The Arab League

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 8:30 am

Reuters reports at Stuff:

Syria has rebuffed an Arab League call for President Bashar al-Assad step down in favour of a unity government as interference in its affairs, underlining its determination to defeat a 10-month-old uprising seeking Assad’s overthrow.

It was not immediately clear whether Syria would accept the League’s decision to keep Arab observers in the country for another month despite their failure to stem bloodshed in which hundreds of people have died since they deployed on December 26.

But any credibility the mission might retain was undermined when Saudi Arabia, a foe of Syria’s closest ally Iran, announced it would withdraw its own monitors because of the Syrian authorities’ failure to cooperate with its mandate. It was unclear if other Gulf states would follow suit. …

Rami Khouri, a Beirut-based commentator, said the unusually bold Arab plan announced at the Arab League’s Cairo headquarters on Sunday was clearly “bad news” for Assad.

“The fact that Arab countries would propose such a clear intervention and essentially order him to step aside and give him a mechanism to do so is quite a dramatic sign of how much credibility and legitimacy he has lost in the region,” he said.

It’s good to see the Arab League putting the pressure on Syria to stop killing its people, and to have elections. It makes it much harder for the regime to say the opposition is a tool of the United States etc.

However it is ironic that you have a league made up of so many countries that themselves do not have democratic elections, pushing for elections in Syria. I guess the difference is their monarchies are  relatively benign, and are not killing their citizens. However even the House of Saud may feel the winds of change one day.

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UN tells off UK

Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 8:38 am

Norfolk Blogger (a Lib Dem) reacts with understandable anger to the UN Human Rights Council chiding the UK for its failings.

Sir Lanka, a country slammed by Human Rights Groups for its extrajudicial executions thinks the UK should ditch the monarchy as it is anti human rights. Now I am a republican but I don’t think the UK needs to be told buy the UN what form of Government to have.

Syria, a country with one party rule, complains about discrimination against Muslims. Syria only restricts freedom of speech, press, assembly, movement, association and oh yeah religion.

But the highlight must be Iran complaining about the UK’s record on sexual discrimination. Here is how Iran treats women:

  • If a woman is killed (say in a car accident) her family is paid only half of what they would get if a male is killed
  • The testimony of a male witness is worth twice that of a female witness
  • Women can not travel by themselves without written permission of her father or husband
  • Women get only half the inheritance amounts men get
  • Women who are raped are deemed guilty of extra-marital sex unless there are four Muslim male witnesses to the rape

And Iran sits on the UN Human Rights Council lecturing the UK on its sex discrimination record. It would be funny if it wasn’t so very very sad.

There is a rumour NZ is going to seek a place on the Human Rights Council. I sincerely hope we do not. We should not add legitimacy to this farce.

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Posted in International Politics | 21 Comments »