Reuters

- Clashes between police and protesters in the U.S. town of Ferguson are reminiscent of the racial violence spawned by apartheid in her native South Africa, the top U.N. human rights official said on Tuesday.

Navi Pillay, who is due to step down at the end of the month after six years in the U.N. hotseat, urged U.S. authorities to investigate allegations of brutality and examine the "root causes" of racial discrimination in America.

U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday called for calm and a change in police tactics in Ferguson, Missouri, which has been rocked by racially charged clashes and riots after a white officer killed an unarmed black teenager 10 days ago.

"I condemn the excessive use of force by the police and call for the right of protest to be respected. The United States is a freedom-loving country and one thing they should cherish is people's right to protest," Pillay said in a wide-ranging interview in her office along Lake Geneva.

"Apart from that, let me say that coming from apartheid South Africa I have long experience of how racism and racial discrimination breeds conflict and violence," she said.

"These scenes are familiar to me and privately I was thinking that there are many parts of the United States where apartheid is flourishing."

Noting that African-Americans are often among the poorest and most vulnerable U.S. citizens, and accounted for many of the inmates in the country's teeming prisons, she added: "Apartheid is also where law turns a blind eye to racism."