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Freedom House: Most Arabs
ruled by fascist-type regimes

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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