Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Human (Some) Rights Watch: it happened again. I can't believe this. Over the last year, there has been numerous cases of of murder, beatings, abuse, and harassment of Syrian workers in Lebanon. I have noted that HRW has not said a word about that while Amnesty International, to its credit, issued a press release on that matter. Now, Human Rights Watch has spoken. And as we say in Arabic, the mountain gave birth to a mouse. Human Rights Watch gave a "human rights award"--whatever that is--to right-wing, pro-Israeli invasion, and pro-Bashir Gemayyel, crackpot lawyer Muhammad Mughrabi (who uses the same GYM that I use in Beirut--how dare he). Now, Human Rights Watch has spoken, and it is about a trial for Muhammad Mughrabi. This is just incredible. There was a poor person who died in Lebanese police custody in 2004, and the father of Abu `Adas (of the Hariri aljazeera claim of responsibility tape) also died in police custody, and not a word from HRW. But if the state bothers Muhammad Mughrabi, HRW gets into action.