The human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman delivered a speech at the side-event "The effect of political conflict on the human rights condition in the Arab Spring countries",

organized by International Lawyers Organization on the sidelines of meetings of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 2 March. It reads as follows: 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, 

At the outset, I would like to express my happiness to be here with you to participate in the discussion about the human rights condition, especially in light of the rise of extremist and fascist movements believing in ideas, which in essence are hostile to human rights.

 

Dear friends, 

Six years ago, millions of Arabs went to streets and public squares across countries to overthrow oppressive regimes that had failed in politics and economy but succeeded in violating human rights and crushing freedoms.

The Arab peoples have been let to live under a deliberate humiliation for decades, as their governments used to believe that this way would have led to security and stability. As a result, there had hardly been any progress in respect with human rights condition in the Arab world over the past years, but the Arab Spring came to make the human rights issue a top priority. 

In the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions, which overthrew the ex-regimes of Bin Ali, Mubarak, Saleh and Muammar Gaddafi, the transitional period experienced significant progress in the observance of basic human rights and civil liberties, especially political freedoms and media and press freedom. Every citizen had the right to express own opinion and political and intellectual position without being prosecuted by intelligence and security agencies.

During that period, the human rights condition improved in the Arab Spring countries, crimes of political arrests, restrictions on the right to demonstrate and to form various unions disappeared. Things were going in a good way, it is true that it was not that perfect but at least there was no a police state, and this gave reason for optimism.

 

Dear friends, 

With the rise of counter-revolutions and military coups in the Arab Spring countries and the occurrence of internal wars as a result, the human rights condition and public freedoms has noticeably deteriorated and the situation returned as it was.

Security services have resumed playing their old role represented by oppressing opponents, intimidating citizens and seeking to control spaces of the public sphere, but also it came to intervening in parliaments, as happened in Egypt, and chasing those sharing their own views on social media and imprisoning them as happens in Yemen, Egypt and Syria.

he counter-revolutions in the Arab Spring countries have reactivated all the old policies in a tougher manner, and this is obvious and no one could deny it.

In Yemen, human rights have been affected on more than one level, which has been manifested in the growing number of causalities due to the multi-level war on the one hand, and in the liquidation of those who oppose the expansion of the racial Houthi militia on the other hand.

The right to life no longer exists in Yemen, all gains Yemenis made after decades of peaceful struggle have been wasted. Yemenis no longer have the right to express their opinion. Under the control of the Houthi militia and forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen has turned into a state of fear and a state of the inquisition.

The coup and counter-revolution led by the Houthi militia and the ousted Saleh have undermined achievements related to rights and freedoms made by the revolution, particularly freedom of expression characterized by the transitional period.

In the transitional period, we enjoyed absolute press freedom, and everyone exercised freedom of expression without restrictions. The coup immediately started to shut down newspapers, satellite channels, radio stations and news agencies. It also banned political parties, human rights organizations and civic groups. Thousands have been detained, tortured or killed.

The protests, sit-ins, strikes and other forms of peaceful resistance that characterized the vibrant political life of the transitional period have been also prohibited after the coup, and whoever tries to exercises any of them is imprisoned, forcibly disappeared or often subjected to extrajudicial killings. 

At this moment while I am talking to you around 18 journalists have been tortured in Houthi illegal detention centers, and this is added to countless violations against journalists and civilians in general.

The leader of the Houthi militia, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, in a speech addressing his own followers incited murder of journalists by saying they are more dangerous than “the mercenary warriors”, and this unprecedentedly represents a flagrant violation of the right of expression in Yemen.  

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Dear friends, 

Bashar al-Assad's regime plays the role of arrogant killer. In fact, there are no suitable words to describe the human condition in Syria. What is happening in Syrian prisons would not have been believed if thousands of documents, pictures and certificates had not proved it. Bashar al-Assad's regime has committed the worst-ever violations. Nevertheless, for no convincing reason, there is international complicity with him. The world has failed the exam of human rights there; it's shameful.

Syrians should be helped to get rid of the regime that is only skilful at committing the most atrocious crimes. We must immediately act to end this terrible carnage, and to take action against terrorist groups, which wreak havoc, commit crimes and murders in Syria. Those who violate human rights there should be held accountable so that the world becomes safer. 

Our Arab region as a whole are fully deprived of human rights as enshrined in international covenants and charters. Citizens do not enjoy- even at the minimum- civil, economic and political rights, and their freedoms and rights have been violated in favor of the dictator and his family. 

Moreover, most of the Arab countries are still suffering from the impact of emergency laws, exceptional courts and breach of the principle of separation of powers.

This overall situation experienced by the Arab citizens will remain as long as the absence of national state is in place, as long as the state of tyranny, corruption and nepotism exists and as long as the UN mechanisms remain powerless to make governments and regimes abide by international covenants and conventions.

People have only one single road to enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms, including UN Charter and Universal Declaration and the International Covenants, and this road is represented by:   

- Forming national governments, which are based on good governance, to ensure that the rights and freedoms are respected and protected, establishing national states that safeguard the human rights and foster freedoms. Doing so is a crucial step for human rights, otherwise states and governments would play an opposite role represented by fostering the absence of rights and guaranteeing violation of freedoms.

- Having a global struggle to adopt reforms within the United Nations including the UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council in order to make them more effective bodies that are able to protect peoples from massacres committed by rulers. 

The Arab Spring was not a passing fancy or an emergency, but an urgent need for the peoples of those countries who chose it as a single option in the face of the failed governments ruled by corruption and tyranny. 

Having the state where rights are guaranteed and freedoms are protected was the strategic goal of all the Arab Spring countries. 

To sum up, those countries largely experienced a full launch of rights and freedoms before our great Arab Spring was betrayed. I can say that this was the reason why regional and international plots had been hatched against our Spring. If the Arab Spring had not the goal to establish the state guaranteeing the rights and freedoms, the coups and all these global conspiracies would not have taken place. 

 

Dear friends, 

 

US President Jimmy Carter is quoted as saying: “America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.”

I am not going to discuss this statement, or show whether it is true or false, but the argument seems to draw interest and admiration at the same time, as it is too strange that this superpower gives signals and takes actions that lets it appear the first supporter of repression in Arab countries.

It is unfortunate that the democratic West has gotten involved in the conspiracy against the Arab Spring as it happened with the Egyptian experience, or in Yemen, Libya, and Syria, and Tunisia may be the next. The democratic West we counted on should have made the Arab Spring an inspiring spring for other peoples yearning for freedom and equality, at least it should have taken the necessary measures to stop the regime of Bashar al-Assad from killing over half a million people just because they demanded freedom," she continued. 

But unfortunately, Bashar al-Assad and Sisi have been met with the international silence over their crimes, and this let them be inspiring for all authoritarian regimes over the globe to oppress their own people. 

Our struggle for a democratic society that respects rights and enjoys freedoms is a human and holy battle, and we will keep fighting along with the world’s free people in order to create the national state that respects and protects rights and freedoms. We will also keep fighting to have UN institutions that are able to protect international conventions and hold accountable whoever violates them. 

I am frankly saying again: The Arab peoples are determined to achieve their rights and freedoms and continue tirelessly to struggle for the sake of this noble purpose.

The idea of human rights deserves that people make sacrifices for, and we in the Arab Spring countries are well aware of the greatness of this idea, and therefore we will not accept to go back to states of fear and tyranny no matter the sacrifices and the price.