Press Release
Rev. Torli H. Krua
The Universal Human Rights International (UHRI) has seized upon the holy seasons of Easter, Passover, and Ramadan to host a memorial service marking one million human beings killed by the Covid-19 virus across America.
The event will be staged at the City Hall Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts, during which time, Rev. Torli H. Krua will lead a group of worshipers to call on President Biden to urgently issue an emergency public health intervention designed to prevent more unnecessary deaths of human beings in the United States due to Covid-19 virus. UHRI calls for President Biden to immediately issue an Executive Order granting Temporary Protected Status (Work Permits) not just for the 6000 Liberians but also to all asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants in the USA as long as the Covid-19 Pandemic lasts.
By failing to protect asylum seekers who are struggling to survive in America, the United States opened the door for a public health disaster of human-to-human transmission of covid-19 that has killed more Americans than any war in recent history. Rev. Krua will also call on President Biden to lead the United States in signing and rectifying important international treaties and conventions in order to gain international credibility in securing global peace and security.
Rev. Krua will also call on President Putin to immediately order a cease-fire and negotiate an end to the killing of human beings.
UHRI believes as long as factories for making deadly weapons exist within the member countries of the UN Security Council, wars are the inevitable money-making schemes that will continue to destroy human life. Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, agreed. He said: “When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.”
Whether we were talking about the purpose and outcomes of the Liberian Civil War, or the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Ukraine, all wars are about money and can never secure justice for oppressed humans. A. J. P. Taylor, British historian and broadcaster said: “No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.” That is why the $800 billion dollars Americans pay annually for defense actually enrich shareholders of weapons companies and make Americans insecure.
No war has brought lasting peace. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing 2,403 Americans and destroying 19 U.S. Navy ships. The United States responded by detonating two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, killing 226,000 people, mostly civilians. World War II has come and gone and injustice still remains as the rich get richer. On September 11, 2001, Bin Laden attacked America, killing 2,977 Americans.
Although the majority of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, the US responded by invading Afghanistan and occupying it for 20 years at a cost of $2 trillion- 47,245 Afghan civilians died along with 66,000 Afghan national military and police personnel. The death toll includes 2,448 American service members and 3,846 U.S. contractors. In the past 2 years, Covid-19 has killed nearly one million Americans.
While there seems to be compassion for Ukrainian refugees, 11 million asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented immigrants who are our neighbors without work permits, health insurance and access to humanitarian assistance are perishing alongside Americans. Compared to China, a country with 1.44 billion people with less than 5,000 covid deaths, America’s covid-19 death toll is an outrageous and unacceptable public health disaster, especially because millions of vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers in the U.S. have been inhumanely denied work permits for years, thus making them more susceptible to infection and death of covid. Covid-19 spreads without discrimination.
That is why we believe protecting all human beings in America during this pandemic actually protects all Americans.
With one million Americans dying of this preventable disease, we call on President Biden to urgently consider protecting Americans by granting work permits to all 11 million asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants on American Soil during the covid-19 pandemic because “Charity begins at home.”
After protecting Americans, President Biden must end the unnecessary killing of innocent people in Ukraine, by focusing on negotiations, not fanning the flames of war. We also call on President Biden to immediately make a case for the United States to sign and rectify all the international treaties and conventions that make up our international order of peace and security. America undermines global peace by failing to sign and rectify so many commonsense treaties such as the Optional Protocol To The Convention against Torture (OPCAT), Civil Law Convention on Corruption, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against women (OP-CEDAW)…and many many more.