UN official: Trump's comments on immigrants 'racist'

By Fatih Erel

GENEVA (AA) - The UN human rights spokesman has strongly criticized an expletive-laden comment from U.S. President Donald Trump on immigrants from Latin American and African countries, terming it "shameful" and "racist".

According to a Washington Post report, Trump was quoted as saying during a recent Oval Office meeting with lawmakers: "Why are we having all these people from [expletive] countries come here?”

The American president went on to suggest the U.S. should instead focus its immigrant entry policy from places like Norway.

Speaking at a news conference in Geneva on Friday, UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said: "If confirmed, there are shocking and shameful comments from the president of the United States. Sorry, but there is no other word one can use but racist.

"You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as [expletive] whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome."

The UN spokesman also underlined the concerns about the decision to terminate the Temporally Statues Program for people from El Salvador that would affect around 180,000 people for September 2019; for Haitians about 59,000 for July 2019; and Nicaragua about 5,300 people for October 2018.

"The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear.

"Like the earlier comments made vilifying Mexicans and Muslims, the policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion, and the reluctance to clearly condemn the anti-Semitic and racist actions of the white supremacists in Charlottesville -- all of these go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War II and the Holocaust," Colville said.

"This is not just a story about vulgar language. It is about opening the door wider to humanity's worst side, about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and even destroy the lives of many people.

“That's perhaps the single most damaging and dangerous consequence of this type of comment by a major political figure."