Obama condemns anti-LGBT violence in final United Nations speech as US President

President Barack Obama has made his last ever United Nations speech as US President and used it to condemn anti-LGBT violence.

In the speech at the UN, President Obama warned US voters against embracing isolationism and ultra-nationalism in November’s Presidential election.

He also warned against discriminating against minority groups, saying: “I do not believe progress is possible if our desire to preserve our identities gives way to an impulse to dehumanise or dominate another group.

“If our religion leads us to persecute those of another faith, if we jail or beat people who are gay, if our traditions lead us to prevent girls from going to school, if we discriminate on the basis of race or tribe or ethnicity, then the fragile bonds of civilisation will fray.”

“The world is too small, we are too packed together, for us to be able to resort to those old ways of thinking,” he continued.

Condemning Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, who he never mentioned by name, he took apart policies on trade, immigration and multiculturalism.

He also attacked the suggestion by Trump that a wall should be built between the US and Mexico, saying: “A nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself.”

Of Trump, he warned against “aggressive nationalism” and “crude populism”, and the dangers therein.

• Dec 01 2023

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