UN: Repealing ObamaCare Violates “International Law”

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The United Nations is again acting as a wannabe global government and perverting the meaning of human rights, warning the Trump administration in a bizarre letter that repealing the unconstitutional ObamaCare takeover of health insurance may violate what the UN likes to call “international law.” However, critics were quick to ridicule the UN and its alleged legal reasoning. Instead of acquiescing, they called for the U.S. government to withdraw from the scandal-plagued, dictator-controlled UN “Human Rights Council” altogether.

The UN’s legal “reasoning” was based on a number of unconstitutional international agreements, some of which have never even been ratified by the U.S. government. According to a UN “special rapporteur,” abolishing the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA) would represent a violation of the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” As The New American has documented extensively, the UN document perverts the very meaning of rights and stands in direct contradiction to American notions of God-given, unalienable rights enshrined in America’s founding documents.

The UN also pointed to other obscure global agreements, including at least one that the U.S. government never even ratified. And yet, the UN has nonetheless weaponized the unratified scheme to dictate policy to nations around the world, and especially the United States. Despite the UN’s bogus claims, however, the U.S. Constitution remains the Supreme Law of the Land in the United States. That means any international agreements that conflict with it are null and void by definition. The authors of the U.S. Constitution and even the U.S. Supreme Court have made that crystal clear.

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The threatening UN letter in question, dated February 2, was sent to the U.S. government mission to the UN in Geneva by Dainius Puras (shown), the UN “Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” And yes, that is his real title. He serves the almost comically discredited UN “Human Rights Council,” which, in addition to being run by a discredited prince from an Islamic dictatorship, is literally dominated by mass-murdering dictators and brutal autocrats infamous for their human-rights abuses.

In the letter, Puras, a Lithuanian psychiatrist, warns of his “serious concerns” about efforts to repeal ObamaCare. Among other UN instruments he describes falsely as “international law,” Puras points to Article 25 of the UN “human rights” declaration, which purports to mandate government healthcare. “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services,” it says, fundamentally perverting the meaning of rights as they have always been understood in the Christian West and the United States in particular.

If Puras had gone down a bit further to Article 29 of that same UN declaration, he would have seen that any of the pseudo-“human rights” the UN purports to bestow on lowly humans can be revoked or limited under virtually any pretext — including, presumably, the phony “right” to take other people’s money for whatever purpose. That same Article 29 also makes clear that the UN’s pseudo-rights do not extend to opposing the UN’s globalist agenda. “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” the declaration says in clear language.

Puras claimed in the letter that the bizarre UN “human rights” document — a massive threat to the U.S. Constitution and the freedoms it protects — has “become a source and expression of international customary law.” He did not explain how or when that happened, or who supposedly gave approval for it on behalf of the American people. Next, the UN “rapporteur” claimed that “all States, including the United States of America, are obliged to protect and guarantee the rights therein.” Of course, in the real world, the U.S. government is explicitly prohibited by the Constitution from doing much of what Puras claims is obligatory.

Separately, the UN bureaucrat pointed to Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESC). While acknowledging that the U.S. government has not ratified that scheme, he claimed the U.S. government is nevertheless “obliged to refrain from acts that would defeat the covenant’s object or purpose.” In other words, even though Americans never agreed to the scheme through their elected officials, in the UN’s view, they must comply anyway. Self-government, then, would be a thing of the past if the UN were to get its way.

Finally, the extremist UN “rapporteur” cited the “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.” That scheme purportedly requires that national governments and dictatorships “guarantee the right of everyone,” including “the rights to public health, medical care, social security and social services,” without regard to race or color. Of course, the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to provide healthcare to everyone, so without a constitutional amendment delegating such authority to Washington, D.C., that power is reserved to the states or the people. The U.S. government is legally prohibited from expanding its powers using treaties.

Of course, despite the UN’s latest false claims purporting to decree “international laws,” the UN Charter — even assuming it were a legitimate document — specifically prohibits UN interference in domestic issues. “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state,” Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter explains clearly. If healthcare is not a domestic issue, nothing is.

And yet, Puras claimed not only the authority to meddle, but the duty to do so. “It is my responsibility, under the mandates provided me by the Human Rights Council, to seek to clarify all cases brought to my attention,” he wrote, demanding that the letter be shared with congressional leaders and other U.S. officials. He also demanded more information from the Trump administration, including what policies might be put in place after ObamaCare is repealed, so he could see whether they conform to “international law.”

