Africa: A petition to Human Rights Watch

'In an Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, we express our concern that the director of Human Rights Watch has used his introductory essay in the 2012 Human Rights Watch World Report to urge support for newly elected governments of the Islamic right in the Middle East and North Africa. Our letter points out that he does not need to urge engagement where there is no threat of a boycott; that he mirrors security discourses relating to Muslim contexts where the choice is between 'autocrats' or 'moderate Islamists'; and that he is dismissive of the threats to sexual rights and to religious minorities and silent on the struggles of labor, secularists and others who initiated and sustained the mobilizations and movements against oppressive regimes.'