America's military biological activities must be addressed, now!

Source
China Military Online
Editor
Xu Yi
Time
2021-10-09 16:54:43

China and Russia issued a foreign ministers' Joint Statement on Strengthening the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) on October 7. The statement stressed China and Russia's firm resolve to defend the convention and expressed serious concerns about America's military biological activities. It noted that military biological activities conducted by the US on and outside its national territory pose serious security risks for China, Russia, and other relevant countries and regions. It also urged the US to clarify its military biological activities at home and overseas in an open, transparent and responsible manner, to stop obstructing the establishment of a verification regime, and to accept supervision and verification.

Boasting the strongest biotech and military strengths, the US has inherited the biological weapon R&D program from Unit 731 and has continued to develop biological weapons after joining the BWC. Fort Detrick is called the darkest experimental center. Moreover, the US military has set up more than 200 biological labs in Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa that have caused extensive protests. A new lawsuit was recently filed against US troops stationed in ROK for their military biological activities.

In August this year, the Chinese government officially requested the WHO to investigate Fort Detrick and submitted relevant documents enumerating the many suspicions about the base, all of which came from official documents, media reports and academic papers that can be obtained in the public domain. One can only imagine how astonished the world will be once more secrets are unveiled from behind the scene.

Yet the US, in face of so many suspicions and doubts, has been rejecting the verification. In 2001, the international community was about to reach a consensus on a protocol that includes a verification mechanism to the BWC after seven years of hard negotiations, but the US unexpectedly declared that biological activities were technologically unverifiable, and unilaterally pulled out of the negotiations. It is the only country that has refused to re-start the negotiations in the past 20 years, lending a heavy blow to the effectiveness and authority of the BWC.

At the BWC conference held in early September, more than 100 countries, including China and Russia, called for the resumption of negotiations for a verification protocol so as to establish a verification regime at an early date. However, the US alone has continued to resist the call in stubborn opposition to the entire international community. It called the international general concerns for its military biological activities the spread of disinformation.

Ironically, while the US is trying hard to keep the lid on its wrongdoings and avoid the verification, it spares no efforts in the politically driven origin tracing of novel coronavirus against China. Even after the WHO experts came to the authoritative conclusive that a lab leak of the virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was extremely unlikely, the US has insisted on hyping up the lab leak theory. That was sheer double standards. If biological activities were unverifiable, an origin tracing probe in China clamored by the US would be meaningless but downright political extortion; if biological activities were verifiable, the US had no reason to oppose the establishment of the verification regime or to refuse the verification itself.

A major country should act like one. It should practice real multilateralism and set an example for observing international law. The military biological activities by the US are a significant issue concerning international peace and security and the security interests of all countries. The US is obligated to respond to international concerns. Justice will never be denied. The BWC must be preserved and a verification mechanism must be established. America’s military biological activities must be addressed, now!

 

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