Amnesty takes issue with Trump and the EU in its annual report

AFP
Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general.

AFP

Thursday, 22 February, 2018 03:58

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Thursday, 22 February, 2018 03:58

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Amnesty International has denounced the european Union’s policy and that of Donald Trump in the field of immigration and reception of refugees, blaming a “demonization” of migrants, in its annual report published on Thursday.

“Throughout the year 2017, millions of people around the world have tasted the bitter fruits of the policy of demonization,” says the report of the NGO, presented for the first time in the United States, in Washington.

Amnesty criticized the “leaders of the rich countries,” their approach to the crisis of migrants”, which combines the dodge to the inhumanity, pure and simple.”

In Europe, the NGO considers that most executives “have decided that almost everything was allowed in order to prevent the refugees from reaching the shores of the continent.”

She also talks about the recent elections in Austria, France, Germany or the netherlands, where “some of the candidates have sought to portray the anxieties of social and economic resentment, in particular towards migrants”.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general, lashed out at u.s. president Donald Trump, who, since his election, has stepped up attempts to impose a decree on anti-immigration, several times suspended by the justice.

It has also condemned, in front of the press in Washington, the attitude of the president who “actually said to approve, during the first few months (of his tenure), the use of torture”.

International community impotent

The organization also denounced the “campaign of ethnic cleansing being conducted against the Rohingyas of Myanmar”, which led to the exodus of 655,000 people.

“This episode will go down in history as another example of the calamitous failure of the international community to resolve the situations that are conducive to the worst mass atrocities”, says the NGO.

Amnesty also stops on the number “scary” of civilian victims of armed conflicts, citing “humanitarian catastrophe underway in Yemen”, the killings are “blind” in Syria and Iraq, and the forced exile of the people of South Sudan.

In some cases, “the parties to the conflicts that are tearing apart the planet no longer even try to maintain a semblance of compliance with the obligations that are theirs”.

The report criticised the governments have exploited the concerns related to terrorism to “call into question the balance between State power and individual freedoms”, citing France, which put an end to the state of emergency only after having entered “in the common law many of the provisions of the regime of exception”.

In the United Kingdom, Amnesty international is concerned about the impact of Brexit, believing that the bill of withdrawal from the european Union, adopted in January by the mp, “threatens to significantly reduce protections for existing Human rights”, especially because it has not incorporated the european Charter of fundamental rights.

In the Philippines, the NGO is concerned that the president Rodrigo Duterte not to chase the defenders of human rights and those who criticize his policy. Since his election, nearly 4,000 traffickers and drug users were alleged to have been killed by the police, and the defenders of Human rights believe that the real number of deaths could be three times more important.

Regulate social networks

The report welcomes, however, the movement #MeToo and the marches during the international day of the woman, to have attracted the attention “on the scale appalling abuses and sexual harassment”.

Amnesty also welcomes the burst of the “ordinary citizens”, such as the recent mobilization of young survivors of the shooting in Florida.

“There is no better example than what we have seen in recent days with the young people of this country who are resisting and struggling against the violence by firearms,” said Salil Shetty, Washington, dc.

Finally, on the internet, in front of “the opportunity is virtually unlimited to incite hatred and violence”, Amnesty laments the scarcity of the tools of regulation available and points to the responsibility of the giants of the web.

In conclusion, a few months of the 70th anniversary of the universal Declaration of Human rights, Amnesty International “may consider only one of the fundamental rights as granted”.