Zeid Raad al-Hussein has taken a thinly-veiled swipe at US Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on Friday.
In a speech, the UN human rights chief accused the presidential candidate of promoting bigotry and torture. He made the remarks at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, the same city where Republicans will meet in July to nominate their party’s presidential candidate.
“Bigotry is not proof of strong leadership. It is evidence of the lowest and most craven lack of faith in the principles that uphold a ‘land of the free’,” Zeid told students in a speech, AFP reported.
“Less than 150 miles away from where I speak, a front-running candidate to be president of this country declared, just a few months ago, his enthusiastic support for torture, [...] inflicting intolerable pain on people, in order to force them to deliver or invent information that they may not have,” Zeid said.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has said that “torture works” and said he would bring back techniques he called worse than waterboarding—a harsh interrogation method banned by the Obama administration.
Trump has also been criticized for his promise to build a wall on the US-Mexico border to keep out migrants and to ban Muslims from entering the US, ideas the human rights chief called “grossly irresponsible”.
Though it did not refer to Trump by name, the message was clearly intended for the Republican frontrunner.
Zeid also admonished the “multiple candidates” who advocate surveillance and other invasive measures targeting Muslims.
