African UN envoys demand Trump apology

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 (APP):All African member states of the United Nations have jointly denounced US President Donald Trump’s reference to African nations as “shitholes” and called on him to retract his statement and apologize.
After an emergency session on Friday to weigh Trump’s remarks, the African group of UN Ambassadors said it was “concerned at the continuing and growing trend from the US administration toward Africa and people of African descent to denigrate the continent and people of colour.”
The group said it was “extremely appalled at, and strongly condemns the outrageous, racist and xenophobic remarks by the president of the United States of America as widely reported by the media”.
Trump had reportedly demanded to know why the United States should accept immigrants from “shithole countries”, after lawmakers raised the issue of protections for immigrants from African nations, Haiti and El Salvador.
He later tweeted, “this was not the language used”. But a US senator present at the meeting said the president repeatedly called the countries “shitholes”.
The United Nations also slammed the reported remarks as “shocking and shameful” and “racist”.
“You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes’ whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome,” Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN human rights office, told reporters in Geneva.
IN Washington, the U.S. State Department tried to calm things down after Trump’s vulgar remark, tweeting from the department’s Bureau of African Affairs that “the United States will continue to robustly, enthusiastically and forcefully engage in Africa, promoting this vital relationship, and to listen and build on the trust and views we share with our African partners.”