The Conservative Cave

Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: bijou on October 06, 2009, 11:16:14 AM

Title: US funds dry up for Iran rights watchdog
Post by: bijou on October 06, 2009, 11:16:14 AM
Quote
For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers.
   

But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed - its federal funding request had been denied.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was sur prised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.’’

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush. But the timing has alarmed some on Capitol Hill. ...
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/10/06/us_cutoff_of_funding_to_iran_human_rights_cause_signals_shift/?page=1
Title: Re: US funds dry up for Iran rights watchdog
Post by: Odin's Hand on October 06, 2009, 11:22:08 AM
Hey, that's taking away from American jobs to compile dossiers on dissident citizens here in the U.S.
Title: Re: US funds dry up for Iran rights watchdog
Post by: thundley4 on October 06, 2009, 11:25:31 AM
This was part of 0Bama's negotiations to get inspectors into Iran, or was this a unilateral move on 0Bama's part to appease Iran?
I hope they can get funding from some conservative group.
Title: Re: US funds dry up for Iran rights watchdog
Post by: SSG Snuggle Bunny on October 06, 2009, 12:16:53 PM
How about some of that money we just stripped from ACORN? That'd be some real community organizing.