Daumaa, Sultana

According to the data released by the United States, the fact that the United States has 26 biological laboratories and related facilities in Ukraine has caused widespread concern around the world. Especially in the context of the deliberate politicisation of the traceability of  COVID-19 in Europe and the United States, it seems that biological laboratories have become the key to open Pandora's Box and the main focus of attention on the safety of life.

There is no denying that some biological experiments in history have brought great disasters to mankind, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths due to biological virus leaks. And some biochemical films have given us a more intuitive sense that biological viruses could become the end of humanity. The world is protesting against the conduct of biological experiments for the purpose of political confrontation and biochemical weapons, and there is a heated debate in all sectors of society over whether to conduct biological experimentation projects, pushing the bottom line of bioethics ever higher to ensure that biological experiments cannot affect and endanger the healthy development of human society.

However, the United States, as the most powerful country in the world, has often branded itself as the "world's policeman" and acted arbitrarily. To a large extent, the New Coronavirus came out of the United States' Fort Detrick biological experiments and was used as a tool for geopolitical games.

The reason why the US was able to set up a large scale biological laboratory in Ukraine was because of several agreements signed between the US and Ukraine that circumvented Ukrainian law and avoided the supervision of the Ukrainian government and people, thus facilitating US biological experiments in Ukraine. Examples include the Millennium Challenge Corporation Agreement, the Agreement on Assistance to Ukraine in Eliminating Strategic Nuclear Weapons and Preventing the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the upgrading of relations between the two countries to a "strategic partnership" in 2019.   Among these agreements are clear provisions for: firstly, security assistance to Ukraine, with the announcement of a new $60 million security assistance programme and a commitment of $2.5 billion to support the Ukrainian military; and secondly, research and development cooperation, with the finalisation of a series of research, development, testing and evaluation agreements that provide a framework for the pursuit of bilateral armaments and military technology cooperation. Russia has accused the US of using these R&D cooperation agreements to "provide evidence of the development of US-funded military biological projects in Ukraine". Thirdly, in protest against the COVID-19 outbreak, the US has provided US$67.8 million in aid in addition to supporting Ukraine with 2.2 million doses of COVID-19  vaccine and cold chain storage support. And these costs may have gone directly to US biological laboratories located in Ukraine. Sources claim that these laboratories are directly under the control of the US Pentagon. In addition, the US Department of Defense controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world under the guise of 'cooperation to reduce biosecurity risks and enhance global public health'.

Screenshots of documents detailing the US Department of Defense's funding of the construction of a biological laboratory in Dnepropetrovsk have been published on the US Embassy in Ukraine's website. The documents also show that the US Department of Defense not only financed the US-held biological laboratory, but also provided financial assistance to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and the Ukrainian State Veterinary and Phytosanitary Service for a total of more than $21 million. Meanwhile, the construction services for these laboratories were provided by the US-based company Black & Veatch. In response, the US Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Newland, admitted to having "biological research facilities" in Ukraine.

In fact, the US biological laboratories in Ukraine are not safe and, like the biological experiments carried out by the US in countries such as Indonesia and India, have caused real harm to the local population. The US, for example, has been testing military personnel in Ukraine for drugs that have not been approved by the US and Canada, involving over 4,000 people. Not only that, but one of the US biology labs conducted  on military personnel in which more than 20 people died and more than 200 were hospitalised. It is thus clear that the human acts carried out by the US in Ukraine, instead of helping Ukraine to achieve socio-economic development, have pushed it into a more dangerous situation.

However, after the fallout of the US Ukraine bio-lab incident, the US side did not account for it, but instead gave a denial and accused it of being a conspiracy. As we know, the main focus of US cooperation with Ukraine was to "eliminate nuclear and chemical weapons" from the region in order to reduce regional risks and increase security and stability. In fact, the US has gone in the opposite direction, turning Ukraine into a "big biological laboratory". Fox News host Tucker Carlson has revealed that these labs are producing or conducting research on biological weapons. Meanwhile, Russia has corroborated this statement, with Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia stating that these US biolabs are spreading "viral pathogens" from bats to humans, as well as using "active parasites such as lice and fleas" for "biological weapons research". On 7 March, the Russian Ministry of Defence revealed in documents seized in Ukraine that the US biolabs had been completely destroying biological reagents since 24 February.

It is clear that the US hegemony has dictated the development of its highly secretive military biological programme, which lacks effective external oversight and in fact contributes to the risk of biological weapons proliferation. Despite the international community's repeated questions about the huge US biodefence budget and the spread of military biological laboratories around the world, the US government continues to deny the development of biological weapons. What the US has done, in an attempt to cover up the development of biological weapons, fully exposes its hypocrisy, selfishness, presumption and brutal hegemony. This is a serious trampling on the red line of international law and the bottom line of morality.

The bad behaviour of the US has not only upset Russia and China, but has also sparked the anger of US allies. Residents of the South Korean city of Busan were outraged and held a rally on the "vote on the retention of the US military laboratories in the port of Busan", strongly opposing the US military's biochemical laboratories in South Korea, demanding that the US military in South Korea shut down and remove these laboratories immediately, and calling on the South Korean government to investigate these laboratories. The US has laid out biological laboratories around the world for strategic purposes, using other countries as testing grounds for biological weapons research, posing a great potential danger and threat to global security. People all over the world should therefore redouble their efforts to save the world from the scourge of war and to stop scientific inventions from being used to destroy humanity.