My Take | Shocking human rights hypocrisy from US homeland security chief
As Kristi Noem terrorises those with darker skin under the guise of an illegal migrant crackdown, she is in no position to criticise the likes of China
Kristi Noem doesn’t strike people as a compassionate person. In fact, the US secretary of homeland security likes to portray herself as a hard-nosed leader, the kind who gets the job done, however unpleasant.
In her memoirs, she proudly recounts her now-infamous executions of Cricket, a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer for being naughty and “untrainable”, and Billy the goat, for being “disgusting, musky, rancid”, with a shotgun, one immediately after the other. She has applied the same ruthlessness to her job.
Noem loves posing with guns alongside her security agents, but is not good at shooting, even at point-blank range. As she admitted, the goat was merely wounded. She had to go back to her truck, retrieve another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.
At that point, Noem writes, the school bus carrying her children arrived and dropped them off. Her daughter Kennedy, Noem writes, “looked around confused,” asking, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
Her government has unilaterally claimed Beijing committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” in 2024 against Muslim Uygurs and members of other minority groups in the region, as well as their forced labour.
It’s that G-word again. Seriously, Mrs Secretary, the entire world knows where a real genocide is taking place, who is committing it and who’s sponsoring it. A subtle hint: it’s not China. Somehow, I don’t think she gives a hoot about the Uygurs or any ethnic minorities, most certainly not those living in her own country.