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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Agencies
June 4,2020

Washington D.C, Jun 4: A lawsuit has been filed against US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order on preventing online censorship that seems to violate the freedom of speech of individuals on social media platforms.

On Tuesday, the Center for Democracy and Technology filed the lawsuit against Trump's "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship," which was signed May 28, 2020. The suit argues that the Executive Order violates the First Amendment by curtailing and chilling the constitutionally protected speech of online platforms and individuals.

"CDT filed suit today because the President's actions are a direct attack on the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. The government cannot and should not force online intermediaries into moderating speech according to the President's whims. Blocking this order is crucial for protecting freedom of speech and continuing important work to ensure the integrity of the 2020 election," said CDT President and CEO Alexandra Givens.

The executive order is designed to deter social media services from fighting misinformation, voter suppression, and the stoking of violence on their platforms, the digital rights group said.

"Access to accurate information about the voting process and the security of our elections infrastructure is the lifeblood of our democracy. The President has made clear that his goal is to use threats of retaliation and future regulation to intimidate intermediaries into changing how they moderate content, essentially ensuring that the dangers of voter suppression and disinformation will grow unchecked in an election year," Givens said.

The law firm of Mayer Brown is representing CDT in this action.

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News Network
February 24,2020

Beijing, Feb 24: The lockdown of Guo Jing's neighbourhood in Wuhan -- the city at the heart of China's new coronavirus epidemic -- came suddenly and without warning.

Unable to go out, the 29-year-old is now sealed inside her compound where she has to depend on online group-buying services to get food.

"Living for at least another month isn't an issue," Guo told news agency, explaining that she had her own stash of pickled vegetables and salted eggs.

But what scares her most is the lack of control -- first, the entire city was sealed off, and then residents were limited to exiting their compound once every three days.

Now even that has been taken away.

Guo is among some 11 million residents in Wuhan, a city in central Hubei province that has been under effective quarantine since January 23 as Chinese authorities race to contain the epidemic.

Since then, its people have faced a number of tightening controls over daily life as the death toll from the virus swelled to over 2,500 in China alone.

But the new rules this month barring residents from leaving their neighbourhoods are the most restrictive yet -- and for some, threaten their livelihoods.

"I still don't know where to buy things once we've finished eating what we have at home," said Pan Hongsheng, who lives with his wife and two children.

Some neighbourhoods have organised group-buying services, where supermarkets deliver orders in bulk.

But in Pan's community, "no one cares".

"The three-year-old doesn't even have any milk powder left," Pan told news agency, adding that he has been unable to send medicine to his in-laws -- both in their eighties -- as they live in a different area.

"I feel like a refugee."

The "closed management of neighbourhoods is bound to bring some inconvenience to the lives of the people", Qian Yuankun, vice secretary of Hubei's Communist Party committee, said at a press briefing last week.

Authorities on Monday allowed healthy non-residents of the city to leave if they never had contact with patients, but restrictions remained on those who live in Wuhan.

Demand for group-buying food delivery services has rocketed with the new restrictions, with supermarkets and neighbourhood committees scrambling to fill orders.

Most group-buying services operate through Chinese messaging app WeChat, which has ad-hoc chat groups for meat, vegetables, milk -- even "hot dry noodles", a famous Wuhan dish.

More sophisticated shops and compounds have their own mini-app inside WeChat, where residents can choose packages priced by weight before orders are sent in bulk to grocery stores.

In Guo's neighbourhood, for instance, a 6.5-kilogramme (14.3-pound) set of five vegetables, including potatoes and baby cabbage, costs 50 yuan ($7.11).

"You have no way to choose what you like to eat," Guo said. "You cannot have personal preferences anymore."

The group-buying model is also more difficult for smaller communities to adopt, as supermarkets have minimum order requirements for delivery.

"To be honest, there's nothing we can do," said Yang Nan, manager of Lao Cun Zhang supermarket, which requires a minimum of 30 orders.

"We only have four cars," she said, explaining that the store did not have the staff to handle smaller orders.

Another supermarket told AFP it capped its daily delivery load to 1,000 orders per day.

"Hiring staff is difficult," said Wang Xiuwen, who works at the store's logistics division, adding that they are wary about hiring too many outsiders for fear of infection.

Closing off communities has split the city into silos, with different neighbourhoods rolling out controls of varying intensity.

In some compounds, residents have easier access to food -- albeit a smaller selection than normal -- and one woman said her family pays delivery drivers to run grocery errands.

Her compound has not been sealed off either, the 24-year-old told AFP under condition of anonymity, though they are limited to one person leaving at a time.

Some districts have implemented their own rules, such as prohibiting supermarkets from selling to individuals, forcing neighbourhoods to buy in bulk or not at all.

"In the neighbourhood where I live, the reality is really terrible," said David Dai, who is based on the outskirts of Wuhan.

Though his apartment complex has organised group-buying, Dai said residents were unhappy with price and quality.

"A lot of tomatoes, a lot of onions -- they were already rotten," he told , estimating over a third of the food had to be thrown away.

His family must "totally depend" on themselves, added the 49-year-old, who has resorted to saving and drying turnip skins to add nutrients to future meals.

The uncertainty of not knowing when the controls will be lifted is also frustrating, said Ma Chen, a man in his 30s who lives alone.

"I have no way of knowing how much (food) I should buy."

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News Network
June 10,2020

Hong Kong, Jun 10: The Hong Kong police on Wednesday said they had arrested 53 people during demonstrations on Tuesday evening which were called to mark the one-year anniversary of the protest against a bill proposing extraditions to mainland China. That protest grew into a pro-democracy movement and sparked seven months of protests against Beijing's rule.

Hundreds of activists took to the streets in Hong Kong yesterday, at times blocking roads in the heart of the city, before police fired pepper spray to disperse crowds, Al Jazeera reported.

The police informed that 36 males and 17 females were arrested for offenses including unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct.

Protesters had defied a ban on gatherings of more than eight people introduced by the Hong Kong government to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

"Lawful protests are always respected, but unlawful acts are to be rejected. Please stop breaking the law," police said in a tweet.

More protests are being planned in the coming days, with pro-democracy supporters fearing the proposed national security legislation will stifle freedoms in the city.

While details of the security law or how it will operate have yet to be revealed, authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong have said there is no cause for concern and the legislation will target a minority of "troublemakers".

But critics say the law would destroy the civil liberties Hong Kong residents enjoy under the "one country, two systems" agreement put in place when the United Kingdom handed the territory back to China in 1997. The agreement is set to end in 2047.

Japan had already issued a statement independently expressing serious concern about Beijing's move on May 28, the day China approved the decision and called in the Chinese ambassador to convey its view.

The United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada also condemned the move, with Washington saying it would revoke Hong Kong's special trading status granted under a 1992 law on the condition that the city retains key freedoms and autonomy.

China blames the protests in part on foreign intervention and is rushing to enact the national security law aimed at curbing secessionist and subversive activities in Hong Kong.

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