Tag: Mohammad bin Salman

Visit by Mohammed bin Salman


A visit to the UK by Mohammed bin Salman planned for October

August 2023

It has been confirmed today that a visit is planned to the UK by Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia in October and the prime minister Rishi Sunak has apparently phoned him to discuss details. It places the UK into something of a quandary and is a test of our adherence to moral standards in our international relations.

It was only in October 2018 that the journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the embassy in Istanbul where he was murdered and dismembered. It is highly likely that MBS ordered the assassination. It caused an international outcry at the time and a British minister referred to it as an act of ‘appalling brutality’. This was not an isolated incident which could perhaps be explained as an overzealous act of a group of secret police. The human rights situation in Saudi is grave. Executions have increased since MBS came to power. Between 2010 and 2021, 1,243 were executed and in 2022, at least 147. 81 were executed in one day last year. The six bloodiest years have occurred since he came to power. The process is highly secretive and torture is practised to secure confessions. Minors are also killed.

Human rights organisations are banned. Critics of the regime are arrested. Women are not free although after a long campaign they are now allowed to drive.

Bin Salman has used the enormous wealth of the country to try and ‘buy’ a better image and we have commented before on the purchase of Newcastle United Football Club as part of a widespread programme of sportswashing. Football, golf, tennis, boxing, F1 motorsport and recently, some high profile purchases of footballers. Sporting organisations and sportsmen have happily accepted the largesse with seemingly no qualms about its source. Slowly, the issue of sportswashing has made it out of the back of newspapers into the news pages. It does seem however, that there are no misgivings or revulsion evident from sports people who are only too keen to take the money.

The vast wealth of the country, its immense reserves of oil and its desire to acquire weapons, means it has considerable influence over governments like the UK. There is thus a conundrum: we simply need Saudi wealth in a variety of ways and so we are forced to deal with an odious regime. We cannot it seems, afford to be squeamish. They can buy their weapons from a variety of countries and invest their wealth other than in, or via, the City of London. To pretend to be concerned about their human rights record, the executions, the treatment of women and their activities which have so immiserated Yemen, is not an option. Sporting people and their millions of fans are mostly unconcerned so why should we? Roll out the red carpet – which after all the French have done – arrange meetings with the King, hold our noses and sign the deals so vital for our economy. Is this where we are?

Money or morals?

The government has to choose: money or morals? It is likely to choose the former. They might wrap it up in claims of realpolitik but the power and immensity of the money – a wall of cash estimated to be around £1tn – is the deciding factor.

The UK was one of those countries which, sometimes reluctantly because of our continuing activities in the colonies, took a leading role in promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the war. For a time we had an ‘ethical’ foreign policy. But it seems that slowly but surely, the need for business has led to the watering down of policies and quietly dropping our commitments to some kind of moral compass in our dealings with countries who flagrantly abuse the human rights of their citizens. Outrage is expressed at the treatment of the Rohingya in Burma but little seems to happen to stop insurers enabling jet fuel for example being sold to the regime. More outrage was expressed at the treatment of the Uyghurs in China but little action followed and cotton produced by forced labour still finds its way onto our shelves. Public outrage – let it go quiet – then back to business as usual. Is this the new policy? Will human rights be mentioned when MBS visits? It is doubtful.

Perhaps the visit by MBS represents the final curtain call on any claim we might have had for moral leadership to the rest of the world.

Sources: Channel 4; Reprieve; Amnesty International

0

Saudi executes 81 in one day


News that Saudi Arabia has executed 81 people in one day has shocked the world. Where or how is not known but the usual method is beheading. It surpasses the 63 executed in one day in 1979. So much for the reforms Mohammed bin Salman was supposed to be introducing.

The dead were unlikely to have received a fair trial. They would almost certainly have been tortured into providing confessions. Saudi television said that those executed had ‘followed the footsteps of Satan’.

The executions brings into sharp focus UK relations with the regime. Saudi is our biggest overseas buyer of weapons many of which are being used in the war in Yemen. While our news media is giving wall to wall coverage of the war in Ukraine, the bombing of Yemen hospitals, clinics, weddings and other communal events gets scant coverage. Tens of thousands have been killed, including many children, and cholera is endemic.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, is due to visit the kingdom in the next few days to try and increase the supply of oil. One wonders if the executions and the outrage they have caused will feature in the discussions. A Reprieve action urging Johnson to cancel his trip is here. Saudi Arabia has invested in Newcastle Football Club.

A report by the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights report on this can be accessed here. This organisation has been added to our list of contacts to be found at the bottom of the page.

0

Saudi takeover of Newcastle football club


The news today of the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United is condemned by Amnesty

It was announced today (7 October 2021) that the Saudi Public Investment Fund has agreed a £300m takeover of Newcastle United Football Club. This has resurrected the argument about ‘Sportswash’ and countries with poor human rights records using sport to try and create a better image for themselves. Saudi Arabia has a particularly dire human rights record with the routine use of torture, capital punishment often by primitive means and in public, the poor treatment of women and the silencing of opposition to the regime.

The takeover has been welcomed in Newcastle and it was suggested by a reporter in the City that the fans were jubilant as it will mean the end of Mike Ashley’s ownership and the poor record by the club in the league during his time. Newcastle Chronicle has considerable coverage and photos of large numbers of jubilant fans. The newspaper describes the atmosphere as ‘electric’. On Twitter a tweet said it was about ‘returning a sense of pride’.

