UN experts: Race report ‘normalises’ white power

A RACE report released to widespread controversy ‘repackages racist stereotypes into fact’ and should be rejected by the government, UN human rights experts have warned.

The report ‘attempts to normalise white supremacy’ with ‘arguments that have always justified racial hierarchy’, said the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.

Arguing that its findings distorted the history of the slave trade, the experts called for the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities to be ‘disbanded or reconstituted’.

But Downing Street rejected the criticism and insisted last month’s government-commissioned report ‘in no way condones racist behaviour’.

The commission argued Britain is no longer a country where the ‘system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities’, while chairman Tony Sewell said he had found no evidence of ‘institutional racism’. But the UN group accused the report of ‘twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies’.

In a statement released by the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, the experts said the commission had sidestepped the chance to ‘acknowledge the atrocities of the past’.

A spokesman for Boris Johnson said: ‘Our view is that this report misrepresents the findings. We remain proud of the UK’s long history as a human rights champion and we encourage everyone to read the original report in full.’ He said the commission had ‘ absolutely not’ normalised white supremacy.