News / Interviews

Trump visa ban, xenophobic action, offensive racist policy: Commentator

Wednesday, 01 February 2017 7:27 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 01 February 2017 7:29 PM ]

Protestors listen to a speaker at the South Carolina Statehouse during a demonstration in response to the Trump administration's recent executive order blocking entry of refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries January 31, 2017 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by AFP)

A group of UN human rights experts have voiced deep concern over US President Donald Trump’s travel ban on Muslim countries. In a statement, the experts said the president’s order is discriminatory toward international humanitarian and human rights law.

Trump issued an executive order late Friday to impose a 90-day entry ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia, block refugees from Syria indefinitely, and suspend all refugee admissions for 120 days.

Tens of thousands of protesters have rallied in US cities and at major airports over Trump’s executive order.

An author and commentator believes Trump’s travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries is a “typically xenophobic action” and an “offensive racist policy” but nothing less was expected from his administration.

“But the countries listed on this ban are the same ones that Wesley Clark mentioned in his famous interview about seven countries in five years from 2001. This was the neocon agenda … and this is stating the same thing again, reshaping the Middle East and making it friendly to Western capital and to Israeli interests,” John Steppling told Press TV in an interview on Wednesday.

He also noted what is more troubling is the signals being sent from Trump’s foreign policy which seems to be an extension and an intensification of the one pursued by former US president Barack Obama.

Steppling further criticized the people for not protesting 14 years of American war on Muslim countries but opposing this ban. However, he said, part of this is “the antipathy that many Americans have for Trump understandably”.

According to the commentator, US foreign policy since the fall of the Soviet Union has “marched forward seamlessly” through all previous administrations and none of that is changing.

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