Welcome to Pushback. I'm Merrimate.

Killings of unarmed civilians by state forces.

Police repression of mass protests nationwide.

A president openly threatening military force against rebelling civilians.

If what is happening in the U.S. were instead taking place somewhere

else, Washington and its allies could well have been calling for sanctions or even military force.

Well, now the families of black victims of U.S. state violence are urging a different kind of

international intervention. In an open letter, the families urge the UN Human Rights Council to open an investigation

of what they call, quote, the unfolding grave human rights crisis in the U.S.

The families say that recent police killings of unarmed black people, as well as the subsequent

police use of force and repression

of protests violate U.S. obligations under international law.

They urge the UN to open an independent inquiry into the killings and subsequent crackdowns

on the protests.

The letter signatories include relatives of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, Philando

Castile, and Michael Brown, as well as more than 600 rights groups led by the ACLU and the

U.S. Human Rights Network.

The letter was co-drafted by my guest today.

Gay McDougal is a former member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

and was also the UN's first independent expert on minority issues. In South Africa, she helped

provide legal support to anti-apartheid activists and later served on South Africa's

Independent Electoral Commission, which organized the country's first nonracial

...