Statement by Melanie Nathan, Executive Director of African Human Rights Coalition on the speech delivered by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to the United Nations General Assembly, today:
"For a President of a major world power to use the world's peace-making platform to threaten war and the annihilation for 25 million human beings is despicable. Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly today was nothing short of reckless, terrifying, embarrassing, unacceptable and cause for great concern. Americans are better than what was spewed out today at the UNGA. Trump’s threats conveyed through his pathetic childish posturing warrants action. This is not how the majority of Americans want to be represented. We must rise up!
We also cannot ignore Trump veering into a course of anti-human rights rhetoric through his excessive expression of isolationism, harping on the “sovereignty” of States – the latter often used as an excuse by governments and dictators to circumvent basic human rights of their citizens. This type of talk emboldens anti-homosexuality legislation and state sanctioned persecution against LGBTI people. It seems that America no longer has the back of persecuted gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals. Donald Trump can no longer be allowed to misuse language in a manner that endangers us all. I quote Nelson Mandela: “It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.”
As a member of the global human rights community we are shocked and are calling on the citizens of the United States to implore upon their political representatives to look to any means possible to chastise and reign this President in, as well as for all Americans to rise up in peaceful protest, expressing that we will not tolerate war mongering and the overt promotion of human rights violations."
