* US, EU have been inconsistent in supporting Arab Spring
* HRW: West should stop supporting Arab autocrats
* AU has been “shamefully complacent” about Arab Spring
(Adds quotes from news conference in Cairo)
By Louis Charbonneau
NEW YORK, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Western democracies
should overcome their aversion to Islamist groups that enjoy
popular support in North Africa and the Middle East and
encourage them to respect basic rights, Human Rights Watch said
in a report on Sunday.
HRW executive director Kenneth Roth said in the group’s
annual report that the past year’s Arab Spring pro-democracy
uprisings across the region have shown it is vital for the West
to end its policy of backing “an array of Arab autocrats” in
exchange for supporting Western interests.
The West should also be more consistent in supporting
pro-democracy forces in the Arab world and elsewhere, he said in
HRW’s 690-page report on human rights abuses worldwide.
“The international community must … come to terms with
political Islam when it represents a majority preference,” he
said. “Islamist parties are genuinely popular in much of the
Arab world, in part because many Arabs have come to see
political Islam as the antithesis of autocratic rule.”
“Wherever Islam-inspired governments emerge, the
international community should focus on encouraging, and if need
be pressuring, them to respect basic rights – just as the
Christian-labeled parties and governments of Europe are expected
to do,” he said in the introduction to the report.
Continued…
