54 African countries demand Trump's apology over 'racial' slur

New York [USA], Jan 13 (ANI): A group of 54 African countries demanded the United States President Donald Trump to apologise and retract  his reported racist comments on African, Haitian and El Salvadorian immigrants.

According to the Telegraph, after an emergency session was held to weigh down on Trump's comments, the group of African ambassadors to the United Nations (UN) said it was "concerned at the continuing and growing trend from the US administration toward Africa and people of African descent to denigrate the continent and people of colour."

"The group is extremely appalled at, and strongly condemns the outrageous, racist and xenophobic remarks by the president of the United States of America as widely reported by the media," the African leaders said in a statement, demanding a "retraction and an apology."

The condemnation by the African countries comes a day after Trump had questioned why the US only accepted immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa during a meeting at the Oval Office in White House to discuss reforming the country's immigration policy. He has reportedly called them as "s---hole countries."

The US President had also suggested that it could take more from countries such as Norway, whose Prime Minister had recently met him.

The White House, in an initial statement, did not deny the comments, which remained unchallenged by the Trump administration, until a pair of tweets from the US President came later.

"Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said 'take them out.' Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians," Trump had tweeted.

In a dramatic turn, the UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville criticised Trump's alleged comments, saying it "encouraged racism and xenophobia".

"These are shocking and shameful comments from the President of the United States. There is no other word one can use but 'racist'. You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 's---holes', whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome."

He added, "The issue was more than "vulgar language". It's about opening the door to humanity's worst side, about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and destroy lives of many people."

Democratic Party leader Hillary Clinton, on Twitter, accused Trump of having "ignorant and racist views of anyone who doesn't look like him".

Congressman Luis Gutierrez said, "We always knew that President Trump doesn't like people from certain countries or people or certain colours. We can now we say with 100 percent confidence, that the president is a racist who does not share the values enshrined in our Constitution."

Republican Rep. Mia Love of Utah, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, said: "Mr. Trump's comments were "unkind, divisive, elitist and fly in the face of our nation's values."

Haiti's ambassador to the US, Paul G. Altidor, also said that "the president was either misinformed or miseducated about Haiti and its people." (ANI)