UN condemns systemic racism - without naming US
The UN's top human rights body on Fri condemned discriminatory police brutality and demanded a report on "systemic racism", but rights groups accused Washington of wielding pressure to strip out any mention of the USA in the resolution.
The UN Man Rights Council's 47 members approved by consensus a revised resolution, which was presented by African countries for an urgent council debate, called following a death of George Floyd in US police custody.
Floyd's killing on May 25, after a light Minneapolis police officer - since charged with murder - pressed a good knee on his throat for nearly nine minutes, fuelled a good national and global uproar above racism and police brutality.
An in the beginning strongly-worded text proposed earlier this week had needed a high-level international investigation into police violence against people of African descent in the usa.
Nonetheless it was watered down in latest days, first to remove the call for an international probe, and lastly to strip away any mention of the United States.
This sparked outrage from rights groups, which accused Washington and its allies of lobbying heavily to revise the written text - a charge that the united states mission in Geneva declined to respond to.
Burkina Faso's ambassador, who presented the resolution on behalf of African claims, acknowledged on Fri that "numerous concessions" have been made to "assurance a consensus" on the text.
The approved resolution demands UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet to "make a statement on systemic racism, violations of international man rights legislation against Africans and people of African descent for legal reasons enforcement agencies."
It adds that the record should especially pay attention to "those incidents that led to the death of George Floyd and other Africans and of men and women of African descent, to contribute to accountability and redress for victims."
It also calls on Bachelet to examine federal government responses to "peaceful protests, including the alleged utilization of excessive power against protesters, bystanders and journalists."
AMERICA, which had complained to be singled out in the initial text, withdrew from the council in 2018 and was not present on Friday.
But numerous its allies took the ground to hail the alters made to the written text, stressing that racism was a global issue.
Australia's representative, for instance, celebrated the "acknowledgement that problem does not belong to any one country. It is a problem all over the world."
Rights groups, however, slammed the revision.
"By bullying additional countries to normal water down what would have been an historic resolution and exempting itself from international investigation, the United States is just as before turning its back on victims of police violence, and black persons," said Jamil Dakwar, mind of the American Civil Liberties Union's human being rights division.
He said it had been "absurd" for the text not to mention the united states, "where police kill people, particularly black people, at alarmingly higher costs in comparison to other developed countries."
Salma El Hosseiny of the International Provider for Individual Rights said many delegations from Europe and Latin America especially had worked to guarantee the US mention was taken off the written text, charging that that they had helped "subvert the debate into an 'all lives matter' discussion.
Individual Rights Watch's Geneva director John Fisher meanwhile insisted that "the work of the US in order to avoid council interest only highlights why such scrutiny is needed, and how far there is even now to visit dismantle the pernicious structures of institutionalised racism."
He celebrated meanwhile that the image resolution "opens the door to provide increased international focus on violations both by the united states and other powerful states in future."
The urgent UN debate commenced on Wednesday with an impassioned speech via video link by Floyd's brother Philonise, who said his brother have been "tortured to death" as witnesses begged the officer to avoid.
He urged the council to determine an unbiased international commission
of inquiry - among the UN's highest-level probes - as needed in the original version of the draft resolution.
While there will be no international probe in to the situation in america, Bachelet has been called upon to present her statement on "systemic racism" globally in a year's period. - AFP
