UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein on Monday launched a scathing attack on politicians including US presidential nominee Donald Trump and Freedom Party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, saying that they had similarities to the Islamic State group.
Speaking in The Hague, al-Hussein said he was a Muslim whose role was “to defend and promote the human rights of each individual, everywhere.”
“And I am angry, too, because of Mr Wilders’ lies and half-truths, manipulations and peddling of fear,” al-Hussein told the inauguration of the Hague-based Peace, Justice and Security Foundation.
Last month, the PVV launched its campaign platform ahead of elections in March next year vowing to “close mosques, Islamic schools and ban the Koran” if elected.
The PVV, which has been leading in opinion polls, also vowed to reverse the “Islamization” of the Netherlands by closing the borders, shutting asylum seeker centers, banning migrants from Muslim countries and stopping Muslim women from wearing headscarfs.
Al-Hussein slammed the PVV’s proposals and said that Wilders had much in common with Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, National Front leader Marine Le Pen of France and leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage.
He also said they had similarities to the ideology espoused by the Islamic State group.
“All seek in varying degrees to recover a past, halcyon and so pure in form, where sunlit fields are settled by peoples united by ethnicity or religion,” Zeid told prominent members of the justice community.
“A past that most certainly, in reality, did not exist anywhere, ever,” he said.
Promises to recover such a past were “fiction; its merchants are cheats. Clever cheats,” he added, accusing the leaders of using “half-truths and oversimplification” to feed the fears of “anxious” individuals.
It was a simple formula “to make your target audience feel good by offering up what is a fantasy to them, but a horrendous injustice to others.”
“I do not equate the actions of nationalist demagogues with those of DAESH, which are monstrous and sickening,” al-Hussein said, using an Arabic-language acronym for the Islamic State.
However, the militant group’s methods of communication were “similar tactics to those of the populists,” with both groups benefiting from the other to survive, he added.
“We must pull back from this trajectory,” Zeid said, adding that there was a risk “the atmosphere will become thick with hate,” which could “descend rapidly into colossal violence.”
Urging people to speak out and “draw the line,” he asked: “Are we going to continue to stand by and watch this banalization of bigotry?”
Wilders in a text message to reporters said that the Jordanian prince was “an utter fool.”
“Another good reason to get rid of the UN,” Wilders said, calling again for the world to “de-Islamize.”
“Islam and freedom are incompatible, whatever this Jordanian bureaucrat says,” Wilders said.
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