WASHINGTON: Human Rights Watch warned on Wednesday (Feb 4) that President Donald Trump was turning the United States into an authoritarian state as democracy declines globally to its lowest ebb in four decades.
Trump’s return to the White House has intensified a “downward spiral” on human rights that was already under pressure from Russia and China, the New York-based advocacy and research group said in its annual report.
“The rules-based international order is being crushed,” HRW said.
In the United States, the group said, Trump has shown “blatant disregard for human rights and egregious violations”.
In descriptions that would have been unthinkable in the US section of its previous annual reports, the group pointed to the deployment of masked, armed agents – the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency – which has carried out “hundreds of unnecessarily violent and abusive raids”.
“The administration’s racial and ethnic scapegoating, domestic deployment of National Guard forces in pretextual power grabs, repeated acts of retaliation against perceived political enemies and former officials now critical of him, as well as attempts to expand the coercive powers of the executive and neuter democratic checks and balances, underpin a decided shift toward authoritarianism in the US,” the report said.
Human Rights Watch repeated its finding that the United States engaged in enforced disappearances – a crime under international law – by sending 252 Venezuelan migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
In a recent report, HRW documented allegations by the men, who eventually were allowed into Venezuela, of being tortured including beatings and sexual violence.