U.S. President-elect Joe Biden requires to restore the country’s credibility on human rights at home also abroad, the head of New-York based Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, after what he said were four years of violation of democratic principles.
Before releasing the activist group’s annual report, Kenneth Roth said outgoing president Donald Trump had defied human rights at home and been inconsistent in criticising other countries’ rights records.
Due to take office on Jan. 20, Biden should make human rights a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy, said Roth, HRW executive director.
“Trump has been a complete disaster for human rights; he flouted human rights at home with the fomenting of the January 6 attack on the Capitol being just the latest example of the natural culmination of four years of abuse of democratic principles,” Roth told an international news Television in Geneva.
With eight days remaining of Trump’s term, the House will vote on Wednesday on an article of impeachment accusing him of inciting insurrection in a speech to his followers last week before a mob of them stormed the Capitol, leaving five dead.
Trump has refused the responsibility for the violence and previous allegations of violating human rights. He has said his critics stole the election to block his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” policies but produced no evidence.
Roth accused Trump of having “cozied up to every friendly autocrat under the sun” while reserving criticism on human rights issues for his “perceived adversaries” – Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and “sometimes China.”
“But that kind of utterly inconsistent approach had no credibility. There was no force to his criticism when people knew that it was serving another political agenda, not a principled plan,” he said.
Biden should articulate human rights as a “guiding principle of US foreign policy and then to stick with it, even when that’s difficult,” Roth said.
He urged him to call off arms sales to countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel and criticize Indian prime minister Modi over his policy towards Muslims, “even though India will be an essential ally in contesting China.”
Roth also called for Biden to re-engage by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, a Geneva forum which Trump ended in June 2018, “even though it criticizes Israel.”
