Bablylon And Beyond gets straight to the point:
Ahmadinejad urges Arabs to democratize even as his nation doesn'tOf course, when Iran says stuff like that, it's not interfering in the affairs of other Muslim countries at all--and why should it. It's not the sort of thing that is meant to be taken seriously anyway.
Some would consider it rather rich. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who got his post after a widely disputed election and serves under an unelected cleric whose powers are officially second only to God, encouraged Arab governments to heed their people's demands for reform.
"Today, the people of the region must enjoy equal rights, the right to vote, security and dignity, and no government can deprive them of freedom and justice or refuse their peoples' demands," Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Monday evening, according to the president's official website (in Persian). "The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that all regional governments can run their countries by introducing reforms and realizing their peoples' demands."
Iran, however, has been unsupportive of the uprising that has unsettled its ally, Syria. Even though Iranian media had reported that the unrest in Syria would top the agenda of the meeting, the presidential website's account made no mention of Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, whose violent suppression of a pro-democracy movement has left as many as 2,000 people dead, according to rights activists.
So why does Ahmadinejad spout such nonsense?
Maybe he just wants to burnish Iran's credentials as a member of the UN Human Rights Council.
And of course there is no need to even delve into the hypocrisy of this coming from Ahmadinejad and Iran, who instead of criticizes Syria, condemns the protesters instead of being agents of the Great Satan.
Which is why Iran feels free to help Syria crush the dissent.
Technorati Tag: Iran and Ahmadinejad.
In Iran, democracy is the right to agree with the Supreme Leader and to submit to Islam. A challenge to this definition is met with the iron fist.
ReplyDeleteEU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton is "concerned" over Israel's new boycott law infringing on the rights of Israelis to undermine their own country. Fair enough.
But where is her voice when Iranians are raped, tortured and killed for resisting the mullahs' definition of democracy. The EU hasn't exactly taken a stand of moral courage in opposing Iran's clampdown on the freedom of its own people.
Its not like the EU can at least express a "concern" for the poverty of democratic rights under Iran's theocratic dictatorship!