Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt lead the way in bashing the U.S.
After a three-month hiatus due to Covid-19, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) convened for an “urgent debate” on Wednesday about “systematic racism” and “police brutality.” The debate was proposed by Burkina Faso on behalf of the UN’s Africa group in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
The UNHRC never fails to deliver a rich performance of sanctimonious virtue signaling by states with atrocious human rights records and this occasion was no different.
Nigeria, for instance, where security operatives have reportedly killed at least 18 people while enforcing the Covid-19 lockdown, hypocritically presented itself as the champion of human rights. “This ugly incident should serve as a clarion call on the need for all states to take action in addressing systemic racism and racial discrimination which has been suffered by Africans and peoples of African descent for decades,” the Nigerian representative said.
A 2018 study, Systematic Brutality, Torture and Abuse of Human Rights by the Nigerian Police: Accounts of Inmates of Ogun State Prisons, found that Nigerian police “rely heavily on the use of torture to elicit ‘confessions’ from arrestees. Former detainees reported experiences that included being bound and suspended mid-air in painful positions, kicked and beaten with machetes, gun butts, boots, fists, electrical wires, animal hides, and other instruments.”
Apparently, Nigeria has no problem with police brutality against black people, as long as its own police is doing the brutalizing.
In South Africa, at least 200 reports of police brutality have been recorded during the Covid-19 lockdown and eight people have been killed, according to Deutsche Welle, which reported that videos of the police brutality had gone viral: “Some of the videos show soldiers kicking people and forcing them to roll on the ground. Others were forced to frog-march until they reach their homes.”
At the UNHRC, however, South Africa invoked its experience of apartheid and played the role of human rights advocate.
Judith Bergman – The American Spectator – June 20, 2020.
