Saturday, July 9, 2016

Diversity is our strength: U.N. chief urges US to deal with racial disparity in law enforcement

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday the United States needed to comprehensively address discrimination, including racial disparities in law enforcement, after police killed two black men in the Louisiana and Minnesota.

Ban also condemned the killing of five police officers in Dallas, his spokesman Farhan Haq said in a statement.

"There is no justification for such violence," Haq said. "Those responsible compounded the suffering that many in the United States feel following the killing of two African-American men over two days."

At least one sniper killed five Dallas police officers and wounded another seven at the end of a protest on Thursday night over this week's pair of fatal shootings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Ban called for a "thorough and impartial" investigation into the deaths of the black men, Haq said.

"They once again put the focus on the need to address discrimination, including racial disparities in law enforcement, in a comprehensive manner," he said.

A long string of killings of black men by police in cities including Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Baltimore and Chicago has given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement against excessive police force. The killings have spurred almost two years of mostly peaceful street protests in the United States.

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