Demonstrators protest against police brutality on Times Square in Manhattan of New York, the United States, May 31, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)
"Discrimination in society and preferring an ethnic to another in society deserves condemnation," an Afghan expert said.
by Abdul Haleem
KABUL, June 1 (Xinhua) -- The widespread protests to condemn the killing of a black man by a policeman in the United States demonstrates the country's poor record of racial discrimination, an Afghan expert said on Sunday.
"No doubt, justice and equality of citizens in the U.S. have not been institutionalized and the killing of a black man by a policeman last week is a proof of it," Dad Mohammad Annabi, a researcher and the editor-in-chief of the Islah Daily, told Xinhua.
Demonstrations and riots have spread to cities across the United States including New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington after a video went viral of George Floyd being suffocated to death by a white police officer in the mid-western U.S. state of Minnesota on Monday.
Floyd, who lost his job like many other Americans due to lockdown measures imposed on U.S. cities, was choked to death by police after he allegedly used a counterfeit 20-U.S.-dollar banknote in a shop.
Protesters rally near the White House during a protest over the death of George Floyd in Washington D.C., the United States, on May 30, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
"Discrimination in society and preferring an ethnic to another in society deserves condemnation," Annabi said.
On the United States cutting ties with the World Health Organization (WHO), Annabi said that this is not the first time that the Trump administration has pulled his country out of major international organizations.
"Cutting more than 400 million U.S. dollars to WHO definitely would undermine the global health agency's performances including the war on COVID-19 and research on how to make vaccine to cure the killing disease in the world," Annabi said, adding that the move would also affect the fight against the coronavirus in the United States.
"Afghanistan is part of the international community and like other nations has been fighting COVID-19, and certainly financial cut to WHO would undermine the entity's support to Afghanistan," the expert said.
More than 15,200 people have been infected with the contagious novel coronavirus in Afghanistan since February and it is difficult to contain the virus by the conflict-battered country without the support of international organizations such as WHO, he added. ■