Ferguson Protesters Puzzled By Security Council Inaction

Ferguson, Missouri, November 28 – African-American residents of this town and their supporters from around the nation have yet to hear from either the United Nations Security Council or its Human Rights Council, disappointing many who expected at least one of those bodies to react the same way they do when Israel appears to do anything that affects Palestinians negatively, observers reported today.

Just days after a federal grand jury declined to issue an indictment of the white police officer who fatally shot a black youth, Ferguson remains tense, though with the rioting and looting that followed the grand jury announcement having given way to less dangerous demonstrations of displeasure. African-Americans in Ferguson and around the nation have long complained of discrimination by law enforcement, and of the sense that police officers who shoot blacks frequently escape serious charges.

Seeing eerie parallels with Palestinian grievances against Israel, the Ferguson demonstrators expressed frustration that the international bodies so piqued by Palestinian suffering have all but ignored the plight of African-Americans, even as a number of demonstrators have made a point of linking the two populations.

Spokespeople for the protesters stopped short of accusing the UN and its ilk of outright hypocrisy, but voiced their displeasure nonetheless. “It’s disheartening to find that the very institutions so prepared to step up for Palestinian human and political rights haven’t convened even a single session to discuss Ferguson,” said local resident Jamal Whitewash. “White oppression and discrimination have been going on far longer than anything Israel has done, but I don’t see any perpetual or special UN committees focused on our situation.” The protests do receive prominent attention in the international press, notes Whitewash, so ignorance of current events cannot account for the silence.

Indeed, Russian state media in particular have seized upon the Ferguson story as an illustration of American hypocrisy on issues of equality and civil rights, while myriad other nations have engaged in barely-concealed schadenfreude at such a prominent display of underachievement in human rights by a country that loves to lecture others on the issue. Despite the satisfaction, however, representatives of those repressive regimes sought to strike a balance between gleefully pointing out American human rights shortcomings and playing up the issue of human rights in general, fearful of attracting attention to their own abysmal records.

That factor, says analysts, accounts for the silence of the UN organizations on Ferguson. “The nations whose representatives sit on the Security and Human Rights Councils have horrible human rights,” notes political science author Ray Ciszt. “I hope the demonstrators in Missouri and elsewhere aren’t holding their breath.”