It is time for the West to stop arming dictatorships

Friday 27 April 2012

Bernie Ecclestone claims people in Bahrain have free speech ("Race that is all about politics, not sport", The Herald, April 18).

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A Bahraini crown prince can speak to reporters, but that's like claiming there's free speech in Syria because the Assad family can speak freely there. Reporters other than sports journalists were banned from Grand Prix press conferences.

What's far worse is that the British and American governments are continuing to arm and support the Bahraini, Saudi, Yemeni and Egyptian police and militaries as they kill and torture protesters demanding democracy. The UK Government merely refused a few export licences at the height of media coverage of the Arab Spring before carrying on as usual. Barack Obama's administration is also continuing to fund the Egyptian military with billions of dollars of military aid, spent on US arms and "crowd control" ammunition. Supposedly "non-lethal" ammunition such as tear gas is being used at such high concentrations it has killed dozens of people in Bahrain on top of those shot or tortured to death. Far from reforms happening, the number of people killed has been rising sharply in the last few months according to Physicians for Human Rights figures.Our governments may not be able to overthrow every dictator, but they could at least stop arming many of them as they kill and torture their people. Until they do, their condemnation of the Russian government – equally wrongly – doing the same in Syria will lack weight because their foreign policy is identical to Russia's: arming, torturing, murdering, client dictatorships while condemning rivals for doing the same.Duncan McFarlane,Beanshields,Braidwood, Carluke.

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It is time for the West to stop arming dictatorships

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