The United Nations human rights office has rejected as “racist” remarks by Donald Trump describing immigrants from Africa and Haiti as coming from “shithole” countries.
On Thursday, the president questioned why the US would want to have immigrants from Haiti and African nations, referring to some as “shithole countries”. He instead suggested the US should bring more immigrants from Norway, whose prime minister he met on Wednesday.
Trump pans immigration proposal as bringing people from 'shithole countries'
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“There is no other word one can use but racist,” the UN human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, told a Geneva news briefing. “You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes’, whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome.”
The African Union said it was “frankly alarmed” by Trump’s language, though many across the continent reacted with humour.
“Given the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the United States as slaves, this statement flies in the face of all accepted behaviour and practice,” AU spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo told the Associated Press. “This is particularly surprising as the United States of America remains a global example of how migration gave birth to a nation built on strong values of diversity and opportunity.”
In the US, Cedric Richmond, Democratic representative and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Trump’s comments were “yet another confirmation of his racially insensitive and ignorant views” that reinforce “the concerns that we hear every day, that the president’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is really code for ‘Make America White Again’.”
Mia Love, a Utah Republican whose family came from Haiti, condemned Trump’s remark as “unkind, divisive, elitist” and demanded an apology for the American people and the nations he “wantonly maligned”.
The former Haitian president Laurent Lamothe also expressed his dismay, saying the US president’s remark “shows a lack of respect and ignorance”.
There was more criticism from within Trump’s own party, with the Salt Lake County Republican party tweeting that it welcomes “all those” who have emigrated to the US.
James Comey, who was fired as director of the FBI by Trump, quoted the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: