Washington
US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said on Saturday that a UN Human Rights Council vote condemning racism amounted to hypocrisy.
Pompeo defended the recent discussion on race relations in America as a sign of a healthy democracy, and said the council should focus on what he called systemic racial disparities in member countries such as Cuba and China.
“The council’s decision to vote yesterday on a resolution focusing on policing and race in the US marks a new low,” Pompeo said in a statement.
The council took the vote after a debate prompted by protests in the US triggered by the death at police hands of African American George Floyd.
However, a specific mention of racism and police brutality in the US was removed.
This sparked outrage from rights groups, which accused Washington and its allies of lobbying heavily to revise the text — a charge to which the US mission in Geneva declined to respond.— AFP
