TEHRAN, Jul 29 - The United States has kept silent on Bahrain’s recent execution of three pro-democracy campaigners in defiance of international calls, showing no proclivity to express support for the innocent victims, which manifests American hypocrisy concerning democracy and human rights issues.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The comments were made by Daniel Kovalik, a university lecturer and author from the US state of Pennsylvania, during a debate hosted by Press TV on Sunday.
“The United States and the UK are really unwilling to break ties with Bahrain or really even to criticize Bahrain in any serious way for its human rights abuses and so that really gives Bahrain a free hand to carry out this type of repression,” Kovalik said.
“The West and particularly the United States is very hypocritical when it comes to democracy and human rights,” he added. “They support countries very opportunistically not based on their human rights situation but on whether … they view those countries as acting within their interests … And so the result is that the US will back very repressive government like the one in Saudi Arabia, like the one in Bahrain while trying to claim that it cares about human rights.”
The university lecturer also said the administration in Washington backs the majority of dictatorships it has installed across the world and particularly in the Middle East region, adding that Bahrain is an emblematic example of the West's hypocrisy as regards democracy and human rights.
“The US is supporting Saudi Arabia in the most brutal war in the world in Yemen. The US is supporting Israel in its destroying Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem [al-Quds] and the US is obviously trying to provoke a war with Iran as we speak. So the US has no interest in peace in the Middle East, in fact, it's trying to sow chaos,” Kovalik said.
“They support the [Persian] Gulf states which by and large are pretty repressive governments and they support it for geopolitical reasons not because of any issues of human rights or democracy,” he noted. “If that was an issue they wouldn't support those countries.”
The case of the two activists executed — Ahmad al-Malali, 24, and Ali Hakim al-Arab, 25 — caught special international attention. The duo had been handed down the sentence along with another 56 men last year on “terrorism crimes.”
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the trial had been “marred by torture allegations and due process violations.
Since February 2011, Bahraini people have been holding peaceful protest rallies regularly, demanding that the Al Khalifah family relinquish power and let a just system representing all citizens be established.
They have also been complaining about widespread discrimination against the country's Shia majority.
Manama has responded to the demonstrations with an iron fist. The authorities have detained rights campaigners, broken up major opposition political parties, revoked the nationality of several pro-democracy activists and deported those left stateless.
In March, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to assist Bahrain in its crackdown.
Hundreds have also been killed during the regime crackdown.
Source: Press TV
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