Unrest in Ferguson draws attention from the US's critics
- 20 August 2014
Pictures coming out of Ferguson, Missouri, of masked protesters engulfed in clouds of tear gas and police armed with military-grade kit have sparked debates within the US. At the same time, many commentators abroad see the chaos in Ferguson as hypocritical.
Much of the criticism comes from those the US has taken to task for human rights violations. They say that while US has tried to position itself as a defender of human rights abroad, it seemingly cannot uphold the same standard within its own borders.
Indeed, Amnesty International, the international human rights watchdog group, has deployed a team to Ferguson to observe law enforcement and support the community. It's the first time the group has made such a move in the US, they said.
Such news contributed to a growing narrative abroad. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei lashed out on Twitter at what he considered to be the US's crimes against its own people.
"Today the world is a world of tyranny and lies. The flag of #HumanRights is borne by enemies of human rights w/US leading them! #Ferguson," he posted.
Qasem Ghafuri of the Iranian newspaper Siyasat-e Ruz agrees.
"Considering the developments in Ferguson, the question is how can America chant slogans about supporting people and security in the world at a time when the people's simple demands are suppressed inside the country and people do not even have the right to protest?" he writes.
A few Iranian papers and some agencies have chosen to highlight the story on their front pages, BBC Monitoring reports, including hardline conservative Hemayat's front page headline which reports incorrectly that reporters are banned from entering Ferguson.
China's state-owned news agency, Xinhuanet, says that while the US has been trying to play the role of judge and jury around the world, Ferguson shows that there is still work to be done at home.
"Obviously, what the United States needs to do is to concentrate on solving its own problems rather than always pointing fingers at others," writes Li Li.
Another opinion piece in China's Global Times says that the unrest "tells us that racism still overshadows minorities in the US even while they have a black president".
And in Russia, which is suffering under the brunt of US sanctions, a state-owned paper was eager to call attention to the situation.
"Though the US portrays itself as a country of equal opportunities, it is too early to talk about the victory over racism and segregation there," writes Igor Dunayevskiy for Rossiskaya Gazeta.
And popular pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda says bluntly, "Not only are the police acting as the US Army does in Iraq (simply put, like occupation forces), but it is this model that the US exports to countries that seek help... in reforming their interior ministries." The paper cites US involvement in Georgia under Saakashvili.
Not all of the international coverage of Ferguson has pointed fingers at the US.
The Sydney Daily Telegraph's Miles Godfrey called for both sides to try and gain some perspective.
"What matters is a man has been shot dead in the prime of his life. The officer who shot him was just 28. One life has been lost, another changed forever," he writes.
Reminding readers of the 2011 UK riots and the violence following the beating of Rodney King in 1991, he urges protesters to not use Brown's death as an excuse to be destructive.
"America now stands on a similar precipice and must remember the lessons of Los Angeles and London," he writes.
After many people in Turkey compared the turbulence in Ferguson to last year's Gezi Park protests, Dogan Eskinat argued that the origins of the protests are different.
"It is perfectly understandable that some media outlets might rather translate old-school racial tensions into hipster language and make it about social media rather than race, but suggesting that Turkey's angry youth were motivated by the same reasons as the urban poor in the American Midwest does great disrespect to past generations who suffered the most grave violations of their human rights and were systematically deprived of human dignity," he writes.
Tim Stanley writes for The Telegraph that the White House will not be the driver behind the type of meaningful change in how the US deals with racism, inequality and violence. He says President Barack Obama has not claimed a meaningful leadership role within the country's racial narrative.
"He was never going to be someone who would confront racism head on or seek a substantial redistribution of power and money of the variety that many civil rights leaders feel is necessary to help the poor," he writes.