Rice silent on women’s rights in Middle East

[emad]

June 26, 2005


Tony Allen-Mills and Jon Swain

SHE may be America’s most powerful woman but Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, made clear during her tour of the Middle East last week that she is not about to become its most outspoken supporter of women’s rights.

During her week-long sweep through Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Rice steered clear of confrontation over one of the region’s most volatile issues — the role of women in Islamic societies.

Her admission that there were “boundaries” to the US drive for democratic reform in the region — notably in Saudi Arabia, where she declined to take up the cause of women, who are barred from driving cars — spurred accusations of American hypocrisy.

Critics claimed it also reduced the effect of a hard- hitting speech in Cairo, where Rice urged Middle Eastern rulers to “abandon the excuses” they had advanced for avoiding the “hard work” of democracy.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1669434,00.html

[suffragette]

1. more regarding her hypocrisy later in the article

Her response fuelled complaints by human rights activists such as Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian feminist who won the 2003 Nobel Peace prize. Earlier this year Ebadi accused the administration of “hypocrisy” in its attitude to unfriendly nations such as Iran.

“Given the longstanding willingness of the American government to overlook abuses of human rights, particularly women’s rights, by close allies in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, it is hard not to see the Bush administration’s focus on human rights violations in Iran as a cloak for its larger strategic interests,” Ebadi said.

Very apt comment. Their hypocrisy is so blatant. We need to challenge them more on it.

[IndianaGreen]

2. The GOP doesn't support women's rights in America, why would they

support it overseas? Reproductive rights is a woman's right, not the government's!