Arab Dissident Slams Obama's Human Rights Record
It’s been a bit over a year since President Obama’s Cairo speech, which at the time was much admired by the excitable press in this country--even Hot Air had something good to say about the speech. The Cairo speech, you may recall, took a conciliatory tone to Islam while establishing America’s commitment to human rights in the Middle East.
The speech was nothing short of exhilarating to human rights activists in the region. But one year later, activists in the region—who were adoring admirers of Obama one year ago—think that the human rights situation has, as a result of Obama's policies, actually deteriorated in the Middle East, not gotten better.
The Washington think-tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace held an event a few days ago, which I attended, evaluating where human rights in the Middle East stand one year after the Cairo speech. Think-tank events like these are often painful snooze-fests. Consider: undersecretaries of state Michael Posner and Tamara Whittes both spoke, trying to make the case that promoting human rights in the Middle East is a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy—and like good diplomats, they each spoke in monotone for about twenty minutes and did not say much of anything.
But there was something notable about the Carnegie event: a human rights activist from Egypt laid into the Obama administration for its policies, which he argued led to the unprecedented deterioration of human rights in the region.
Egyptian human rights activist Bahey El Din Hassan argued that as a result of Obama's Cairo speech, Arab governments have actually been emboldened in their human rights abuses. He explains that last year there were “two interpretations of the Cairo speech.” The first interpretation, made by think tank analysts and civil servants in DC, was that “this is a message of engagement with the Arab people and [Arab] governments. The second interpretation was of Arab governments … that the speech is a message of engagement with Arab governments and disengagement with Arab people.”
He cited as proof the increased repression of political dissidents in Egypt, the rigged elections in Sudan—which the Obama administration supported—and the continued oppression of Shia in Saudi Arabia, among other abuses.
He concluded, “I don’t think such a deterioration [in human rights] can be explained without taking into account the policies … of the new administration.”
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: Arab Dissident Slams Obama's Human Rights Record
I wonder if Obama even understood, that the freedom that individuals (in the Islamic Middle East) want, and the freedom that their governments want, are very different things, and mostly incompatible. The governments just want freedom of action.
May '10
Re: Arab Dissident Slams Obama's Human Rights Record
So true, and not dissimilar to our own gov't. To Obama, our freedom is an annoyance at best; at worst, a hinderance he'd like to roll back. It's a legitimate question: For whom does Obama feel more empathy, Arab goverments or Arab people?