The United States got a tongue-lashing at the United Nations on Monday from countries such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Although the U.S. withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2018, it participated in its Universal Periodic Review before the council, which it is required to do every five years as a member of the U.N.
Over 100 nations were given the opportunity to make their recommendations to the U.S. on how it could improve in the area of human rights. Those nations included some that have less-than-stellar records on human rights themselves.
China, which is a member of the council, said the U.S. needed to work to eradicate “systematic racism,” “police brutality,” and “religious intolerance.” China has come under fire recently for its alleged internment and persecution of Uighur Muslims.
“Stop interfering, for political reasons, in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of human rights,” said the nation’s representative.
Russia, also a member of the council, told the U.S. that it needed to “guarantee freedom of expression in the media” and “ensure full-fledged realization of voting rights by American citizens.” The Russian government has long been implicated in the killings of a number of journalists in the nation. It has also been repeatedly accused of election rigging.
The representative from Iran sat in front of a photo of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by the U.S. earlier in 2020, and demanded it cease “arbitrary killings.”
North Korea urged the U.S. to end “racial discrimination.”
In December 2019, Joe Biden expressed his intention to have the U.S. rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council should he be elected as president.
“We will rejoin the UN Human Rights Council and work to ensure that body truly lives up to its values,” Biden, who major networks have declared as winner of the 2020 presidential election, wrote.
