The Midas Touch: Political hypocrisy and foreign government involvement
Please read this post carefully.
We are a group of Arab and Iranian activists who believe in the independent struggle for human rights. We fight for religious freedom, freedom of speech, the rights of Baha’is, bloggers, Kurds, migrant workers, and all other religious or ethnic minorities. Our strength relies upon our credibility and independence from foreign influence. This statement is an effort to make that mission more visible to inspire other activists to take the same lead for the sake of their security, independence, success and credibility.
The U.S State Department is currently the largest funder of human rights work in the Middle East. The U.S government is also the funder of some of this region’s worst dictatorships. Therefore the intentions of such government funding of human rights activism in the Middle East remains unclear and questionable. We believe that the people genuinely interested in our human rights are ourselves and independent people around the world. This includes millions of passionate Americans who have taken an interest in the Middle East out of their own sense of justice, not as representatives of any governmental entity.
The U.S. State Department seems to offer funding to young human rights activists in exchange for a pro-USA approach in their work. Many regional activists are naive and are not sure what is in store for them when funding is considered. What they don’t anticipate are the strings attached: an overwhelming amount of censorship on topics such as criticism of U.S. foreign policy and in certain situations, Israel.
Such politically conditional funding is troubling for security reasons as well as ethical ones. With the exception of Israel, in almost all countries within the region any activist that is exposed to be backed heavily by the U.S State Department is punished by constant harassment, imprisonment or death. We ask that all foreign powers consider our lives and our human rights first, regardless of whether or not it fits their ideology or personal gains.
In our experience, some U.S.-based foundations dependent on the U.S. State Department for funding dismiss our wishes and demands to keep as far away from their influence as possible for credibility and security reasons. In one instance, Mideast Youth requested that a well-known human rights foundation that wanted to reprint a cartoon include a disclaimer disassociating Mideast Youth from its operations and affiliates. “Sadly,” wrote Mideast Youth, “[your foundation] and the money that is behind it has made activism efforts in the Middle East seem disingenuous due to its strong ties to political agendas. We are an independent grassroots organization that fights for every penny we have. We have a strong reputation for remaining above the politics and money…our name is our reputation.”
A senior manager at the foundation responded, “Thank you for your defamatory email. I suggest that you not fight for pennies, it violates the principle of non-violence and really is not worth the effort. We will definitely not be using your cartoon.” But most others continue to link to our material or try to imitate it. In several occasions, our names and projects are listed in sensitive campaigns without our approval, and staff of beneficiary foundations and organizations of the government of the United States are not willing to remove them.
As local and grassroots activists, we have a responsibility never to politicize our efforts for human rights and we want other governments to respect those wishes and agree not to interfere. When we criticize treatment of Baha’is in Iran, demand free speech throughout the region, defend Kurds, women’s rights, LGBT rights, or tackle any of the many other regional issues, the U.S. State Department and their primary financial recipients need to realize that they need to stop trying to exploit our efforts for the sake of political gain. We know what it takes to achieve our work, and unfortunately foreign involvement only makes our success less possible. When an article of ours is reprinted only to have a concluding statement critical of U.S. foreign policy censored without our permission, we feel that this is a violation of our basic right to self-expression by those claiming to want to help us achieve this goal.
Please understand our situation—the majority of us are based in countries where human rights activism backed by foreign entities is not tolerated and is grounds for imprisonment or execution. Please don’t take offense—we realize our own governments are oppressive, but there are elements of this kind of influence that must be exposed and corrected. Please don’t misunderstand us—do not confuse the U.S government with average American citizens whose support we benefit from and admire.
We realize that not all staff of the U.S. State Department and its funded projects are misleading. Many sincerely care about human rights and wish the best for all of us, and we are grateful for their interest in our freedom. However, our concern for our lives must be expressed. These individuals must help their government respect independent activists. When we refuse to be associated with foreign politics it is never due to racism or hatred. It is due to security and most importantly, the honesty represented within our efforts. We are not advocates for any government and take offense when our work is made to appear as such.
Make no mistake – we activists are aching for human rights. But most of us will always remain firm against foreign involvement in our affairs. These are our countries, and the only political demands we wish to make are our own. We expect people to respect us as human beings and not as political figures to be taken advantage of for the sake of self-important gains of any Arab government, Iran, the USA, Israel, or any other foreign power. Our fight for human rights needs to transcend the interests of these political entities.
