Thread by @TLHumanRights

The @TLHumanRights hearing on the state of human rights in the MENA region ten years after the Arab Spring is live now. Watch below:

.@RepMcGovern: "When I look at the Middle East, I also see the many brave young people who have risked their lives to imagine a different world for themselves... I see the women who took leadership roles in the Arab Spring."

.@RepMcGovern: "We do not want the U.S. to be complicit in any way, shape or form with human rights violations committed by 'allied' governments. We have seen enough. We need a new human rights-based U.S. foreign policy toward the MENA region."

.@ptnassif: "The mass uprisings of 2011 and then again in 2019 sent shockwaves across MENA. The demonstrations broke the taboo surrounding popular protests and triggered an irreversible shift in the political imagination of young women and men."

.@ptnassif: "The U.S. should ban all arms sales to Egypt along with the transfer of tear gas, small arms, ammunition, and other repressive equipment and condition security aid to the country broadly due to egregious human rights violations committed by the Sisi government."

.@HolewinskiSarah: "The U.S. government should reassess the policy mistakes it made in the past that have exacerbated human rights abuses... The Trump administration further emboldened autocrats like Egyptian President al-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman."

.@HolewinskiSarah: "More consistent US public messaging and criticism of human rights abuses in the region — whether the perpetrator is Iran, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia — will be fundamental in addressing a credibility gap created over decades."

.@Samueltadros: "The Biden administration should utilize the available tools in its own arsenal to remedy the lack of access to information and accurate news, as well as counter conspiracy theories and anti-American rhetoric by those regimes, especially those allied to the U.S."

.@Samueltadros: "Religious minorities across the region are under assault by both regimes and Islamist groups. Helping build safeguards for religious minorities does not only help their prospects of survival but can genuinely ease the societal tensions in those countries."

.@sarahleah1: "The U.S. has actively aided and abetted the most serious abuses in the Middle East by providing military, economic and diplomatic support to authoritarian, repressive, and apartheid govts, in breach of its human rights obligations under U.S. and international law."

@sarahleah1: "America’s participation in the devastating and needless war in Yemen is another shameful blight on our deadly record in the region... The continued provision of 'defensive' weapons to Saudi Arabia serves only to embolden and assist their undemocratic leaders."

.@POMED's Stephen McInerney: "The Arab Spring should have been a historic opportunity for an overhaul of U.S. policy. Instead, the opposite happened - the main policy was to double down on failed policies, by drastically increasing arms sales to brutal dictatorships."

.@POMED's Stephen McInerney: "The only country making significant progress toward democracy and human rights is Tunisia, and I believe that supporting the consolidation of Tunisia’s democratic transition should be the single top priority for the U.S. in the MENA region."