SIPRI, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, one of the reliable research institutes that researches into the arm control published a scary report on the increase spending on arms by countries with most human rights violations. According to the report China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are among the 23 countries around the world that have more than doubled their military expenditure since 2004. While developing countries are springing more on weapons, western countries such as US is spending less on arm forces and weapons.
Saudi Arabia’s spending increased by 14 per cent and reached $67 billion,
Bahrain’s spending increased 26 per cent,
Iraq’s spending is up to 27 per cent,
The report highlights that eight states bordering the Gulf—Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are countries that invest most in arm forces and weapons.
Such report raises the important question of why such countries are inverting so much on weapons. And where do they buy these weapons from?
History reveals that all these countries have been involved in human rights violations, arm conflicts and unrest. Number of these countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are well known for arming different terrorist groups. Some others, such as Bahrain, are well known for oppressing peaceful pro-democracy native protestors.
It is interesting how money and economic priorities result in killings of many activists and pro-freedom civilians. The fact that all mentioned countries buy the weapons to mainly confront their own citizen is crystal clear to all yet no company or government stopped selling weapons to those countries. Except Korea that stated they stopped selling to Bahrain, no other country claimed such rightful decision.
If and only IF, international committees and nations would stop selling arms to countries that are famous for their human rights violations, there would be a hope for the peace in the future of the Middle East….
Too bad….
Every nation needs money and guest who has it?
Oil reached companies of Middle East…..
So it’s OK if they are killing people with it, as long as they pay CASH for the weapons….
by Hawraa Zakery, Human Rights Reseracher on April, 15,2014
