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Trump is disaster for human rights, fuels authoritarians

By Agencies
January 19, 2018

PARIS: US President Donald Trump´s record on human rights in his first year in office has been a “disaster” and has encouraged oppression by authoritarian leaders from China to Russia, the head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in an interview on Wednesday.

“Trump has been a disaster for the human rights movement, in part because he seems to have this insatiable desire to embrace people who have been able to govern without the checks and balances of democracy,“ Roth said in an interview. “Roth singled out Russia and China for conducting an “intense crackdown” on opponents and, after Trump was reported to have described African countries as “shitholes”, said the US president had “found political advantage in acting as a racist”. “It´s easy to defend human rights when it´s free, when there´s no real cost in doing so. But when you´re dealing with Chinese or Saudi (business) contracts, or you´re dealing with Egypt´s potential assistance in fighting terrorism . . . Macron has been more resistant to standing up for human rights.

“The policies of US President and his embrace of populist strongmen have dealt a blow to rights campaigns around the world but resistance is building, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The HRW denounced rights abuses in unstable states like Syria and Myanmar as well as authoritarian trends in powers like Turkey and China — while also weighing in on the first year of Trump’s term. Under Trump, the United States cosied up to leaders like the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. Roth hailed the growing civic and political resistance to populists. “The big theme this year is really how much the world has changed,” Roth said. “Because a year ago, just as Donald Trump was entering the White House, it was a moment of despair. “What has been encouraging over the last year is how much resistance we’ve seen in many countries to this rise of populism.”

He also praised the role of Western nations in pressing nations to end rights abuses, such as Iceland’s efforts at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which led Duterte to rein in his “murderous police”. And when Russia vetoed bids to hold Syria to account, “it was the superpower of Lichtenstein that led an effort at the UN General Assembly to appoint a special prosecutor,” Roth said. Roth also noted efforts by US judges and activists to fight back — not always successfully — against measures such as Trump’s moves to curb immigration from Muslim-majority nations. Myanmar saw its cautious year-old transition towards elected civilian rule morph into a “massive human rights and humanitarian crisis” for its Muslim minority, the HRW report said.