Jeffrey Sachs: What about America's human rights abuses?

(Screenshot of BBC Newsnight via YouTube)

On April 15, Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, a current serving Environmental Advisor to the UN, slammed the BBC for ignoring America's human rights abuses during an interview about climate change on BBC's Newsnight program.

As the BBC started with talking about China's human rights abuses, Sachs said that the broadcaster's framing of the interview was "not what [he had] expected", and asked "What about America's human rights abuses?"

He then cited examples, saying "The Iraq war, together with the UK, [was] completely illegal and under false pretenses. The war in Syria, the war in Libya. The continued sanctions against civilian populations in Venezuela and Iran. Walking away from the Paris Climate Agreement for the last 4 years. Unilateral trade actions that have been deemed illegal by the WTO…"

"We have really serious human rights violations by the United States abroad…not to mention the continued, massive racism, white supremacism, and incarceration of hundreds of thousands of black African American and people of colour in the US," he added.

"I found the framing of it not what I expected - I thought we were going to talk about climate change, which we should," Sachs said.