Amnesty International accuses Trump of violating human rights

Human rights advocacy organization Amnesty International has accused US President Donald Trump of violating human rights by adopting “hateful” politics.

"President Trump takes actions that violate human rights at home and abroad," the UK-based group said in its annual report The State of the World’s Human Rights published Thursday.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s Secretary General, took particular aim at Trump's "transparently hateful" travel ban, which restricts the entry of citizens of several Muslim-majority countries.

“The transparently hateful move by the US government in January to ban entry to people from several Muslim-majority countries set the scene for a year in which leaders took the politics of hate to its most dangerous conclusion,” she said.

Despite facing overwhelming opposition inside America and abroad, Trump insists that the ban is necessary to keep what he calls “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the US.

PressTV-US allows Trump travel ban to go fully into effect

The US Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce a travel ban targeting eight countries.

Shetty said prominent world leaders like Trump offered a “nightmarish vision” of societies that were immersed in hatred, a picture that she said encouraged those who “promote bigotry.”

“The specters of hatred and fear now loom large in world affairs, and we have few governments standing up for human rights in these disturbing times,” she added.

In a separate statement about the human rights situation in the Americas, Amnesty accused Trump of worsening the immigration crisis by stepping up border crackdowns and making a “cruel” pledge to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

PressTV-‘No. I’m not a racist,’ Trump says

Trump has rejected claims that he is a racist following his reported description of   several nations as "shithole countries" during a White House meeting with lawmakers last week.

“More than 50,000 people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador sought asylum in other countries, thousands of whom were then apprehended at the US border,” the statement added.

The Republican president has signed executive orders that call for the hiring of 5,000 more US Border Patrol agents and 10,000 more immigration officers.

Since campaigning for the 2016 presidential election, Trump has been accused of stoking racial, ethnic and religious tensions lurking within America.

Human rights experts have warned about the rising racism and xenophobia in the US under his presidency.