Finally, the bureaucrat, who was raised under a brutal communist system and so might be forgiven for not understanding liberty, brazenly threatened U.S. officials. Among other threats, he demanded that Trump officials take “all necessary interim measures to prevent the alleged violations” and to “ensure adequate measure [sic] to prevent their occurrence as well as to guarantee the accountability of any person responsible of [sic] the alleged violations.” What sort of “accountability” he had in mind for the alleged perpetrators was not specified.

And in the meantime, the UN rapporteur warned that he would “publicly express” his “concerns” in the “near future.” The Trump administration’s response will be presented to the dictator-controlled UN “Human Rights Council” for its “consideration,” Puras concluded. The council is made up of 47 governments, including many of the most savage communist and Islamist dictatorships that have collectively murdered many tens of millions of people.

UN “High Commissioner for Human Rights” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, an Islamic prince who oversees the UN “Human Rights” apparatus, has long been a lightning rod for criticism and ridicule as well. Last year, for example, he claimed that “international law” supposedly “requires” that “robust gun control” be imposed on the United States, apparently unaware that the U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits that. More recently, during the U.S. election, Hussein viciously attacked then-candidate Donald Trump, warning that he was a “threat” to the world and equating his tactics with those of ISIS.

And that is just the start. Hussein also played a key role in protecting child-raping UN “peace” troops while persecuting the whistleblowers, such as Anders Kompass, who tried to stop it and protect the children. And in February, it emerged that Hussein and other UNHCHR bureaucrats had persecuted a whistleblower who exposed UNHCHR officials identifying dissidents to the Communist Chinese dictatorship, also a member of the UN “Human Rights Council” despite murdering more human beings than any government in human history. Several of those dissidents were kidnapped and killed following the leaks. And Hussein punished the whistleblower, instead.

The UN’s legions of discredited “special rapporteurs,” meanwhile, have also developed a reputation for idiocy. In the United Kingdom, for example, a nutty UN special rapporteur infamous for sacrificing an animal to Karl Marx was relentlessly ridiculed for accusing the U.K. government of “human rights violations” because welfare recipients were not being given large enough houses. In Switzerland, the UN bureaucrats attacked stay-at-home mothers as a human-rights violation. In Canada, they claimed supposedly “low” taxes were a “human rights” violation. In Japan, free speech was a violation. In America, virtually everything from gun rights and regulations on killing preborn babies to child discipline, self-defense protections and even the name of a sports team has been called a “human rights” violation by UN officials. Indeed, as The New American has documented in detail, the UN now poses a grave threat to U.S. independence and self-government.

But critics were quick to lambaste the UN’s latest meddling in U.S. healthcare. “Not a single taxpayer dollar should be wasted on replying to the questions submitted by the Special Rapporteur,” wrote Joseph Klein, author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom. “And if he should issue a critical press release, as he has threatened to do, in advance of his presumably critical report to the UN Human Rights Council, this will provide yet another reason for the Trump administration to pull out of the dysfunctional, misnamed Human Rights Council and to withdraw funding.”

Even the far-left Washington Post writer who first broke the story, Dana Milbank, appeared to ridicule the notion that the UN would or could impose its will on America. “None of this, of course, will deter President Trump and congressional Republicans, who are again attempting to get a repeal bill through the House,” he wrote, saying the letter was of “questionable” legal value despite his obvious support for ObamaCare. “They scoff at lectures from U.N. bureaucrats, particularly on domestic affairs, and the world body has no practical way to impose its will on Congress. There’s also a logical question: If repealing Obamacare violates international law, wasn’t the country in violation before Obamacare?”

A better course of action than simply ignoring or ridiculing the UN’s outrageous meddling in U.S. affairs, though, would be to have the U.S. government withdraw from the UN entirely in an “Amexit.” Already, legislation to do that, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (H.R. 193), is sitting the House Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress awaiting action. With sufficient public pressure, lawmakers would have no choice but to pass it — and that pressure is growing stronger every day. If anything, the fact that the UN and its largely dictatorial member regimes oppose the repealing of ObamaCare is yet another excellent reason why Congress must get it done as quickly as possible. The UN is a tool of tyrants and must be evicted from America.

Photo: Dainius Puras

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook. He can be reached at [email protected].