Raif Badawi is a liberal from Saudi Arabia. In 2006, he started a website, Free Saudi Liberals. Intended as a platform for serious political and social debate, it published articles critical of senior religious figures, and the kingdom's Wahabbi Islam and religious authorities. Badawi endorsed a separation of religion and state and argued that Muslims should be more tolerant. "You have the right to express and think whatever you want as you have the right to declare what you think about it," he wrote in one post. "It is your right to believe or think, have the right to love and to hate, from your right to be a liberal or Islamist."
Last year, he was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison, as well as a 1 million riyal (£175,000) fine. In 2013, he was cleared of an apostasy charge, which would have carried the death sentence. When Badawi was first arrested in 2012 for insulting Islam and showing disobedience, Amnesty International said that he was a prisoner of conscience, "detained solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression".
The first flogging took place last week, with 50 lashes administered outside a mosque in Jeddah. A YouTube video showed Badawi being beaten as a crowd of several hundred watched and clapped. The flogging took place as the world watched the violent conclusion of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, and the siege of a Jewish supermarket. This timing meant that Badawi's punishment prompted outrage all over the world; in the wake of the murder of 12 cartoonists in Paris, it was seen as another example of Islamic intolerance, as an international debate about the right to and limits of freedom expression raged.The full 1,000 lashes will take 19 weeks to administer.
The US, EU, and others have urged Riyadh to call off the flogging. "The UK condemns the use of cruel and degrading punishment in all circumstances," said the British Foreign Office in a statement. Spokeswoman for the US state department Jen Psaki expressed a similar sentiment: "The United States government calls on Saudi authorities to cancel this brutal punishment and to review Badawi's case and sentence." Despite public condemnations by western governments, however, there has been no indication of any diplomatic action. Amnesty had called on the UK government to challenge Saudi Arabia. Kate Allen, Amnesty's UK director, has criticised British ministers, saying that they "rightly celebrate free speech in Paris or in London but suddenly seem to lose their own power of utterance when it comes to forthrightly and publicly condemning the authorities in Riyadh."
The harsh punishment meted out to Badawi is shocking, but not surprising. Saudi Arabia has a long history of brutally repressing dissent. The think-tank Freedom House has described the media environment in Saudi Arabia as one of the "most repressive in the world". This is particularly acute at the moment, with the government jumpy about contagion from unrest elsewhere in the region. Badawi's website was on the radar of the authorities from 2008, but it was not until 2012, after the Arab Spring, that it was taken down and he was sentenced. There has simultaneously been a crackdown on Islamist extremists and returnees from the conflict in Syria, as well as a broad-ranging anti-terror law that equates atheism with terrorism.
Badawi's case is high profile, but he is not the only person facing harsh punishment for exercising free speech. His lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair was sentenced to 15 years in prison last July because he criticised human rights abuses. His case will resume next week, with the government seeking a harsher sentence. The month before Badawi was sentenced in 2013, human rights blogger Fadhel al-Manafis was sentenced to 15 years in jail, followed by a 15 year travel ban. The charges leveled against him included "undermining national security and stability", "disloyalty to the king", and "publishing articles and communicating with foreign journalists with the aim of harming the state's image". The last charge related to his assistance to journalists covering protests over the treatment of Shia Muslims in the country. In 2012, a 23 year old Saudi journalist and blogger resident in Malaysia, Hamza Kashgari, was actually extradited back to his home country, due to tweets that allegedly insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Charged with apostasy, he faced the death sentence, but in the end was jailed for two years instead. This particularly heavy response to online "crimes" reflects the fact that, as in many other repressive states, dissenting Saudis have turned to the internet to express their political views.
Many commentators in the west have commented on the public relations disaster for Saudi Arabia of going ahead with such a violent punishment for Badawi at a time when freedom of expression is so high on the international agenda. But, of course, the kingdom has a reason for carrying out excessively harsh punishments. As Reporters Without Borders has noted, self-censorship is encouraged by the "systematic recourse to prison terms and the harshness of the sentences imposed". Campaigners for freedom with speech often say that every time a journalist or blogger is jailed, dozens more are silenced. That certainly seems to be the case in Saudi Arabia, where anyone who even attempts to open a political dialogue is risking their life, liberty, and personal dignity.
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