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United Nations Human Rights Office Decries Donald Trump's Reported Remarks As "Racist"

Agencies
January 12, 2018

Geneva, Jan 12:  The United Nations human rights office on Friday rejected as "racist" and inciting xenophobia the reported remarks by US President Donald Trump describing immigrants from Africa and Haiti as coming from "shithole" countries.

Trump on Thursday questioned why the United States would want to have immigrants from Haiti and African nations, referring to some as "shithole countries," according to two sources familiar with the comments made in the White House.

"These are shocking and shameful comments from the President of the United States. There is no other word one can use but 'racist'," UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a Geneva news briefing when asked about the comments.

"You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes', whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome," he added.

The issue was more than "vulgar language", Colville said.

"It's about opening the door to humanity's worst side, about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and destroy lives of many people."

Trump had also failed to clearly condemn the "anti-Semitic and racist actions of white supremacists in Charlottesville" at a rally in Virginia last August, Colville said.

The programme that was being discussed at the White House is called Temporary Protected Status.

In November, the Trump administration decided to end the status for immigrants from Haiti and Nicaragua. It gave the approximately 59,000 Haitian immigrants who had been granted the status until July 2019 to return home or legalize their presence in the United States. Nicaraguans were given until January 2019.

"The future of the Dreamers should not be used as a bargaining chip to negotiate the most severe and restrictive immigration and security measures possible. These are human beings, not commodities," Colville said.

"Dreamers" is term used for undocumented immigrants who were brought into the United States as children.

William Spindler, a UN refugee agency spokesman, declined to comment directly on Trump's purported remarks:

"But what I can say is that UNHCR's position is always that people forced to flee war or persecution, and needing asylum, should be given protection by whichever country they are in, irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity or place or country of origin," Spindler said.

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s
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Sunday, 14 Jan 2018

US should be thrown out of the UN.

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News Network
July 10,2020

Lahore, Jul 10: The Punjab government enforced smart lockdown in seven cities of the province for 15 days with an immediate effect from Thursday night, The News International reported.

The Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department on Thursday issued a notification under the Punjab Infectious Diseases Ordinance 2020, about enforcement of lockdown in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat and Rawalpindi, till July 24 midnight.

In Lahore, the lockdown will be enforced in A2 Block Township, EME Society, Main Bazaar Chungi Amr Sadhu, Punjab Government Servants Housing Scheme, Wapda Town, C-Block Jauhar Town and Green City.

The basic necessities of life will remain available in smart lockdown areas. "The purpose of the smart lockdown is to minimise movement of people in hotspots of positive coronavirus cases," said Capt (retd) Muhammad Usman, Secretary, Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department.

The country registered 2,751 new COVID-19 cases during the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 243,599 on Friday. The province-wise breakup includes 85,261 cases in Punjab, 100,900 cases in Sindh, 29,406 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,099 in Balochistan, 13,829 in Islamabad, 1,619 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,485 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The death toll due to the virus reached 5,058 with 75 more deaths reported over the last 24 hours, as per data cited by Radio Pakistan.

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News Network
April 24,2020

Washington, Apr 24: The number of coronavirus cases in the US has surpassed 850,000, Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center data revealed on Thursday (local time).
The country now has registered 8,56,209 cases overall, according to the data, including 47,272 deaths.

The US currently leads the world in the number of reported COVID-19 deaths and confirmed cases.

There are more than 2.6 million COVID-19 cases around the world and more than 1,85,000 deaths, according to the data.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Sydney, Jul 28: Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group's earlier estimates.

Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by the country's worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.

When the fires were still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25 billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United Kingdom.

"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history," said WWF-Australia Chief Executive Officer Dermot O'Gorman in a statement.

The project leader Lily Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and "other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".

The total number included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now faced lack of food and shelter or the prospect of moving to habitat that was already occupied.

The main reason for raising the number of animal casualties was that researchers had now assessed the total affected area, rather than focusing on the most affected states, they said.

After years of drought made the Australian bush unusually dry, the country battled one of its worst bushfire seasons ever from September 2019 to March 2020, resulting in 34 human deaths and nearly 3,000 homes lost.

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