(DailyVantage.com) – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused US President Joe Biden’s administration of hypocrisy during a speech on March 21, during which he argued that the White House should not criticize the state of human rights in Mexico while it continued to persecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
López Obrador told his supporters that US allegations of human rights abuses in Mexico should “not be taken seriously” as the US government was engaging in its own human rights violations, including with Assange, who is currently imprisoned in the UK’s Belmarsh Prison awaiting extradition to the US.
The Mexican president asked the White House why it continued to persecute Assange despite its alleged commitment to freedom and journalism, before moving onto the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022 — questioning how the White House could talk about violence in Mexico when it has been accused of attacking the pipeline.
Award-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in February 2023 that the Biden administration had ordered the sabotage of the pipeline in an effort to cripple Russia’s gas exports to Europe.
During his speech, López Obrador also weighed in on the news that former US President Donald Trump was expected to be arrested by the Manhattan district attorney in the near future, arguing that if such an arrest did take place, it would “be so that his name doesn’t appear on the ballot” during the 2024 US presidential election.
López Obrador’s scathing comments were made after the US State Department released a report on the state of human rights in Mexico on March 20. The report alleged major human rights violations in the country under López Obrador, including illegal police killings, torture, restrictions against free speech, and violence against journalists.
Biden met with López Obrador in Mexico in January. During the meeting, the Mexican president accused the US government of feeling “disdain” for its Latin American neighbors. Biden, on the other hand, asked for Mexico’s help in stopping the importation of fentanyl into the US.
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