'Human Rights Watch' too busy trying to destroy Israel to help Syria
Syrian opposition activists are laying their lives on the line trying to topple the Assad regime. But don't look for 'Human Rights Watch' to help them out. They're too busy trying to destroy Israel. In Syria, HRW’s inadequacy is not new. Last July, HRW published a report titled “A Wasted Decade,” covering ten years of research on human rights violations in Syria in just 35 pages. The thinness of the report was matched by the weak recommendations.Read the whole thing.
The report recommended a limited response, directed exclusively to President Assad, who was urged to enact, amend, introduce, and remove a variety of laws, and to set up commissions. To alleviate restrictions on freedom of expression, HRW urged him to “stop blocking websites for their content.” In a contemporaneous op-ed article, "Syria's decade of repression” (The Guardian, 16 July 2010), HRW researcher Nadim Houry concludes with gentle prodding of Assad: “his legacy will ultimately depend on whether he will act on the promises” of reform he made upon taking office. “Otherwise, he will merely be remembered for extending his father’s...government by repression.”
In other words, HRW was content as a spectator throughout much of Assad’s brutal reign. Now, as Syrian citizens are murdered by his forces, HRW has no infrastructure or networks in place to aid citizens leading the “human rights” revolution.
But, if HRW did not invest in developing its capabilities in the closed and repressive society of Syria, what were HRW’s priorities?
As dictated by the ideological agenda of the organization’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division, the priority was Israel. For example, while HRW released 51 documents in 2010 on “Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” it released 12 for Syria. Israel also had three “single country reports,” compared to the very short one for Syria.
2009 was even worse. By May, HRW had spent the entire Middle East budget mainly making more false allegations of Israeli “war crimes and promoting the Goldstone façade. In a fundraising trip to that bastion of civil liberties and human rights – Saudi Arabia – MENA director Sarah Leah Whitson highlighted HRW’s attacks on Israel in her pitch for funds.
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, Syrian uprising
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:33 AM
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