Let's take a quick look at what life is like in Algeria today.
- A law was passed in 1962 that ensured that anyone without a Muslim grandparent couldn't be a citizen. Some 140,000 Jews had to leave, and the laws, while changed, ensure that they cannot become citizens today.
- Algeria routinely arrests human rights activists.
- There are credible reports of torture in prisons.
- The judiciary is not independent and effectively controlled by the president.
- There are laws that restrict women's rights.
- Men who beat women can be pardoned if the woman is pressured to marry him.
- There are laws that criminalize many forms of speech, both in mainstream and social media. Some journalists were harassed and intimidated.
- Laws restrict activities of any religion besides Sunni Islam.
- Gays can be imprisoned under the law for homosexual acts.
- Movies and books must be approved before being allowed into the country.
- Protests in Algiers are essentially illegal.
- Black Algerians, Black migrants and non-Muslims are widely discriminated against.
So Algeria is a racist, homophobic, misogynist, apartheid dictatorship whose citizens have no freedom and limited rights.
One reason you don't hear much about countries like Algeria in the news is because if the media and human rights groups would judge all countries with the same standards and campaign against all abuses with the same energy, criticism of Israel would be invisible in the tsunami of actual serious human rights abuses worldwide. And they don't want to live in a world like that.
A set at the Security Council is a very high honor. Outside of groups like UN Watch, who is protesting giving this honor to a country as contemptuous of human rights as Algeria is?
