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America Should Rescue the Human-Rights Agenda from its Hijackers

[Wall Street Journal] Saad Eddin Ibrahim - Though last week's UN conference in Geneva claimed to stand for the "inherent dignity" and "the equal and inalienable rights" of all human beings, the world's dictators were the real winners. Many official country delegates came to condemn the "colonial powers" of the West and Israel. In so doing, they sought to guard against exposing their own regimes' human-rights records. Most of the governments that pile on to condemn Israel and the so-called "neocolonial" West have terrible human-rights records. These include tyrannical regimes such as Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Libya, Iran, Syria and Egypt (my home country). But members of like-minded voting blocs - such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Organization of African Unity and the League of Arab States - comprise more than two-thirds of the UN membership votes. Together, they can railroad through any resolution, no matter how absurd. The writer, who was incarcerated by the Mubarak regime from 2000 to 2003, is now a visiting professor at Harvard.
2009-04-30 06:00:00
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