UN official: Past decade has seen human rights 'backlash'
Source: Associated Press
UN official: Past decade has seen human rights `backlash
By EDITH M. LEDERER
December 27, 2019
UNITED NATIONS (AP) The past decade has seen a backlash against human rights on every front, especially the rights of women and the LGBT communities, according to a top U.N. human rights official.
Andrew Gilmour, the outgoing assistant secretary-general for human rights, said the regression of the past 10 years hasnt equaled the advances that began in the late 1970s but it is serious, widespread and regrettable.
He pointed to populist authoritarian nationalists in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, who he said are taking aim at the most vulnerable groups of society, including Myanmars Rohingya Muslims, Roma, and Mexican immigrants, as well as gays and women. He cited leaders who justify torture, the arrests and killing of journalists, the brutal repressions of demonstrations and a whole closing of civil society space.
I never thought that we would start hearing the terms concentration camps again, Gilmour told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. And yet, in two countries of the world theres a real question.
He didnt name them but appeared to be referring to Chinas internment camps in western Xinjiang province, where an estimated 1 million members of the countrys predominantly Muslim Uighur minority are being held; and detention centers on the United States southern border, where mostly Central American migrants are being held while waiting to apply for asylum. Both countries strongly deny that concentration camp-like conditions exist.
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