US Human Rights Network statement regarding insurrection at the US Capitol
Yesterday, we watched, alongside the rest of the world, as hundreds of white nationalist insurrectionists -- responding to President Trump’s blatantly false allegations of a fraudulent election -- violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on his order in an attempt to obstruct the certification of the 2020 U.S. General Election results... USHRN vehemently condemns the actions that took place yesterday. We must be clear: this was an assault on democracy. This was white nationalist terrorism.
... The world has already seen the images in the United States of the treatment of Muslims (and those appearing to be Muslim) as terrorists, the violent reaction to Black Lives Matter protests, the siege against Indigenous Peoples at Standing Rock, and the violent assaults on immigrants at the border. What this moment makes really clear is that who the State decides to coddle and who they demonize is almost entirely based on race and ethnicity and that this coddling of white supremacists has emboldened them to act without fear of the same kinds of consequences that marginalized groups continue to endure.” -Salimah K. Hankins, Esq., Interim Executive Director.
... What occurred yesterday was an attempted electoral coup d'etat instigated by President Trump’s followers, encouraged by Republican members of Congress and emanating from the President himself, who just hours earlier, addressed his angry followers at the Washington Monument saying, “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue … and we’re going to the Capitol … we’re going to try and give our Republicans … the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
... While this white supremacist coup is a bold, audacious, and visible attack on the very seat of government, it is also an attack on marginalized groups' human right to vote.
... [T]he United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) [has] called on President Trump to disavow “false and dangerous narratives,” stating: “Wednesday’s attack on the US Capitol demonstrated clearly the destructive impact of sustained, deliberate distortion of facts, and incitement to violence and hatred by political leaders. Allegations of electoral fraud have been invoked to try to undermine the right to political participation.”