Freedom House: Most Arabs
ruled by fascist-type regimes
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SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, January 4, 2002
WASHINGTON ø A new U.S. study asserts that many Arab regimes ø
including those aligned with the United States ø have adopted a fascist
model
to maintain their regimes.
The Washington-based Freedom House said countries such as Egypt, Iraq,
Libya and Syria have adopted fascist and communist models for their regimes.
They said these models seek to suppress both democratic and fundamentalist
Islamic movements.
In a report on democracy and human rights, Freedom House said Arab and
Muslim states continue to lag behind the rest of the world in democratic
reforms. The group said a non-Muslim state is three times more likely to be
democratic than a Muslim country, Middle East Newsline reported.
Mali was the only Muslim country deemed by Freedom House as free. The
term means the granting of such rights as open elections and freedom of
religion, press and other rights.
"The reality in much of the Islamic world is that democratic voices are
opposed not only by tyrannical regimes," Adrian Karatnycky, responsible for
the Freedom House report, said, "but also by powerful Islamic political
forces, some of them supported by the power of the mosque, which often
promotes anti-democratic and anti-Western viewpoints."
Five of the worst offenders of human rights and democracy were Arab
states, the non-partisan group said. They are Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia,
Sudan and Syria.
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