Trump administration ‘flooding atmosphere with lies’ — Mary Robinson 

by Democrat reporter

Former Irish president Mary Robinson was speaking for women everywhere at the weekend when she accused Donald Trump’s US administration of “flooding the atmosphere with lies”.

She was at an International Women’s Day rally in Belfast, at which there were loud cheers for a number of speakers who called for an end to the conflict in Iran.

“We have an administration in the United States which is flooding the atmosphere with lies, not to be believed, but to confuse, to confuse that there is no truth,” Robinson, pictured right meeting Democrat editor Bill Heaney in Glasgow,  said. “Truth is our relations with each other … we must flourish together.”

Robinson spoke at the rally alongside Iranian human rights activist and academic Azadeh Sobout, Helen Crickard from Reclaim the Agenda and Aoife Nic An Tuile from Youth Action.

She condemned the “epidemic of violence against women and girls” across the globe, and criticised spending on wars at a time when international aid contributions are falling.

“Now we have this war by Israel and the United States on Iran which has opened up such devastation in the Middle East,” she said.

“We have to grow that solidarity and grow it in ways that strengthen it in order to counter a very severe range of backlashes against rights now.”

The former UN high commissioner for human rights also condemned the “misogyny of social media for every woman who stands up, or even if they don’t stand up”.

“It is an extraordinarily dark part of social media now, and getting worse because AI is enabling the denuding of women and girls, the ways in which it’s possible to literally try to destroy people’s lives through attacks on social media,” she said. “All of this needs the strength in solidarity.”

Sobout called for democracy in Iran, which she said is coming “under bombardment”.

“I stand before you as an Iranian woman who opposes the men who rule my country today, the theocratic regime that answered demands for dignity and freedom with massacre, and the men who ruled it before, a monarchy sustained by foreign intelligence and imperial power,” she said.

Nic An Tuile urged unity and solidarity to work to prevent violence against women and girls.

“Violence against women affects everyone we know, our mothers, our grandmothers, our sisters, our friends and our girlfriends,” she said.

“The north of Ireland is the most dangerous place in Europe to be a woman, but no more, it’s time to stand up united. Violence against women is not inevitable but preventable.”