Human Rights Watch has denounced Donald Trump as “fomenting hatred and intolerance” in a report which cites Brexit as proof of rising “intolerance” in world politics.
The group said the US president-elect was a threat to human rights due to his views on womens’ issues and the use of torture.
“Donald Trump’s election as US president after a campaign fomenting hatred and intolerance, and the rising influence of political parties in Europe that reject universal rights, have put the postwar human rights system at risk,” Human Rights Watch said on Friday announcing its new World Report.
“(Trump’s) campaign floated proposals that would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women’s rights and media freedoms, and to use torture,” Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said.
“Unless Trump repudiates these proposals, his administration risks committing massive rights violations in the US and shirking a longstanding, bipartisan belief, however imperfectly applied, in a rights-based foreign policy agenda.”
Brexit, meanwhile, was a “vivid illustration” of the politics of intolerance, Roth said.
In France, Marine Le Pen, head of the anti-EU, anti-immigrant National Front, is campaigning for the presidency.
“We forget at our peril the demagogues of the past: the fascists, communists and their ilk who claimed privileged insight into the majority’s interest but ended up crushing the individual,” Reuters reported Roth as saying.
He added that voters around the globe needed to demand politics based on truth and the values of a rights-respecting democracy.