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West backs 'dubious democracies'
The United States and European Union are undermining human rights worldwide by allowing countries with dubious elections such as Pakistan and Kenya to pretend they are genuine democracies, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:52 February 1, 2008
United Nations: The United States and European Union are undermining human rights worldwide by allowing countries with dubious elections such as Pakistan and Kenya to pretend they are genuine democracies, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
"States claiming the mantle of democracy, including Kenya and Pakistan, should guarantee the human rights that are central to it, including the rights to free expression, assembly and association, as well as free and fair elections," the New York-based rights watchdog said in its annual report.
The group said Russia, Nigeria, Bahrain, Jordan and Thailand also had acted as if merely holding an election was enough to make them worthy of being called democratic. "It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the 'victor' is a strategic or commercial ally," said Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch.
In Pakistan, a key US ally in the war against terrorism and the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the organisation said President Pervez Musharraf had undermined the possibility of having free elections next month by revising the constitution and sacking the independent judiciary.
"But the United States and Britain, Islamabad's largest aid donors, have refused to condition assistance to the government on improving pre-electoral conditions," the report said.
Human Rights Watch said Washington may have encouraged Kenya's leadership in what it described as the "apparent rigging" of a presidential poll by accepting the results of Nigeria's February 2007 election, which was marred by credible accusations of poll-rigging and electoral violence.
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