UNITED NATIONS (PA) – The UN counterterrorism chief warned on Tuesday that terrorists are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic and appealing to new “violent extremist groups with racial, ethnic and political motives”.
Vladimir Voronkov spoke at the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the UN Security Council of the fundamental counter-terrorism resolution adopted after the 9/11 attacks in the United States – and six days after a violent assault at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump crowd.
He said that over the past two decades, “the threat of terrorism has persisted, evolved and spread.”
Al Qaeda, responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in 90 countries, remains resilient despite the loss of numerous leaders, Voronkov said. The Islamic State extremist group, which lost its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, is still carrying out attacks on the two countries “and seeks to rebuild a capacity for external operations.”
Voronkov, who heads the UN counterterrorism office, said terrorists have tried to exploit the COVID-19 crisis, “mounting on the peaks of the waves of polarization and hate speech amplified by the pandemic “.
Terrorists have quickly adapted to the exploitation of cyberspace and new technologies, interacting with organized crime figures and finding regulatory, human and technical gaps in countries, he said.
“Their tactics are attractive to new groups across the ideological spectrum, including violent extremist groups with racial, ethnic, and political motives,” Voronkov said.
UN Under-Secretary-General Michele Coninsx described the Security Council’s adoption of the U.S.-sponsored counterterrorism resolution on September 28, 2001, “a pivotal time in which the council and the international community recognized the seriousness of the threat posed by transnational terrorism. ”
The resolution ordered all countries to criminalize the financing of terrorist acts and to ban recruitment, travel and shelter for anyone involved.
He also set up an anti-terrorism committee to oversee the implementation of the resolution. Coninsx heads the executive board of the committee, which was established in 2004 to assess how the 193 member countries of the United Nations are implementing counterterrorism measures, recommend ways to address shortcomings, facilitate technical assistance, and analyze counterterrorism trends.
In recent years, according to Coninsx, Islamic State affiliates have emerged in many places, including South Asia, Southeast Asia, and several regions of Africa: the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, and south and east of the continent.
“The proliferation of far-right terrorism is also a cause for growing concern,” he said, adding that it included racially and ethnically motivated violence.
Britain’s Foreign Minister James Cleverly called for more attention to the “terrorist misuse of social media and other new technologies” and the long-term impact of COVID-19 on ” the dynamics of terrorism “.
More specifically, Estonian Defense Minister Juri Luik warned: “We are facing new complex security challenges, such as cyber and hybrid threats and capabilities such as drones that increase the real threat of terrorists to civilian populations and our men and women in operations and missions around the world. ”
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney praised the committee’s efforts to assess the impact of the pandemic and stressed that “addressing the evolving threat of violent extremism and politically motivated terrorism , especially the growing number of far-right attacks, is part of our responsibility, too. “
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills made no mention of the Capitol attack, but said that “the United States takes the threat of terrorist attacks on racial or ethnic grounds very seriously and continues to take steps to combat this. particular form of terrorism “.
“Last year, for the first time, the State Department designated a white supremacist group as a specially designated global terrorist,” he said.
Mills also influenced the dispute between Western council members and Russia and China over the importance of human rights in the fight against terrorism.
It began with Britain’s British assistance to China’s “severe and disproportionate measures” against the Uighurs of the Muslim minority as an example of anti-terrorist measures used “to justify flagrant human rights violations and oppression.”
He said the detention of up to 1.8 million people in Xinjiang from Beijing without trial and other well-documented measures goes against China’s obligations under international human rights law and the Security Council’s requirement that anti-terrorist measures comply with these obligations.
Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun dismissed Cleverly’s statements as “baseless attacks,” calling them “purely politically motivated” with no basis in fact.
“As a victim of terrorism, China has taken decisive measures to firmly fight terrorism and extremism,” Zhang said. “Our action is reasonable, based on legislation and in line with the prevailing practice of the countries in the region.” He added that his actions protect the rights of minorities.
Without naming China, Mills said the United States “will continue to oppose the actions of certain countries to participate in the mass detention of religious minorities and members of other minorities, participate in repressive surveillance and mass gathering. data and use coercive control of the population as forced sterilization and abortion “.
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia described the terrorist threat as one of the “biggest challenges” today. But he said the Security Council and its counterterrorism committee operations put “additional attention to aspects related to the rights of the fight against terrorism to the detriment of priority security-related tasks.”