Hoha! (Pointblank): The Soundbites

"Left unchecked, we have every reason to believe Gadhafi (will) commit atrocities against his own people... and destabilize North Africa and the broader Middle East...The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun, and the words of the international community would be rendered hollow...The United States will provide the unique capabilities that we can bring to bear, including enabling our European allies and Arab partners to effectively enforce a no-fly zone..."

-------President Barack Obama Warning Libya's Moammar Gadhafi on Friday to immediately stop the "brutal repression" of Libyan civilians or face military consequences from a unified international community.


“With no less than 17 elections coming up this year [in the region], human rights are going to be key to those elections being peaceful...We need to insist on the centrality of human rights in the electoral process...These bad examples could serve as a lesson to be proactive in mainstreaming a culture of human rights..."

-------Patrice Vahard, Senior Human Rights Adviser, United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA) on Human Rights being the key to successful elections in West Africa.


"The Nigerian government is not doing enough to bring people to justice in connection with the violence, and this is creating and fostering a culture of impunity, which is allowing an escalation of violence leading up to April's elections... So we've seen political assassination. We've seen bombs. We've seen fighting between candidate supporters. We've seen attacks on rallies," said Freeman. "We've seen what seems to be an excessive use of lethal force by security officers resulting in children being killed who were just bystanders at a political protest. So it's an extremely worrying level of violence across the country."

-------Lucy Freeman, Amnesty International on the forthcoming elections in Nigeria