Newcastle is not the only football club or sport to accept money from dubious regimes so it would be unfair to single them out. Saudi’s human rights record is particularly dubious however. The list is long and includes the likely murder and dismemberment by Saudi agents of Jamal Khashoggi, the repression of dissidents and human rights defenders, several members of the royal family are still held incommunicado and there is no freedom of religion other than Islam.

Yemen is also a stain on the country with nearly 8,000 killed in air raids including 2,000 children. There is a blockade in place adding to the misery in the country.

Newcastle supporters can also claim that our own royal family and senior ministers have frequently visited the country and are on visible and seemingly good terms with Mohammed bin Salman. The UK is also a major supplier of weapons to the regime, despite evidence of the harm done in their use. To condemn the deal is, they might argue, hypocritical. The Saudis also own considerable real estate in London.

While all this is true, there is no escaping the reality of a terrible regime buying a famous football club to enable it to enhance its image in the world. Although the fans seem delighted with the decision, it remains the case that the money is tainted and from a particularly dire regime.

3

Saudi women still in gaol


The women who campaigned for women to be able to drive in Saudi still in gaol

ACTION TODAY WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE

Next week marks two years since women in Saudi Arabia were finally granted the right to drive.

As part of his Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is working hard to be seen as the moderniser of Saudi Arabia, introducing a number of social reforms.

Meanwhile, thirteen Saudi women’s rights activists remain on trial for peacefully campaigning for the same reforms, including the right to drive.  Five of them are still behind bars – including Loujain al-Hathloul, Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sada.

We’re asking our supporters to take action together this Wednesday 24 June – the day women were granted the right to drive in Saudi Arabia in 2018, while these women’s rights defenders were locked up in prison charged with, among other things, “promoting women’s rights”.

Please share this horn graphic on social media with the following message:

I stand with women rights activists who fought for the right to drive. It’s shameful they were locked up for demanding equality. Join me & @AmnestyUK calling on @KingSalman to release them & drop all charges: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/beepforfreedom #BeepForFreedom CC @SaudiEmbassyUK

Thank you!

1

Weapons to the Saudis


Letter from Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty, to the Observer

We have featured on these pages the continuing scandal of arms sales to the Saudi regime.  Not only the destruction of large parts of Yemen these weapons are used for, but the fact that the Saudi regime’s repression of its own people and denial of human rights.  After China, they are the world’s second biggest executioner often following unfair trials and confessions extracted through torture.  But no matter, there’s money to be made.

Kate Allen discusses these factors in her letter to the Observer newspaper on Sunday 10 May 2020:

It is, as you say, long over overdue that the UK government put its relationship with Saudi Arabia on a healthier footing (Now is the time to distance ourselves from an odious regime, editorial 3 May, 2020).  For years, the UK has claimed behind-closed-doors diplomacy with Riyadh has been better than “lecturing” the kingdom over its appalling humans rights record.  Yet repression has only worsened including under the suppose reformer Mohammad bin Salmon.  Now virtually every human rights activist in the the country has either been locked up, intimidated in to silence or forced the flee the country.

We have sole Riyadh plenty of weaponry, but the UK hushed policy on Saudi human rights has sold the country’s embattled human rights community shamefully short.

The weapons are used in the war in Yemen the bombing of which has caused appalling damage to the nation’s infrastructure.

Attacks by the Saudi-led coalition have destroyed infrastructure across Yemen. Saudi forces have targeted hospitals, clinics and vaccinations centres.  Blockades have starved the population and made it hard for hospitals to get essential medical supplies.  Source; Campaign Against the Arms Trade

The UK is complicit: many of the Coalition’s attacks have been carried out with UK-made fighter jets, and UK-made bombs and missiles – and the UK government has supported them with billions of pounds of arms sales.

 

0

37 beheaded in execution spree in Saudi


Shocking news of a beheading spree in Saudi Arabia.  Allegations of a crucifixion

It has been widely reported that Saudi Arabia executed 37 individuals on Tuesday 23 April 2019 in what was the biggest mass execution since 2016.  The executions have been widely condemned around the world and mark an alarming increase in the use of the death penalty by the regime.  Any hope that the rise to power of Mohammad bin Salman (pictured) marked a more liberal regime seem well and truly to be finished.

The UK government is usually quite reticent in these matters claiming to make its views known behind the scenes.  However, in this instance, diplomatic language seems to be set to one side following an urgent statement in the House of Commons:

The Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan, answering an urgent question in the Commons, spurned the usual diplomatic niceties, saying the mass executions were “a deeply backward step which we deplore”. He added it was “deplorable and totally unacceptable” that at least one of those executed had been a minor at the time of the arrest.
He highlighted reports that one of those executed was displayed on a cross, saying that anyone in the House, just two days after Easter, would find “more repulsive than anything we could picture.  Parliament site [accessed 24 April 2019]

In response, Sir Vince Cable said:

We are in urgent need of a reappraisal of our relationship with Saudi Arabia given that the continued medieval barbarism of the regime does not constitute the basis for a friendly alliance, and indeed makes it an enemy of our values and our human rights.  Ibid

The executions follow sham trials and according to Amnesty International, involve confessions achieved through the use of torture.  The families of those executed were not told of the executions in advance.  It has been reported that one head was displayed on a pole and that one man was crucified.

Juvenile

One individual, Abdulkareem al-Hawaj was arrested at the age of 16 and the execution of people under the age of 18 at the time of their arrest is against international law.

So far this year, Saudi has executed 104 people and if the current rate continues, will exceed last year’s total of 149 for the whole year.

Saudi Arabia is a major customer for our arms industry and our weapons are among those being used in the devastating war currently being waged in Yemen

Sources:  Parliament site; CNN; Guardian

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