The protests against racial discrimination and injustice in the United States have sparked international solidarity and outcry, highlighting once again Washington’s hypocrisy and double standards on human rights.
The majority of Americans say that the anger expressed by protesters over the police killing of George Floyd is justified.
A new Monmouth polls finds that 57 percent of respondents said that the anger over Floyd’s killing is justified, 21 percent said that it was partially justified and 18 percent said it wasn’t justified at all.
Fifty-four percent of Americans said that the actions taken by demonstrators are either somewhat or fully justified, compared to 38 percent who said that the actions weren’t justified at all.
That’s more than enough to tell Washington to clean its own house if it wants to call itself a “bastion of human rights”. The US is a human rights violator where racial discrimination flourishes and extreme racial discrimination acts are openly practiced.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei says what the US has come face to face with today in the form of the protests “is a result of the realities that had always been kept concealed,” and have now risen to the surface causing disgrace for the American administration.
The brutality that was exercised on Floyd is what the United States has been sowing all around the world, Ayatollah Khamenei said Wednesday, adding, “They have done the same in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam, and many other countries. This is the US government’s nature and character that is being exposed today.”
It is easy to lose track of the bigger discussion by arguing that many governments are at odds with Washington over its hypocritical championing of human rights in their countries.
But it’s not just them that are shaking their heads in disgust. Many others in Europe, as well as human rights organizations are also beginning to hear the cry of a people with no voice. They are urging the US to correct its double standards and reflect on its finger pointing over other countries’ human rights records.
As it happens, the civil society roundly condemns the excessive force used by law enforcement agencies in the US, and calls for accountability and systemic change to curb human rights abuses increasingly seen in US communities.
It’s not an exaggeration to say the contentious days of protest in the US mirror those in Europe. They have sparked international rallying cry against America’s racist power structure and multi-generational injustice. They show police beating and killing and spraying tear gas into protestors, and a sudden hail of bullets is what passes for the American dialogue on race and justice.
Ultimately though, people are expressing their collective outrage over racial oppression and say a long pattern of broken justice system is impacting millions of Americans on a daily basis.
They show putting an end to this violence might follow a greater show of violence after Donal Trump said he might use the army to clamp down on peaceful protests. The American people have proved to be furious at their establishment and any army presence could trigger unharnessed violence on their side.
These people show the US government cannot poke their nose into the affairs of other nations if they cannot get their own house in order.
It is high time the US government took stock of these and more, looked at the mirror, and focused on the serious internal problems they have with their own poor human rights record.