Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley harshly criticized the Biden administration for inviting United Nations envoys on racism and minority issues to make an official visit to the U.S., telling Fox News on Wednesday that the move was "insane."
Haley said that "China has one million Uyghurs in concentration camps, Cuba is beating protesters, and Venezuela is torturing political prisoners. Yet Biden’s Secretary of State is inviting the U.N. to investigate human rights in the United States — the freest, fairest country in the world. This is insane."
Haley was not the only Republican to criticize the move, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio telling Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a tweet that "instead of asking the UN to come here & tell us how ‘racist’ America is, why don’t you ask them to go to Cuba where an evil socialist regime storms into peoples homes, beats the crap out of them & then drags them away?"
Blinken said on Tuesday that the U.S. will issue a "formal, standing invitation to all UN experts who report and advise on thematic human rights issues," according to Fox News.
He explained that "As the president has repeatedly made clear, great nations such as ours do not hide from our shortcomings; they acknowledge them openly and strive to improve with transparency. In so doing, we not only work to set the standard for national responses to these challenges, we also strengthen our democracy, and give new hope and motivation to human rights defenders across the globe."
Blinken added that the U.S. has already reached out to the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, as well as the one on minority issues to invite them for an official visit.
Rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council who collect information on their respective topics and then issue a public report.
Blinken’s comments suggested that he expected the U.N. officials to be critical of the United States for its record on racism.
"Responsible nations must not shrink from scrutiny of their human rights record; rather, they should acknowledge it with the intent to improve," Blinken said in the statement, in which he also welcomed the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council’s adoption of a resolution on racism against Africans and people of African descent in the context of law enforcement.
The move is in sharp contrast to the Trump administration, which pulled out of the Human Rights Council three years ago due to its anti-Israel bias and the fact that its members included nations with abysmal human rights records.
Haley, who was U.N. ambasador during the Trump administration, has previously called the U.N. Human Rights Council the "cesspool of political bias that makes a mockery of human rights."
The Biden administration has sought to rejoin the council.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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