predicted that the economic conditions of the countries in general are deteriorating at the quickest pace in decades and the global economic growth rate will further decrease by 4.4%.

The point in question is that there appear the attempts to abuse these sufferings and pains for their sinister political purposes, thus prompting great concerns of the international society.

A newspaper of one country has recently exposed the reactionary nature of the American “aid” and “humanitarian assistance” by commenting that the United States is backing long-term assumption of power and providing support to those rulers obedient to it, but not hesitating to overthrow the government if the reverse is the case.

These comments can be fully elucidated by the U.S. domestic laws of its own making.

The U.S. “Foreign Assistance Act” enacted in 1961 and revised or supplemented thereafter stipulates that any form of assistance to other countries should fully serve the foreign policy of the U.S.

Article 498 of this Act points out that any form of assistance should be banned to those countries that fall behind “human rights standard” established by the United States, and article 620 of the said Act states that any assistance should not be permitted to the communist states with different  idea from the United States.

The “Mutual Security Act” cooked up in 1950 also incorporates a clause which states that the U.S. should not provide any assistance to other countries if that assistance doesn’t help realize the U.S. foreign policy.

This vividly reveals the purpose behind the American much-touted “assistance.”

In actual practice, many countries have undergone bitter tastes as a result of pinning much hope on the American “aid” and “humanitarian assistance.”

In 2011, the U.S. suspended military and economic aid to Pakistan for one year when the Pakistani government expressed its protest to the conduct of unauthorized military operation by the U.S. special forces in Pakistan. And in 2014, the U.S. threatened to trim the financial aid by US$ 33 million, while talking about “human rights”, on the pretext that the Pakistani government had arrested anti-government figure.

The U.S. cut off US$ 1 billion aid for Afghanistan under the pretext that the Afghanistan authorities were not obedient to its instruction to abide by the peace agreement with Taliban.

In 2011, the U.S. imposed “improvement of human rights” on a country in the Middle East over its “human rights issue”, and in the following year, the U.S. openly incited an internal conflict in Syria, saying that the U.S. is prepared to provide “humanitarian assistance” to the Syrian citizens if anti-government forces attain their goal.

In 2018, on the ground that the Palestinian government rejected peace talks with Israel, the U.S. froze US$ 125 million out of the humanitarian assistance fund of US$ 346 million which they annually used to donate to the United Nations for the protection of Palestinian refugees.

In this regard, an official from the Arab League of States expressed great concern, saying that this constitutes a menace to the refugee problem, a core issue in the Middle East.

The U.S. also resorted to despicable attempt to drag Cambodia into an anti-China move, threatening that it could not provide the promised aid of US$ 82 million unless the Cambodian government takes effective pro-U.S. steps with regard to the regional security issues such as the one of South China Sea.

The above-cited factual information is only a tiny piece of abundant evidences which reveal the true nature of the “humanitarian assistance” touted so much by the United States.

The world press is now denouncing the U.S. “humanitarian assistance”, commenting that it is no less than a political tool for subordinating other countries politically and economically, and the U.S. is raking in money a dozen times high in return for its trivial “aid.”

Analysts of global issues comment that the “human rights issue”, a catchphrase used by the U.S. whenever they bring up the issue of “humanitarian assistance” is, in essence, a smokescreen for pursuing the interference in the internal affairs of the countries concerned.

This vividly reveals that the American ulterior intention of linking “humanitarian assistance” with “human rights issue” is to legitimize their pressure on the sovereign states and achieve their sinister political scheme.

Currently in the U.S., the number of infected cases caused by the COVID-19 crisis amounts to over 34.7 million with the death toll as many as 620,000, and this is putting their people into great despair and agony.  And all hues of social evils peculiar to U.S., such as gun-related crime, hate crime, racial discrimination are widespread, thus plunging the U.S. society as a whole into greater chaos and disorder.

So much so that the international society is deriding the United States, saying that, before making “humanitarian assistance” a subject of discussion, the U.S. would be well-advised to seek an international aid to clear the consequences of the humanitarian disaster that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives due to their poor response to the malignant pandemic and to stamp out all hues of social evils, such as gun-related crime and racial discrimination.

Humanitarian assistance should, under no circumstances, be abused for sinister political purpose.

Kang Hyon Chol, Senior Researcher, Association for the Promotion of International Economic and Technological Exchange