Human Rights Group Portrays U.S. as Major Threat, Citing Trump
WASHINGTON Human Rights Watch on Thursday released its annual report on threats to human rights around the world, and for the first time in the 27 years it has done these surveys, the United States is one of the biggest. The reason: the rise of Donald J. Trump.
Eight days before Mr. Trump is to be sworn in as president, the human-rights advocacy group declared that his path to power, in a campaign marked by misogynistic, xenophobic and racist rhetoric, could cause tremendous harm to vulnerable communities, contravene the United States core human rights obligations, or both.
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But Kenneth Roth, the organizations executive director, said in an interview: This is a more fundamental threat to human rights than George Bush after 9/11. I see Trump treating human rights as a constraint on the will of the majority in a way that Bush never did.
Mr. Roth cited a familiar list of policies Mr. Trump embraced during the campaign: mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants, a ban on Muslims entering the United States, and an openness to reintroducing techniques like waterboarding. Mr. Trump has since expressed second thoughts about torture, after a meeting with Gen. James N. Mattis, his nominee for defense secretary, who told him it was ineffective.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/human-rights-watch-trump.html?smid=tw-share
Can you believe it has come to this?