From the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar to the anti-migrant rhetorics of President Donald Trump of the US, showed an increased in hate-filled narratives by governments around the world according to Amnesty International in its annual report.
Amnesty’s excoriating report paints a grim picture of the state of human rights globally, which have given licence to bigotry and discrimination against already-vulnerable groups.
“The spectres of hatred and fear now loom large in world affairs, and we have few governments standing up for human rights in these disturbing times. Instead, leaders such as (Egyptian president) al-Sisi, (Philippines president) Duterte, (Venezuelan president) Maduro, Putin, Trump, and (Chinese president) Xi are callously undermining the rights of millions,” Amnesty International’s secretary-general Salil Shetty said.
“We saw the ultimate consequence of a society encouraged to hate, scapegoat and fear minorities laid bare in the horrific military campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people in Myanmar.
“The feeble response to crimes against humanity and war crimes from Myanmar to Syria and Yemen underscored the lack of leadership on human rights. Governments are shamelessly turning the clock back on decades of hard-won protections.”
The Asia-Pacific region, Amnesty said, was dominated by a failure of governments to protect people’s rights, and in many cases, an active persecution of their own citizens.
“The warning signs in Myanmar had long been visible: massive discrimination and segregation had become normalised within a regime that amounted to apartheid, and for long years the Rohingya people were routinely demonised and stripped of the basic conditions needed to live in dignity. The transformation of discrimination and demonisation into mass violence is tragically familiar, and its ruinous consequences cannot be easily undone.”
“If the Rohingya refugees were forced to return to Myanmar, they would be at the mercy of the same military that drove them out and would continue to face the entrenched system of discrimination and segregation amounting to apartheid that made them so vulnerable in the first place,” the report says.
The Amnesty report assesses the state of human rights across the globe, regionally, and for 159 individual countries and territories.
The report also painted in gloom light the catastrophy going on in Syria.
“Government and allied forces, including Russia, carried out indiscriminate attacks and direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects using aerial and artillery bombing, including with chemical and other internationally banned weapons, killing and injuring hundreds,” Amnesty’s report says.
“Government forces maintained lengthy sieges on densely populated areas, restricting access to humanitarian and medical aid to thousands of civilians.”
