‘Predators’: Amnesty slams Netanyahu, Putin, Trump as human rights decline

Global rights group says leaders of three countries behind devastating wars inspire other states to carry out abuses.London, United Kingdom – Israel, Russia and the United States are leading the destruction of global human rights, Amnesty International has said, describing the three countries’ leaders as “voracious predators” intent upon economic and political domination.“A global environment where primitive ferocity could flourish has been long in the making,” Agnes Callamard, the head of the global rights group, wrote in an annual report on the state of the world’s human rights that was released on Tuesday.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4UNICEF ‘outraged’ after Israeli forces kill water truck drivers in Gazalist 2 of 4Photos: UK police arrest more than 500 people at Palestine Action rallylist 3 of 4Spanish government approves amnesty programme for undocumented immigrantslist 4 of 4‘Sent to be killed’: How Russia forces migrants to fight in Ukraineend of listIn 2025, “sharp U-turns were taken away from the international order that had been imagined out of the ashes of the Holocaust and the utter destruction of world wars, and constructed slowly and painfully, albeit insufficiently, over these past 80 years,” she said.In a news conference on Monday in London, Callamard said that most governments tend to appease the “predators” rather than confront them.“Some even thought to imitate the bullies and the looters,” she said.Spain, however, which is an outlier in Europe for its criticism of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and US-Israeli attacks on Iran, “is standing above the double standard that is destroying the international system”, Callamard said.She argued that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who in 2022 sent his forces into neighbouring Ukraine, have had an “absolutely dramatic” impact on the world.Their conduct is “emboldening all of those that are tempted by similar behaviours,” said Callamard. “It is allowing for the multiplication of copycats around the world, and therefore what we are confronting now is much more aggressive and ferocious than what we had to confront three or four years ago.”