UN chief demands that the world step up to stamp out hatred
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UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres demanded Monday that the world "step up to stamp out anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred, persecution of Christians and all other forms of racism, xenophobia, discrimination and incitement."
The U.N. chief said he was responding to incidents "that have become all-too familiar -- Muslims gunned down in mosques and their religious sites vandalized, Jews murdered in synagogues, their gravestones defaced with swastikas, Christians killed at prayer, their churches often torched."
Guterres cited the most recent incidents: Saturday's shootings at a synagogue in California that killed one woman and Sunday's attack on a Christian church in Burkina Faso that killed the pastor and five others.
Beyond the murders of worshippers, he said, "there is loathsome rhetoric" aimed not only at religious groups but at migrants and refugees as well as "assertions of white supremacy, a resurgence of neo-Nazi ideology (and) venom directed at anyone considered the 'other.'"
Guterres said "parts of the internet are becoming hothouses of hate, as like-minded bigots find each other online, and platforms serve to inflame and enable hate to go viral."
