Despite Omar Hassan al-Bashir's involvement in the killings and abuses of thousands of people in Darfur he has been welcomed and feted by the leaders of the Arab world. What must not be said in that group is that none of them holds power by popular suffrage. The former Kuwaiti minister of information said it well. Referring to the one thing that the Arab leadership can agree on -- that is, to support Sudan dictator al-Bashir in the face of indictment by the International Criminal Court -- he put the issue succinctly:
“The leaders’ position is their own self-defense, because they don’t want to open the door to an international tribunal of any kind that will open the file of any crimes they committed against humanity or against their own people. Most of those regimes are actually dictatorships, and most of them have their hands smeared with the blood of their own people.”
It's refreshing to see someone in the Middle East call a spade a spade. What I wonder now is, what kind of future does this guy have if he plans to live in the Arab world?
[Click on the title for a link to the source.]
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