News / Interviews

US has long history of human rights violation: Commentator

Tuesday, 31 January 2017 6:36 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 31 January 2017 6:36 PM ]

Protesters gather in front of the US Supreme Court to mark 15 years since the first prisoners were brought to the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on January 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

The United Nations has criticized US President Donald Trump for his plan to reinstate waterboarding and other torture techniques with Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, warning that the use of torture techniques to interrogate terror suspects would have catastrophic global consequences.

The United States has violated international and ethic norms, because the country has been built on racism, torture and massacre of other nations, said Jan Oberg, founder of transnational.org from Lund, Sweden.

“The United States is an extremely violent country internally as well as globally. It has been built on ethnic cleansing of its own population and it has killed and maimed people around the world” especially in the Middle East, he said.

So, it is not surprising that the leader of such a country with that history wants to revive torture. However, it is shocking that Europeans and other allies of the United States have not yet stood against Trump’s torture policy to tell him “enough is enough Mr. Trump. We will not follow you on this one.”

According to the analyst, the friends of the US are the ones who can save it from itself.

The United Nations has forbidden torture and cruel treatment against any person in any places and any circumstances. Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights forbids torture and inhuman punishment of people.

Oberg said, “The charter of human rights will be soon 70 years old in which torture is prohibited and we still have the leader of the so-called free world thinking that he can violate these things.”

The brutal practice of waterboarding was first allowed during former US President George W. Bush’s administration, but was finally banned by the same administration in 2006. The US Senate also voted to ban it in 2015.

The analyst also criticized Donald Trump for his decisions during his first days in office as the president of the United States, noting that the new president is running the country like a “dictator” because he does not follow democratic principles.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk