Human Rights Watch is urging the United States and other nations to do more to support the rights of Arab Spring protesters to build real democracies in the Middle East.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch: “And to date, the international community, as I’ve outlined, has been much too equivocal and inconsistent in assisting the birth of rights-respecting democracies in this region. Ultimately, the international community has to decide what it stands for. Does it value the rights and the aspirations of the people of this region, or does it prefer to side with the autocrats? In the past year, the West has generally opposed the violent suppression of peaceful demonstrators, but the West has frankly been sometimes reluctant to become genuinely full partners with the protesters.”