The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights has responded to President Trump’s “enemy of the people” campaign against the free press. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a Jordanian diplomat, said the following in an exclusive interview by Julian Borger published today in the Guardian:
We began to see a campaign against the media … that could have potentially, and still can, set in motion a chain of events which could quite easily lead to harm being inflicted on journalists just going about their work and potentially some self-censorship. And in that context, it’s getting very close to incitement to violence.
Zeid is stepping down in frustration due to decreasing commitment by major powers to fight human rights abuses. In March, for example, Zeid was not allowed even to address the Security Council about the human rights situation in Syria, due to a last-minute abstention by Bernard Tanoh-Boutchoue, the Ivory Coast representative, who acted without authorization from his government. Western diplomats believed that that Russia had pressured Tanoh-Boutchoue, a former ambassador to Moscow, to abstain instead of voting yes. (A month later Tanoh-Boutchoue suddenly died; it was said to be a heart attack.)