Jack B. Kubisch Quotes

During most of the Bush administration, human rights and democracy in Egypt were on the front burner.

The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.

It is good that the Canadians are raising the flag among Western countries to raise the issue of human rights abuse throughout the Middle East.

Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers.

On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days.

Now in its third year in office, the Obama Administration has never championed the cause of human rights. Its slow reaction in June 2009 to the stealing of the election in Iran and the birth of the 'Green Movement' there, and its delay in backing the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, are evidence of this problem.

When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression.

I have nothing but contempt for Gadhafi. I'm not a Gadhafi supporter in any way. However, it's not clear to me that it's a vital and compelling national security objective of the United States that we ought to use military force to remove him from power. He's not the only unpleasant and unsavory dictator in the world.

Kissinger's orchestration of political and military and diplomatic cover for apartheid in South Africa presents us with a morally repulsive record and includes the appalling consequences of the destabilization of Angola

Syria cannot continue this way—killing their people

He [Rafael Trujillo] had his torture chambers. He had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that was fine with us.

The government that has imprisoned more journalists than any other in the world was democratically elected.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.

Countries often prioritise economic interests over human rights - hence all the kowtowing to China.

There are, of course, all sorts of other unpleasant regimes outside the walls as well - the military dictators of Latin America and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

I hope the example of Saddam Hussein will give a lesson to leaders of other countries where human rights are not respected.

It's up to any government to decide how to react to the denial of basic human rights anywhere in the world, including Egypt.

Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to labour camps for life or cutting off their hands without a trial.

We must do all we can to help improve the deplorable human rights situation of the North Korean people.

We don't do the poor any favors by respecting the sensitivities of bad rulers who oppress their own people.

Ukraine is facing a serious threat of isolation as some local political forces want to put an end to democracy and democratic reforms in the country

America simply prefers to deal with dictators.

Fidel Castro has killed more people than we even know …. Fidel Castro uses medicine and food to suppress his people.

Political or religious dissenters are the plague of every totalitarian regime.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.