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| US top diplomat Mike Pompeo defended recent discussion on race relations in America as a sign of a healthy democracy; he is pictured April 8, 2020 (AFP Photo/MANDEL NGAN) |
Washington (AFP) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday a UN Human Rights Council vote condemning racism amounted to hypocrisy.
Pompeo
defended the recent discussion on race relations in America as a sign of a
healthy democracy, and said the council should focus on what he called systemic
racial disparities in member countries such as Cuba and China.
"The
council's decision to vote yesterday on a resolution focusing on policing and
race in the US marks a new low," Pompeo said in a statement.
The council
took the vote after a debate prompted by protests in the US triggered by the
death at police hands of African American George Floyd.
However, a
specific mention of racism and police brutality in the US was removed.
This
sparked outrage from rights groups, which accused Washington and its allies of
lobbying heavily to revise the text -- a charge to which the US mission in
Geneva declined to respond.
The United
States, which had complained of being singled out in the initial text, withdrew
from the council in 2018 and was not present on Friday.
In his
statement Saturday, titled "On the Hypocrisy of UN Human Rights
Council," Pompeo said discussion in the US about race following the death
of Floyd "is a sign of our democracy’s strength and maturity."
"If
the Council were serious about protecting human rights, there are plenty of
legitimate needs for its attention, such as the systemic racial disparities in
places like Cuba, China and Iran," he said.
"If
the Council were honest, it would recognize the strengths of American democracy
and urge authoritarian regimes around the world to model American democracy and
to hold their nations to the same high standards of accountability and
transparency that we Americans apply to ourselves," Pompeo added.
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