Protesters hold banners in front of the Capitol Hill during a rally against the death in Minneapolis police custody of African-American man George Floyd in Washington, U.S., May 30, 2020. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran, always keen to score points against its longtime foe the United States, took Washington to task on Saturday over the killing of a black man by a white police officer that has sparked angry protests over racial injustice.
“Some don’t think #BlackLivesMatter,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter. “To those of us who do: it is long overdue for the entire world to wage war against racism. Time for a #WorldAgainstRacism.”
“The U.S. government is squandering its citizens’ resources, whether its adventurism in Asia, Africa, or Latin America…,” Zarif said in a tweet partly based on a message that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent to Iranian street protesters in 2018, but with some of the words changed.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry earlier denounced the police killing of the unarmed black man in Minneapolis, which has sparked protests in several cities, some which have turned violent.
A ministry statement condemned what it called “the tragic murder of black people and deadly racial discrimination in the United States”.
“The voices of the protesters must be heard … (and) the repression of suffering Americans must be stopped immediately,” the ministry statement said.
(This story was refiled to remove extraneous word in paragraph 1.)
Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Giles Elgood