We realize that the U.S State Department funds multiple other fields irrelevant to activism or politics. We don’t disregard anything good they have helped create in the fields of education and health care. We ask that the U.S. State Department focus its efforts in fields other than human rights. We believe that another step forward is to stop funding oppressive powers in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel.
We welcome and appreciate the support offered to us by American citizens and non-political organizations in the U.S. We ask that they continue standing with us in our struggles, as their support is extremely valuable. But please stop using us as a front for politics. We get enough of that from our own governments, and we are against foreign occupation. Our members in Iraq and Palestine can attest to that.
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That’s a very complicated problem I’ve never known you faced. Maybe that’s what Sami what alluding to earlier at another post, though he had a weird way of dealing with it.
From my own understanding and knowledge I can say that most Americans involved in assisting human rights organizations are genuinely passionate about the cause. The problem is that at the same time, the administration supports the dictators that are causing these problems in the first place. Then, instead of understanding that they their support for human rights can’t help but seem ingenuous, they convince themselves that it’s a problem of “public diplomacy”. Meaning, what the US government does is good, but they fail to get that message across and need to try harder (by establishing outlets like Al-Hurra, spending more money on pro-US articles in the Iraqi press, etc.).
If the US decided (and it clearly did) that it’s sticking by the side of the dictators, they should stop trying to appear as if they support democracy as well. Human Rights activists who accept US government funding can’t help but appear as if they’re serving other interests. That is, their dedication to human rights isn’t totally genuine, because they get backing from a government whose support for human rights is flaky and is based on political interests.
There are many problems in the region other than the lack of human rights. The US government can focus its enormous resources there on things like building schools, training nurses, providing loans for small businesses, etc. But organizations that require local credibility in order to function well and bring change (such as newspapers and human rights NGOs) need to be left alone.
The article says:
I knew it personally, I lived it, I am writing against the American (the government not the people) hypocrisy, and I am fighting against it…
The killing thing that the US at the time deceiving of “human rights” they are creating a police regime in the west bank that all its aim is to suppress the Palestinians and provide security for the occupying settlers… their new vision of Mr. Dayton (peace through security) whick means peace for the settlers by oppressing the occupied Palestiniand…
I stopped to believe in their lies a long time ago … the snake cant give but poison!! and this is the case with the imperial States !!
Sami, the bedouin.
You don’t seem to know the difference between the U.S State Department, the U.S government, and “Americans”.
Maybe read the article again? It’s a great one if you understand it! Very true.
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the snake cant give but poison!!
Sami, the US administration is a huge complex of intertwining branches that often compete against one another. It is not a single snake, it is rather a ZOO, whose inhabitants fight over funds.
I think the same applies for any huge political bureaucracy. Less so in totalitarian top-down states like North Korea, more so in states which actually have some divisions of power.
Samar, I meant people in the US government that I got a chance to know.
As a US taxpayer and human rights activist, I fully support some of my tax dollars going towards human rights and other humanitarian endeavors in the ME and elsewhere. Clearly, as this article aknowledged, the US spends more in these endeavors than any other country and even the amount that does get spent on human rights issues is miniscule compared to other parts of the US budget.
It is worth noting that things like education and health care are human rights, so when the author argues that the US should spend more money on those types of pursuits instead of “human rights issues” demeans the fact that they are also human rights (according to the UN Declaration on Human Rights). Fighting for freedom of speech and religious freedoms is no more admirable than building hospitals and schools….all are necessary aspects of life and therefore deserve equal attention as human rights.
For so many NGOs in the US, accepting gov’t funding is the only way they can survive as an organization. Of course censorship is not good, but what good work can be done by these orgs also deserves attention, as this article points out because so many of the on-the-ground workers are committed to the cause and are forced to work within constraints since otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do any good at all. There may be undue censorship of some organizations who recieve public funds, but the US as a whole is one of the countries where free speech is practiced and respected to an utmost – although of course not perfect – level.
