Ministry Slams ‘Racist Treatment’ of Minorities in U.S.
TEHRAN -- Iran says the American police’s grisly murder of an unarmed Black teacher bespeaks the dire human rights conditions that minorities face across the United States.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani made the remarks in a tweet, commenting on the death of the victim, Keenan Anderson, after he was repeatedly tasered by police officers in Los Angeles, a development that has sparked a massive outcry throughout the United States.
Anderson, 31, cousin of Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, died at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, after suffering a cardiac arrest following the incident on the afternoon of January 3 in Los Angeles’ Venice neighborhood.
Kanaani described Anderson’s death as “tragic”, reminding that it coincided with the day that marks the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., the legendary American civil rights leader, who dedicated his life to the realization of equal treatment for the United States’ African-American community.
The murder, the spokesman said, indicated that “despite the passage of five decades following Luther King’s murder, his dreams of the Black Americans’ equal entitlement to civil rights... have not been realized.”
“The people of color,” he added, “are still subject to severe violation of basic human rights and racist treatment.”