The pandemic and the demonstrations caused by the death of George Floyd, a black man asphyxiated by a white police officer during his arrest, highlight " endemic racial discrimination " in the United States, said the High Commissioner for UN human rights.
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" This virus reveals endemic inequalities that have been ignored for too long ," said Michelle Bachelet in a press release. " In the United States, the protests provoked by the death of George Floyd highlight not only police violence against people of color, but also inequalities in health, education, employment and endemic racial discrimination " .
One week after the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after Derek Chauvin, a white policeman, knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, hundreds of thousands of Americans protest police brutality , racism and social inequality, exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis.
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President Donald Trump has pledged to restore order to an America plagued by historic outbursts, threatening to deploy the military to end the violence. The problems of discrimination combined with inequality in the face of the Covid-19 " are found to varying degrees in many other countries, " said Michelle Bachelet.
" Statistics show a devastating impact of Covid-19 on populations of African origin, as well as on ethnic minorities in certain countries, including Brazil, France, the United Kingdom and the United States ", according to her. In the United States, the mortality rate of people who are positive for Covid-19 is twice as high among African-Americans as in other communities, says the ex-president of Chile.
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