Solidarity and Its Discontents
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/683/solidarity-and-its-discontents
By contrast, Where’s My Vote-NY (WIMV), an organization formed to express solidarity with Iranian protests after the contested election in 2009, called for protection of human rights in #Iran but also took an explicit no war and no sanctions position, making them the only organization to do so. WIMV’s strong anti-sanctions stance has been controversial among some human rights activists in the US who have supported so-called “humanitarian sanctions” that are supposed to target individual Iranian human rights violators. In fact, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International pulled out of a WIMV-organized protest in September 2009 precisely because they refused to endorse a no sanctions platform. Below we size up the efficacy of “humanitarian sanctions” that claim to be in support of the human rights of Iranians.