China urges U.S. to immediately lift illegal freeze on Afghan assets

BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States is simply not qualified to talk about democracy and human rights. What the United States should do is immediately lift its illegal freeze on the assets of the Afghan central bank, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a regular news briefing in response to a statement issued on Monday by 14 UN independent human rights experts. The statement blamed the U.S. government for making life worse for Afghan women by freezing billions of U.S. dollars of Afghan assets.

The 20-year U.S. invasion of Afghanistan claimed the lives of 174,000 Afghans, including more than 30,000 civilians. It turned nearly one-third of Afghans into refugees, and more than half of Afghans faced extreme hunger during the time, leading to a rare humanitarian disaster, Wang said.

The United States decimated a country and laid waste to the future of a generation. In the end, it not only walked away, but also took for itself the money that the Afghan people were depending upon for their survival. This fully exposed the barbarity and cruelty of the so-called rules-based international order of the United States, the spokesperson said.

"What the United States should do is immediately lift its illegal freeze on the assets of the Afghan central bank, apologize and compensate the Afghan people for their lost 20 years, and bring the murderers of the Afghan people to justice," Wang said.