Fortune 500 Awards Tunisian President “Chatham House Prize”
November 29, 2012
Image: Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki speaks in London before the Chatham House, a think-tank representing the collective interests of the largest corporations and financial institutions on Earth. Many of these special interests are responsible for the years of support he received while in exile, laundered through fronts such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), cultivating him as the future head of the West’s new client-regime in Tunisia.
{jcomments on}The Chatham House, a corporate-financier funded think-tank based in the United Kingdom, announced on its website earlier this week that it had awarded President Moncef Marzouki of Tunisia their 2012 “Chatham House Prize.” Chatham House claimed on their website that Marzouki has “ensured that Tunisia remains at the forefront of the new democratic wave in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Marzouki, who accepted the award in person (presented by the Duke of York in London) was one of several nominees which also included Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Previous recipients include US-British backed “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar.
Ironically, Tunisia’s streets are now, just days later, filled with protesters decrying the very same economic conditions that spurred protests early in 2011 leading to Moncef’s ascension to power. Marzouki’s security forces have begun cracking down using teargas and birdshot, leaving 250 wounded. Protesters claim that some have also been killed, but government sources deny this, and the Western media, unlike in 2011, has granted Tunisia’s new strongman the benefit of the doubt.
Such generosity exhibited by the Western press is owed to who Marzouki really is a representative for – the very corporate-financier interests that are partnered with the Chatham House.
Marzouki, who had been living in exile in Paris France for years, was head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, a US National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros Open Society-funded International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) member organization. He was also founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy(WMD) including for a “Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile” and a participant in the WMD “third assembly” alongside Marzouki’s Tunisian League for Human Rights, sponsored by NED, Soros’ Open Society, and USAID.