UN Human Rights Envoy Slams Racist Voter Suppression in US

A senior United Nations human rights officer concluded that new electoral restrictions imposed by Conservatives in Texas and other states dilute the political representation of people of color in the United States, where there is “almost a tyranny” of the white majority and where human rights protection is “by far not comprehensive ”and“ even incoherent ”.

“I conclude that there is indeed an undermining of democracy, with a phenomenal number of legislative measures in different parts of the country that … make it difficult for certain minorities to vote,” said Fernand de Varennes, Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues of the UN Human Rights Office, during a press conference on Monday.

De Varennes has met with government officials, experts and civil rights groups in several states, as well as in Puerto Rico and Guam, where he denounced the lack of national political representation for the people living in those US territories. His visit comes nearly 60 years after black revolutionary leader Malcolm X urged UN human rights officials to indict the US government on charges of racism and repression against blacks, an issue that Malcolm X said the US could not even address in absentia international pressure and solidarity between people of African descent.

After a two-week tour of the US, De Varennes called on policymakers to revise the country’s human rights laws to combat a “dramatic” increase in discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes against Black, Latinx, Asian and indigenous peoples. Millions of Americans, especially colored people, are also at risk from growing economic inequality, pollution, and inequalities in health and education, he said.

“Although there were significant and hard-won human rights gains, especially during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the US stands out among Western democracies with its incomplete patchwork of human rights recognition and legal protection with minorities and [I]indigenous peoples who were most likely left behind in times of upheaval, uncertainty and crisis, ”De Varennes said in a statement.

De Varenne’s comments also come as Republicans continue to block voting legislation in Congress and enforce statewide voting restrictions fueled by former President Trump’s thoroughly debunked but persistent allegations of electoral fraud.

Since the Democrats won the White House and a slim majority in Congress in 2020, Republicans have passed 33 laws in 19 states that make it difficult for people to vote. Citing a decline in civil liberties and Trump’s efforts to overthrow the lost election, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Aid recently added the US to its list of “backsliding democracies” alongside countries like Poland and Slovenia.

Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and former GOP chairman of the Federal Election Commission, pointed to recent attempts by Republicans in Wisconsin to undermine a bipartisan electoral authority and even threaten its members with criminal charges that allow nursing home residents vote during the pandemic.

“In the past few months the partisans’ attempts to undermine legitimate and fair American elections have garnered shocking support and worrying significance,” Potter said in a statement on Monday.

Although state lawmakers in both parties also redraw electoral cards to maximize their political power, Republicans have a clear advantage given their control over more state legislature. Aggressive and racist gerrymanders who dilute the electoral power of colored communities in states like Texas and Georgia could offer Republicans an opportunity to take control of Congress in midterm elections without winning the referendum. Critics say racist gerrymandering helps maintain white supremacy even as demographics in local communities and the nation as a whole become less white.

“Unfortunately, it is becoming apparent that it is a tyranny of the majority in which the minority is denied the right to vote in many areas,” said De Varennes.

There appears to be a “three-tier approach” to citizenship and the right to vote for Americans, De Varennes said, with people who live in Guam and Puerto Rico being considered citizens but denying the right to vote in presidential elections and to elect voting representatives to Congress, and people who live in American Samoa are considered “nationals only” and not citizens even though they live under US rule. Given the legacy of slavery, racism, and genocide in the United States, it is “no coincidence” that most of the people who live in US territories are colored.

“It seems difficult to understand from outside the United States how one can have different levels of citizenship in the country,” he said.

In light of the police murder of George Floyd and other high profile black killings, De Varennes said that blacks in the US are most likely to be jailed, denied the right to vote and attacked by hate speech on social media. He added that indigenous peoples in the US and its territories have seen centuries of “dispossession, brutality and even genocide.”

Systemic racism discriminates against oppressed groups within the US criminal justice system, one reason why blacks and browns are disproportionately incarcerated in the country’s vast prison systems.

“I have been told that minorities such as African-Americans and Latinx in particular are disproportionately affected by marginalization and criminalization, which crushes them into a generation cycle of poverty, with a legal system that is structurally set up for benefit and forgiveness.” Who are richer and punish those who are poorer, especially colored minorities, ”said De Varennes.

While not mentioning Trump or President Joe Biden by name, De Varennes praised the US administration for making “significant changes” since the 2020 elections, including hate crime ordinances and laws that Biden said on the rise of violence and hate crimes against Asian Americans.

De Varennes concluded, however, that the US must pass extensive national laws to guarantee human rights for oppressed communities and to live up to its international obligations and lofty rhetoric. The human rights expert will present a final report on the human rights of minorities in the USA to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March 2022.

The De Varennes report will appear nearly six decades after Malcolm X tried to internationalize the issue of black oppression by bringing it to the United Nations as a human rights issue. The UN Human Rights Council avoided meddling in US domestic politics for decades after Malcolm X’s death in 1965, despite officials touring the US in recent years weighing the implications of current politics.

In June 2020, the UN Council officially recognized Malcolm X’s motion and finally adopted a resolution on human rights violations committed by law enforcement agencies against people of African descent when rioting for racial justice raged in the United States

At the inaugural meeting of the Organization for Afro-American Unity in 1964, Malcolm X said the US government was “morally ill-equipped” to solve the problem of racism:

We believe that the black man’s problem in this country is beyond Uncle Sam’s ability to solve it. It is beyond the US government’s ability to resolve it. The government itself is unable to even hear, let alone solve, our problem. It is not morally equipped to solve it.

So we have to take it out of the hands of the United States government. And the only way to do that is to internationalize it and use the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter of Human Rights, and for that reason bring it to the UN before a world body where we can indict uncles Sam for the ongoing criminal injustices our people experience in this government.

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UN Human Rights Envoy Slams Racist Voter Suppression in US