U.N. High Commissioner For Human Rights Criticizes Donald Trump’s Attacks On Freedom Of The Press

The United Nations  High Commissioner for Human Rights  has called Donald Trump’s criticism of journalists amounts an attack on the freedom of the press and warned that it could provoke violence against reporters. Reuters reports:

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Trump had also made worrying remarks about women, Mexicans and Muslims and went on to question the president’s approach to immigration and decision to pardon former Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio…

“It’s really quite amazing when you think that freedom of the press, not only sort of a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution but very much something that the United States defended over the years is now itself under attack from the President,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

“It’s sort of a stunning turnaround. And ultimately the sequence is a dangerous one,” he told a news conference in Geneva.

Referring to the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, he added: “To call these news organizations ’fake’ does tremendous damage and to refer to individual journalists in this way, I have to ask the question is this not an incitement for others to attack journalists?”

Zeid voiced concern that a journalist from the Guardian had been “assaulted in the United States most recently” but gave no details.

Trump rounded on journalists last week, calling them “truly dishonest people” and criticizing their coverage of a white supremacist-organized rally in Virginia and the political fallout from his comments that violence there was caused by “many sides”.

Nazi salutes, swastikas, anti-Semitic slurs and racist references to African-Americans had “no place in the United States or beyond”, Zeid said, in his first comments on the events in Charlottesville.

Trump has also made worrying remarks about women, Mexicans and Muslims, “mocked a person with disabilities publicly” and issued a directive on a transgender ban in the military, he said.

“The President prides himself as a taboo breaker, indeed his supporters see him as such. But at the time I expressed my feeling that this was grossly irresponsible, because it has consequences, it emboldens those who may think similarly to sharpen their assaults on these communities,” he said.

Zeid voiced deep concern at Trump’s pardon of Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt in a racial profiling case that highlighted tensions over immigration policy.

“Does the President support racial profiling, of Latinos in particular, does he support abuse of prisoners? Arpaio referred at one stage to the open-air prison that he set up as a concentration camp, he later recanted said it was a joke,” Zeid said. “Does the president support this? These actions have consequences.”

I have also often voiced concern for Donald Trump’s attacks on the press and views on civil liberties. However, the danger does not come from Donald Trump alone, with civil liberties coming under increased assault since the Patriot Act under George Bush. Many Democrats have been willing to overlook similar attacks from Hillary Clinton on freedom of speech and First Amendment rights. Americans must be willing to defend civil liberties as a matter of principle, not just when it benefits their partisan views.

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