With all that said, I feel this article ignores a major issue regarding US public funding of human rights issues….it’s what the people of the US want! HR funding began because of public pressure by American citizens for their gov’t to address human rights abuses all around the world, and as a taxpayer, would you want your taxes to go towards the promotion of ideas you find objectionable, racist, or otherwise inflammatory? Of course not! Free speech does have limits in the public sphere, but it should not of course in the private sphere. Endeavors that get public funding SHOULD be careful in order to avoid conflict with the very people supporting it. Think about it – if a privately funded organization made a statement that offended its main donor, that donor would immediately pull his or her money and the org may go under. It’s the same here…..but better since you have actual constituent input! Although the annual reports put out by the DOS on human rights and religious freedoms are not perfect and are conscious of diplomatic ties, I know for a fact that privately funded NGOs also can have great influence, therefore balancing diplomatic and foreign concerns. And it’s often those reports that are cited by major media news outlets and even other orgs as “proof” of human rights abuses.
And no, it’s not just organizations that support the overall policy goals of the US that get funding. After all, if that were true, then no NGO with public funding would be able to survive the twists and turns of administrations that are American politics. To a small degree, orgs supporting special interests have a better chance at funding under certain administrations (funding for absitence programs under Bush, for example, was increased) but overall the changes from year to year/election to election are not astronomical.
Also, a distinction needs to be made between the different types of “aid” given by the US. I totally agree that the US supports some of the ME’s worst dictators, but if people like Hosni Mubarak didn’t buy weapons from the US (which, I might add, is considered “military aid” even though that money is put right back into the US, so it’s a bit of a misnomer) he would certainly buy them elsewhere and potentially from a gov’t that is an even worse abuser of human rights than the US….for example, China, who buys much from (and therefore supports) Sudan and Iran. Yes, the US supports Saudi with all the oil we buy, but doesn’t that in some ways give the US a better platform to argue for human rights advances since we have a bargining tool? It’s a good theory even if it hasn’t been put into conrete action, and the effectiveness of things like economic sanctions are widely debated in human rights circles. The phrase that comes to mind is “keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” After all, the US basically cut off Cuba in all forms of support due to disagreements with their gov’t – trade, aid, tourism, ect – and the situation in Cuba only got worse for the average person. It’s also ironic I haven’t seen a criticism of China’s aid policies supporting ME dictatoriship countries on here….and that’s probably because of 2 reasons: one, China isn’t a democracy and therefore doesn’t have to worry about survival based on public opinion, and two, because aid from China is so small in the grand scheme of things that it is irrelevant.
MEY’s pursuit of freedom of speech is extraordinarily admirable and that is why the site is so popular, and it’s a well-deserved reputation. MEY also deserves great applause for being able to fund themselves without foreign influence, and is certainly right in wishing that is the way it could be for everyone and demanding other orgs/gov’ts to stop using them as a front for politics.
Sometimes, though, as commentor Marian noted; information regarding how the US government actually works as published on this site is misguided. We all want a human rights utopia, and I’ll be the first to admit that the US isn’t perfect in their foreign policy or in human rights – we have a long way to go until perfection – but it is incredibly unfair to expect the US to police the world and support human rights without considering any public opinion or diplomatic issues.
Jessica, I understand where you are coming from. But in my personal opinion, based on what I’ve witnessed thus far, most of the time the U.S government is not funding human rights activism for the sake of our own interests. This is why any initiative it does fund, a lot of things are expected in return, such as a generally pro-American approach in terms of politics and frowning upon any criticism of U.S foreign policy. When funding is from any government in the world, there is no such thing as “unrestrictive funding.” There is always a catch, and it’s often a big one.
If Saudi Arabia funded a gay rights campaign in the USA, would you trust it? Would you believe the funding is unrestrictive and has the concerns of Americans at heart, or is it just to build a better relationship with Americans to try and win their hearts and minds into a particular ideology?
Just to be clear, I do not actually credit the USA for any advancement in terms of health care or education in the region, because it has thus far contributed very little to these areas thus far (and I’m not complaining about that, it’s not their responsibility.) I’m just noting that if it really does want to make a difference, they should fund these areas and not political ones where they have a self-important interest, and not an interest for the actual citizens.
Getting funding from the U.S government is also commonly referred to as “blood money,” considering its own human right issues such as torture prisons around the world including the U.S-sponsored Bagram prison, where human rights lawyers are still demanding justice for innocent people who have been killed and tortured in it.
Something is very fishy with U.S funding and some of our interactions with State-funded initiatives (one incident quoted above) just shows their true face at times. You can see with how much disrespect they treat us, and how little they fear for our lives or concerns for true, honest freedom, and not the kind with one-sided censorship and political gains behind it.
