Tag Archives: Arbeit Macht Frei

An Arab Human Rights Court in Bahrain? ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ in Arabic……..

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There are more recent reports of something called an Arab Human Rights Court, what I (and anybody with sense) would call Mother of All Contradictions. Reports that the Arab League’s current owners have chosen Bahrain as headquarters of the so-called Arab Human Rights Court are apparently not a joke or a prank.

There is or will be an entity called the Arab Human Rights Court. I am guessing, an expensively educated guess, that its specialty will be to prosecute human rights advocates in the Arab countries. And to try and bully foreign and international NGO’s who support them.

The report of its location in Bahrain? Just adding a bit of insult to injury, telling the Arab peoples what their rulers think of them and of their level of intelligence. But then they don’t care what their peoples think anyway.
It is aimed at the outside world. An Arab court can and will always issue verdicts in support of these despotic regimes. Friendly Western media from the Washington Post to CNN, and friendly Western regimes like the one in Britain can point to these verdicts and repeat them like mindless zombies, as alibis.

Terrible. Yet when I first read about this project months ago I could not help laughing. Imagine four terms: Human Rights, Justice, Arab League, Bahrain. How can they all fit in one sentence, one paragraph, or even one page without provoking frustrated mirthless laughter?
Frustrated mirthless laughter is supposed to be more seemly, for men at least, than frustrated weeping which would be the more honest relieving reaction.

This is the equivalent of having a huge sign hanging over the whole bloody Arab World:
Arbeit Macht Frei……..
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arabian Reich: Arbeit Macht Frei, Public Flogging Macht Frei, Tear Gas Macht Frei………

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It is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The Nazi concentration-death camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army as it swept across Poland toward Germany in January 1945.

Sometimes I think the 1960s terms used by JFK “Let them come to Berlin“, “Ich bin ein ‘Berliner'(?)” must have sounded naive and absurd to an average Russian in Leningrad or Stalingrad or to anyone in any Soviet village east of Poland. Barely 15 years after WWII and the horrors of Operation Barbarossa. By the 1980s, however, Reagan’s “Tear down this wall…..” sounded more reasonable and plausible.

Anyway, my focus is the Middle East. The Nazis posted a cruel slogan at the entrance to their concentration camps, which housed mostly Jews but also dissidents, leftists, and other undesirables. The absurd slogan was “Arbeit Macht Frei“, something the cotton plantation owners never thought of in Old Dixie. In the Middle East, one can imagine new slogans based on that one. The Saudi princes can erect “Public Flogging Macht Frei“, or “Absolute monarchy Macht Frei“. The Egyptian regime can erect “Bullets Macht Frei“. The Bahrain rulers can erect “Tear Gas Macht Frei“, or “Kleptocrats Macht Frei“. They and the rulers of UAE can both quite reasonably erect “Foreign Mercenaries Macht Frei“. The caliphate of ISIS might put up “Concubines Macht Frei”. Tony Blair might add to his letterhead “Oil Oligarchs Macht Frei”. No irony intended………..

BTW: did you read that the British Ministry of Justice “is hoping to profit from selling its expertise to the prison service in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for public beheadings, floggings, amputations and courts that regularly violate human rights.…………”?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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