GCJ- Paris, 17/01/2010
It was a very bad weak for President Obama in the Arab countries, many Human Rights Defenders attacked the new decisions of Obama’s administration on military commission, maintaining Guantanamo and the intense screening with 14 countries list under global security system.
Haytham Manna, great figure of the Arab human rights movement said in KSA2 program yesterday: Forget Obama Cairo Speech. Obama today is a President without his own political program and without any alternative strategy. Security in itself and for itself is not a political program; no body can imagine rebuilding good relationship between Arab World and the States with Bush administration politics and additional security scrutiny. The Spokesperson of the Arab Commission for Human Rights described the new security measures: “Discriminatory, arbitrary, a kind of collective punishment and useless”. Speaking about State Sponsors of terrorism in this list supposed a relationship between Cuba Communist regime and al Qaeda, or the Syrian secular regime and radical Islam. What that means “country of interest” when you have One Man case like Nigeria?
Friday, Haytham Manna criticized the continuity of Guantanamo System in 2009. He qualified in BBC Arabic TV interview the actual administration as cowardly thinking based on ad hoc measures.
The Arab Commission for Human Rights, Global Coordination against Guantanamo and Guantanamo Center for Justice organized in Paris last weak a seminar in Malakoff House of Association (Paris) About Guantanamo after 8 years with the participation of Madam Anne-Marie Lizin, (Belgium senator and Guantanamo Special Representative of the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly), Fausto Giudice, William Bourdon and Haytham Manna in presence of ex-prisoners like Khaled Ben Mostafa. Many old prisoners, like the Bosnia-Algerian Sabir Lahmar, recently released, and Sami al Haj, had not the possibility to participate in this event. A large poster was prepared for this occasion with the famous sentence of Obama: “As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions”.