Spain's foreign minister on US independence: 'All they did was kill four Indians'

Josep Borrell under fire for saying US more politically integrated due to having "practically no previous history"

The Spanish foreign minister, Josep Borrell, in Madrid in September 2018 (by Roger Pi de Cabanyes)
The Spanish foreign minister, Josep Borrell, in Madrid in September 2018 (by Roger Pi de Cabanyes) / ACN

ACN | Barcelona

November 28, 2018 10:29 AM

Spain's Minister of Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell is under fire again after appearing to trivialize the mass killing of Native Americans.

"All they did was kill four Indians," he said to justify why the United States is more politically integrated than other countries.

"Why has the US a higher level of political integration? Firstly, they all speak the same language. And secondly, they have practically no previous history. They got independence with practically no history. All they did was kill four Indians," he said.

The Spanish minister made this comments while taking part in an event at a Madrid university. The German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, was also present. The title of the conference was 'The European Union as a global economic actor that protects its citizens'.

Borrell's remarks sparked outrage, with the American Indian Movement dismissing him as "racist" on Twitter: "What a supremacist, denialist, and pathetic way to describe a genocide."

Minister already under fire

Borrell is already in a fragile situation after he was fined to pay €30,000 by the securities regulator for taking advantage of private information from a company to order the sale of shares.

In 2015, at a time when he held no public, Borrell was a board member of the renewable energy firm Abengoa. He advised a person close to him sell company shares worth €9,030.

According to the securities regulator, his position allowed him to know "price sensitive information that had not yet been disclosed."

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