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UN committee issues rare “early warning” to the U.S. over racist violence

A U.N. committee tasked with eliminating racism has issued a rare “early warning” over recent white supremacist demonstrations in the U.S., adding it was “disturbed by the failure at the highest political level” to condemn the rallies.

The warning, given by the U.N.’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, places the U.S. in a select but unenviable club. Only five other countries – Iraq, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Burundi, and Ivory Coast – have been issued such cautions in the past decade.

The statement came in response to the recent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where anti-racism counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed when a man drove his car into a crowd.

“We are alarmed by the racist demonstrations, with overtly racist slogans, chants and salutes by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, promoting white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination and hatred,” said committee chair Anastasia Crickley.

While the edict did not name President Donald Trump explicitly, it said it was disturbed by the failure “at the highest political level” to “unequivocally and unconditionally” condemn racism, and warned that the continued failure to do so could result in further violence. Trump was widely slammed for his response to the violence in Charlottesville, after he repeatedly attempted to draw an equivalence between white supremacists and counter-protesters.

The U.N. committee previously issued a warning to the U.S. in 2006 over land rights issues involving the indigenous Western Shoshone.