Adel bin Abdulrahman Al-Asoumi, Speaker of the Arab Parliament, has condemned information contained in a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report for the year 2021 as “lies and misleading.”
HRW issued its annual report, on 13 January, outlining the human rights situation in a number of Arab countries. Al-Asoumi, however, said the report aims to distort the reality of the internal situation in Arab countries, and does not provide real evidence for the accusations it outlines.
In a statement responding to the report, he added that the Arab Parliament is not against evaluating the human rights system in Arab countries and correcting any abuses in the region.
He added that one of the parliament’s main tasks, as stipulated by its statute, is the maintenance and support of human rights in Arab countries.
“However, it [the Arab Parliament] is against the erroneous and suspicious approach adopted by Human Rights Watch in dealing with the human rights situation in Arab countries,” Al-Asoumi said, “[This] is an approach that clearly relies on the politicisation of human rights files and issues in Arab countries and the use of these issues to blackmail Arab countries politically, which is totally unacceptable.”
He added, “The details are considered blatant and unacceptable interference in their internal affairs, and these politicised reports serve the external agendas of terrorist and extremist organisations that target the security and stability of Arab countries.”
Al-Asoumi stressed that this organisation, which has consistently moved away from professionalism in its work, had better monitor and focus on the ongoing human rights violations committed by terrorist organisations and armed militias in Arab countries, especially in regions of conflicts and crises. He added that hundreds of innocent civilians, as well as army and police personnel, have been killed in such attacks.
