UN condemns as racist Donald Trump’s ‘shithole countries’ remark

Remarks by Donald Trump describing immigrants from Africa and Haiti as coming from “shithole countries” were racist, the United Nations human rights office has said, as it led global condemnation of the US president.

The UN human rights office said President Donald Trump’s reported use of an expletive to describe Africa and other countries could “potentially damage and disrupt the lives of many people.” Repeating the term attributed to Trump a day earlier, spokesman Rupert Colville says that “you cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes’, whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome.”

“There is no other word one can use but racist,” the UN human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, told a Geneva news briefing.

He said Trump’s reported comment could endanger lives by potentially fanning xenophobia, “It legitimises the targeting of people based on who they are. This isn’t just a story about vulgar language, it’s about opening the door to humanity’s worst side,” he said.

Colville says Trump’s reported comments “go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War II and the Holocaust.”

The African Union said it was “frankly alarmed” by Trump’s language. “Given the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the United States as slaves, this statement flies in the face of all accepted behaviour and practice,” AU spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo told the Associated Press. “This is particularly surprising as the United States of America remains a global example of how migration gave birth to a nation built on strong values of diversity and opportunity.”

The former Haitian president Laurent Lamothe also expressed his dismay, saying the US president’s remark “shows a lack of respect and ignorance”. The Haitian ambassador to the US, Paul Altidor, said Trump’s views were “based on stereotypes”.

Standing at a coffee stall outside an office block in Rosebank, a commercial and business neighbourhood in central Johannesburg, Blessing Dlamini, a 45-year-old administrative assistant, said Trump’s words came as “no surprise”.

“He has shown the world he is a racist. We should just block him from our thoughts,” Dlamini said.