A recent report from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) accuses President Donald Trump of espousing “hateful and xenophobic rhetoric” across his presidential campaign. It also describes the president’s comments towards the United Nations (UN) as “deeply disturbing.”
“Discrimination and biases by law enforcement on the basis of race, religion, gender and other prohibited factors are common in the United States,” alleges the UNHRC report. No evidence is provided to support this contention.
Published on May 29, Maina Kiai, the UNHRC’s former Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, concluded the following:
The new administration of President Donald Trump has talked of taking a radically different approach on all fronts: its engagement with the United Nations, its promotion of human rights abroad, and even its attitude towards fundamental rights domestically. The signals coming from the current administration – including hateful and xenophobic rhetoric during the presidential campaign, threats and actions to lock out and expel migrants on the basis of nationality and religion, a dismissive position towards peaceful protesters, the endorsement of torture, intolerance of criticism and threats to withdraw funding from the United Nations – are deeply disturbing.
Without specifics, the UNHRC report further describes Trump’s statements as “corrosive” and “divisive.”
The UNHRC report hyped the narrative of racial agitation movement Black Lives Matter, visiting Baltimore, MD; Ferguson, MO; Baton Rouge and New Orleans, LA, and other cities where incidents of blacks being killed by law enforcement were boosted by news media outlets such as CNN and The New York Times.
“Racism,” alleges the UNHRC report, is ubiquitous across America; with blacks as its primary target. Also pushed is a neo-Marxist racial agitation narrative in which blacks are framed as a neo-proletariat enduring the oppression of wealthy whites. “Intolerance, inequality and exclusion” are alleged to be widespread phenomena across the nation (emphases added):
While the Special Rapporteur’s focus is the status of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, he necessarily situates his assessment within the context of several overarching concerns. It is impossible to discuss these rights, for example, without issues of racism pervading the discussions. Racism and the exclusion, persecution and marginalization that come with it, affect the environment for exercising association and assembly rights. Understanding this context means looking back at 400 years of slavery, the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws that destroyed the achievements of the Reconstruction Era, and enforced segregation and marginalized the African-American community to a life of misery, poverty and persecution. It means looking at what happened after Jim Crow laws, when old philosophies of exclusion and discrimination were reborn, which has resulted in a situation where one out of every 15 black men is currently jailed and one out of every 13 African-Americans has lost their right to vote due to a felony conviction. 14. In contradistinction, Wall Street bankers looted billions of dollars through crooked schemes, devastating the finances of millions of Americans and saddling taxpayers with a massive bailout bill. Meanwhile, crimes against workers – including wage theft, sexual abuse, union busting and more – remain rampant. Yet we do not hear of a “War on Wall Street theft” or a “War on Abusive Employers.” Instead, criminal justice resources go towards enforcing a different type of law and order, targeting primarily African-Americans and other minorities. As a result, there is justifiable and palpable anger in the black community that needs to be expressed. This is the context that gave birth to the non-violent protest movement Black Lives Matter and the context in which it must be understood.
The UNHRC report alleges widespread political corruption across America, where “marginalised groups such as communities of color, women and migrant workers” are “locked out of political spaces” by a “few super-wealthy individuals and corporations.”
Black Lives Matters is said to be “about inclusion,” alleges the UNHRC report, advising Americans to accept and support the racial agitation movement’s narrative and mission (emphasis added):
The Special Rapporteur is disturbed by the hostility towards the Black Lives Matter movement, which seeks, among other things, to reform law enforcement practices in the wake of numerous killings of African Americans by police. Perhaps most troubling is the fact that some Americans view [Black Lives Matter] as divisive, when in fact it is about inclusion. The Black Lives Matter movement is not about demanding special status or privilege for African Americans; it is about a historically and continuously targeted community seeking to elevate itself to the same level as everyone else. Black Lives Matter members exercise the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association to aggregate their voices, address problems and achieve change. The government has an obligation under international law to protect and promote their ability to do this.
Maina Kiai, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. Kiai is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
“Free market fundamentalism,” alleges the report, undermines “human rights:”
In his 2016 report to the Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur highlighted the challenges posed by a variety of fundamentalisms to the exercise of rights. During his visit to the United States, he found that market fundamentalism – the idea that free market economic policies are infallible and are the best way to solve economic and social problems, coupled with intolerance towards competing ideas – taints many policies by undermining human rights.
In 2017, the UNHRC’s Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association visited two countries: The United States and the United Kingdom.
American taxpayers have been the UN’s primary benefactor since the organization’s establishment in 1945, currently funding 22 percent of the UN’s budget and more that 27 percent of its “peacekeeping” budget (as of 2010). Fiscal year 2016 saw $4.26 billion spent by the federal government toward “international organizations,” an over 15 percent increase from the previous year of the Obama administration.