United Nations blast TRUMP and MAY for ‘undermining civil liberties’ of ISIS jihadists
THE United Nations’ top rights official accused US President Donald Trump of breaking taboos by his apparent support for torture techniques, and warned world powers against undermining civil liberties in their fight against militants.
Express.co.uk
Tue, Jun 27, 2017
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein also lambasted British Prime Minister Theresa May for threatening to change human rights laws if they got in the way of security operations, saying her words would give heart to authoritarian governments.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told an audience in London late on Monday that strident statements in the wake of attacks risked undermining international rights treaties.
Mr Ra’ad al-Hussein said: “If other leaders start to follow the same rhetorical course, undermining the (U.N. Convention against Torture) with their words, the practice of torture is likely to broaden, and that would be fatal.
“The Convention would be scuttled, and a central load-bearing pillar of international law removed.”
Mr Trump said in late January that he thought the practice of waterboarding – a form of simulated drowning – worked as an intelligence-gathering tool.
But he also said he would defer on the issue to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis who disagrees with him about the technique’s usefulness.
Mr Ra’ad al-Hussein said he was worried by Mr Trump’s “persistent flirtation” with a return to torture.
There was little immediate danger of the US using torture, but that could change if there was an attack on American soil, he said.
He said: “Mindful of how the American public has, over the last ten years, become far more accepting of torture, the balance could be tipped in favour of its practice.”
After deadly militant attacks on London and Manchester, Mrs May told The Sun newspaper this month: “If human rights laws get in the way of doing these things, we will change those laws to make sure we can do them.”
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