Hi Esra’a,
I don’t know if I would trust a gay rights campaign funded by Saudi in the US….I would have to see what kind of results it put forth first, but I would be skeptical because Saudi doesn’t exactly have the best gay-rights record in their own country. And for those reasons, I certainly understand your (and others) distrust of various US-funded intiatives, since you’ve seen very bad results, bad results, and few good ones.
However, I also don’t think the attempt at building better relationships bewteen countries and understanding ideologies is necessarily bad…after all, isnt’t that part of the point of MEY? One ideology being put up against another, and letting the individual choose which one he or she thinks is best based on an informed and educated opinion?
(also, for the record, Saudi did fund a huge addition to a DC university – I believe Georgetown, although it might have been AU. there was some backlash but certainly nothing that reached a wide-scale campaign against it. as long as they followed relevant US laws in the building and regarding education, I really didn’t care. I also certainly don’t believe the Saudis did that just out of the goodness of their heart – they clearly gained something, too.)
Part of the problem here is that human rights issues are political, there’s no way around it. Even education and health – choosing where to put a hospital is a political decision; and as you can see from the Saudi example, this is true of educational initiatives too. This is an inherent problem that faces any country that gives out humanitarian aid. And with regards to having a self-interested stake, again, I would like a utopia where everyone acted for others out of the good of their own hearts….but that’s not reality, so we must all try to find a solution within the realities that exist. That’s why I disagree with your overall reccomendation that the US should stop funding human rights issues because I don’t believe that is a valid solution to the problem. No government is going to act without some sort of gain, even if that gain is only the possibility of winning hearts and minds. If that is effective or not is another story…there’s certainly been a number of complete humanitarian aid failures.
I would also caution against the stereotyping of all state-funded organizations as being fishy – certainly your experience detailed above is unacceptable and I’m sure there are more examples but I disagree that it’s because they are state-funded that they have little respect for your lives. I know many, many people working in the NGO world that have state-funded intiatives and would never, ever treat you in that way. Sometimes people are just stupid. A pattern of stupidity is also not, of course, unique to the US or to NGO workers, state-funded or not. It also goes both ways, as you have no doubt experienced with your many endeavors, what indidviduals expect from NGOs or other orgs is oftentimes laughable. I remember one particular instance where someone that contacted me through an org I used to work for and expected the (human rights, not soccer related) org to pay for the flights and accomodations for multiple US soccer coaches to fly to his home country and watch him try out so he could get paid to move to the US and get on a soccer team. After all, it was his “human right” to be able to play soccer, so we should be providing that opportunity…. !?!?!?!? A while back, you wrote an article about MEY’s comment policy, and how rejecting certain comments is not a violation of free speech. I totally agreed and chuckled about it since what actually defines human rights and how they are enacted seems to be a completely lost concept on some people….even those like NGO workers who should know better.
Anyway, I never meant to demean the risks that so many people all around the world take for freedom by, for example, blogging under their real names while living in unbearably repressive conditions. This is exceptionally admirable. And I am totally ashamed and sickened that my government and my tax dollars went to pay for the torture of others (among other human rights violations).
But I am also extremely proud of the many, many Americans I know personally – who work for (either partially or fully) state-funded non-profit organizations – who have come to areas in the ME, Africa, and elsewhere and risked their lives to implement humanitarian aid initiatives. And no, I’m not talking about missionaries or the military, although both those groups do participate in humanitarian missions….I’m talking about everyday, average people who start to work for orgs simply because they want to help. And you recognized this in your post, but my point is that many of those other people could also be publicly funded and you just may not know. It’s probably more than you think.
Also, this wasn’t addressed in your original post, but it’s important to note that every year the foreign ops funding bills in Congress, which includes all military and humanitarian aids, is a huge fight and an incredibly complicated issue. Part of this is because some of the very governments we all object to have hired lobbyists in DC to get money – both military and humanitarian aid – from the US: http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/insights/Africa_s_big_men_mess_up_and_pay_image_cleaners_in_Washington_it_s_that_easy_90445.shtml
It’s up to NGOs or other individual constituents here to try and convince Congress why giving this money is not a good idea, but unfortunately, non-profit orgs have a hard time staying afloat (which brings us back to the first issue of where do they get funding) and according to US law can’t engage in lobbying anyway. It’s a constant uphill battle.
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