{"id":3638,"date":"2011-10-22T19:25:37","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T02:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3638"},"modified":"2011-10-22T19:25:37","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T02:25:37","slug":"war-profiteers-greedy-governments-and-sleezy-sales-people-turned-arab-spring-into-bloody-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3638","title":{"rendered":"War profiteers, greedy governments and sleezy sales people turned Arab Spring into ‘bloody hell’"},"content":{"rendered":"

They cited Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Britain and the U.S. as the top suppliers of arms since 2005 to the five Arab Spring countries covered in the report — Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The equipment cited in the report included small arms; smooth-bore weapons over 20mm; ammunition; bombs, rockets, missiles and explosives, armored vehicles; and toxic agents.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Exporters Armed Arab Spring Crackdown<\/strong>
\nWritten by David Rosenberg – October 18, 2011 – The Media Line<\/p>\n

Repressive regimes had all the equipment they needed to quash protests, Amnesty Says<\/p>\n

Many of the world\u2019s governments calling for change and human rights in the Middle East were playing a key role in blocking it by selling arms to the region\u2019s repressive regimes, Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Egypt, whose security forces killed 850 people and left thousands of others injured in 18 days of protests before President Husni Mubarak was forced out of power, bought or approved to buy millions of dollars worth of sub-machine guns and armored vehicles from Germany in the years beforehand, as well as assault weapons, tear gas and ammunition from the United States.<\/p>\n

Amnesty cited 17 countries in Europe and North America that sold arms and equipment to despotic regimes with records of humans rights abuses that could be \u2013 and, when Arab Spring unrest erupted 10 months ago, were \u2013 used against civilians. The London-based human rights organization urged the world\u2019s governments to adopt a systematic and comprehensive system for governing the global arms trade.<\/p>\n

The sales recorded by Amnesty in its report Arms Transfers To The Middle East And North Africa: Lessons For An Effective Arms Trade Treaty were relatively small and involved relatively unsophisticated weapons. But Brian Woods, manager of arms control at the organization\u2019s international secretariat, said they enabled governments to repress protests and rebellions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need a jet fighter or a submarine to violate human rights. You can do that with rubber-coated bullets, tear gas, pistols and sniper rifles. We\u2019ve seen it on our television screens,\u201d Wood told The Media Line.<\/p>\n

Although the governments of the Middle East and North Africa routinely score low on the observance of human rights, the Arab Spring unleashed an unprecedented wave of killings, arrests and repression. The United Nations estimates that some 3,000 have been killed in Syria in a rebellion that shows no sign of ending. In Libya, fighting probably left more than 10,000 dead \u2013 two thirds of them on the rebel side before strongman Mu\u2019amar Al-Qaddafi was ousted in August. In Yemen, some 1,800 have been killed in fighting.<\/p>\n

As governments were quelling rebellions with arms often bought from abroad, Western leaders were urging them to observe human rights and belatedly imposing arms embargos, the report\u2019s authors asserted.<\/p>\n

They cited Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Britain and the U.S. as the top suppliers of arms since 2005 to the five Arab Spring countries covered in the report — Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The equipment cited in the report included small arms; smooth-bore weapons over 20mm; ammunition; bombs, rockets, missiles and explosives, armored vehicles; and toxic agents.<\/p>\n

“Governments that now say they stand in solidarity with people across the Middle East and North Africa are the very same as those who until recently supplied the weapons, bullets and military and police equipment that were used to kill, injure and arbitrarily detain thousands of peaceful protesters in states such as Tunisia and Egypt,\u201d said Helen Hughes, Amnesty\u2019s principal arms trade researcher. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They cited Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Britain and the U.S. as the top suppliers of arms since 2005 to the five Arab Spring countries covered in the report — Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The equipment cited in the report included small arms; smooth-bore weapons over 20mm; ammunition; more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[1498],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}