PARIS: Amnesty Inter­national says “toxic” fear-mongering by anti-establishment politicians, among them President Donald Trump and the leaders of Turkey, Hungary and the Philippines, is contributing to a global pushback against human rights.

Releasing its 408-page annual report on rights abuses around the world on Wednesday, the watchdog group described 2016 as “the year when the cynical use of ‘us vs. them’ narratives of blame, hate and fear took on a global prominence to a level not seen since the 1930s,” when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany.

Amnesty named Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte among leaders it said are “wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanizes entire groups of people.” “Poisonous” rhetoric employed by Trump in his election campaign exemplified “the global trend of angrier and more divisive politics,” Amnesty said.

“The limits of what is acceptable have shifted. Politicians are shamelessly and actively legitimising all sorts of hateful rhetoric and policies based on people’s identity: misogyny, racism and homophobia. The first target has been refugees and, if this continues in 2017, others will be in the crosshairs.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the report.

In the Philippines, Duterte’s spokesman, Ernesto Abella, said the president has recently toned down his rhetoric. Duterte has previously said he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts and talked of fattening fish in Manila Bay with corpses. Duterte’s crackdown on illegal drugs is feared to have killed more than 7,000 mostly poor drug users and petty drug pushers since he took office last June.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2017