European Student Think Tank

The trial against med­ical staff that treated pro­test­ers in Bahrain is now in full swing. The lack of any sig­ni­fic­ant reac­tion from Europe against the Bahraini regime amidst con­tinu­ous human rights viol­a­tions stands in stark con­trast to the reac­tion against other Arab dic­tat­ors. It is a shame that polit­ical and eco­nomic interests pre­vent the West from severely sanc­tion­ing the tiny Gulf state.

Pro­test­ers and free­dom fight­ers in the Arab world can count on the sym­pathy, and some­times the sup­port of West­ern demo­cratic nations. But this sym­pathy clouds our judge­ment, because we auto­mat­ic­ally con­ceive the rioters as her­oes. The vil­lains are those res­ist­ing change, some­times will­ing to give their lives for the dic­tat­ors. Yet, we hardly under­stand why. The demo­cratic prin­cipals that we hold dear and that we wish new regimes will adopt should make us want to know the whole story.

Past and present show that not just polit­ical exclu­sion, but more so eco­nomic under­per­form­ance can lead to pop­u­lar protest and rebel­lion. These les­sons should be applied to Spain and Greece, where Europe’s eco­nomic crisis is hit­ting hard­est. The pos­sib­il­ity of polit­ical viol­ence in South­ern Europe’s poorly per­form­ing eco­nom­ies can­not be excluded.

France’s bombs on Gbagbo and Italy’s bombs on Khadafi show that Europe’s coun­tries dare to act in their former colon­ies. Accus­a­tions of neo­co­lo­ni­al­ism by evil­do­ers should be accep­ted as com­pli­ments, as it means stand­ing up for human rights, even in coun­tries where act­ing mil­it­ar­ily is sensitive.

With Khadafi’s would-be mas­sacre loom­ing in Benghazi, Europe has proven that it is still will­ing to take on a mes­si­anic role to fight for free­dom. The enthu­si­asm that David Cameron and Nic­olas Sarkozy have shown to pro­tect human life with all means neces­sary deserves the deep­est respect and stands in stark con­trast to Germany’s inex­cus­able cow­ardice. Libya deserves European mil­it­ary sup­port in escap­ing from the yoke of a mad­man that has oppressed its people for generations.

Cath­er­ine Ashton might be the most cri­ti­cised European of the last few weeks. While the peoples in North-Africa and the Middle-East were fight­ing for their free­dom, our High Rep­res­ent­at­ive for For­eign and Secur­ity Policy only man­aged to pro­duce some vague state­ments in response. She seemed power­less to do any­thing more sub­stan­tial. But is that entirely her own fault? The answer to that ques­tion will be given below.

Over the past weeks, we have wit­nessed in the Middle East what few have held pos­sible: we have seen the down­fall of two dic­tat­orial regimes and ongo­ing unrest. All eyes were first on Tunisia, then on Egypt. The whole world watched as his­tory unfol­ded, yet many West­ern lead­ers did not know what to do or say. Amidst the tur­moil, the EU has been remin­is­cent of its absence.