IT IS unquestionably obscene that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not only serving on the United Nations Human Rights Council but will be heading a key panel.
This barbaric state is guilty of the type of human rights abuses that Islamic State would be proud of and yet it is on the UNHRC, lecturing the civilised world, including Australia, about how we conduct our affairs.
As you read this, Saudi Arabia’s regime is preparing to behead and crucify a young man for attending a pro-democracy rally when he was 17. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was sentenced to be executed in a closed hearing earlier this month after being arrested in 2012.
The 21-year-old had no legal representation and was most likely tortured to give a statement on trumped up charges; it’s how they do things in the gulf state.
Ali’s uncle, Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, who in the past has been critical of the Saudi royal family, is also sentenced to be crucified for the crime of “waging war against God” in the Sunni-dominant country.
Saudi Arabia kills people for attending freedom protests, for adultery, sorcery, apostasy, homosexuality and a raft of other crimes that apparently deserve a prolonged and painful death.
Women, who are subjugated from birth and treated as less than second class citizens, are killed in public for the crime of witchcraft.
It may be 2015 in the civilised world, but oil riches haven’t advanced the Saudis from a feudal mentality. In fact, crucifixion and beheading isn’t the most horrifying method of execution that Saudi authorities mete out; stoning is still permitted under the country’s sharia law. Women guilty of adultery can be sentenced to a fate that is beyond horrifying; they are partially buried and then surrounded by a ring of men with mounds of rocks at their feet that are thrown from some distance until the victim is dead.
It is a torturous way to kill, although it must be noted that recently the courts have shown a preference for beheading misbehaving women as opposed to stoning them.
Public lashings are another popular form of punishment and can end with the victim suffering an agonising death.
Writer and activist Raif Badawi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes for insulting Islam.
Despite an international outcry, Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court upheld the sentence earlier this year. It’s a sentence his wife, Ensaf Haidar, who fled to Canada with the couple’s three children, has described as a “slow death”.
For his efforts in defending Badawi, lawyer Waleed Abulkhair was also jailed, sentenced to 15 years for crimes including “inciting public opinion”. This isn’t tribal law carried out in remote communities; these are judgments of the country’s highest courts.We have read in horror about gang rape victims being sentenced to prison and 200 lashes but it seems that our Western leaders have little interest in exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to change its ways.
Instead of being ostracised as a savage theocracy, it is welcomed into the UN and celebrated as a friend. World leaders speak glowingly of King Salman and regard the Saudis as vital allies in the Middle East.
But the kingdom isn’t doing all it can to stabilise the region; some argue it is working to encourage the growth of its inhumane interpretation of sharia law.
Much of the financing of acts of terror in the region, and elsewhere, can be traced to Saudi Arabia.
The regime’s reign of terror has also been emulated around the Middle East and by Islamists around the world.
The country’s appetite for violence, death and an irrational adherence to a strict “moral” code is rooted in the Wahhabi or Salafi form of Sunni Islam.
he scale of oppression and carnage is extraordinary yet many in the West prefer to look the other way rather than acknowledge that Saudi Arabia has beheaded 100 people this year.
Then there is the heinous treatment of women, who are segregated, not allowed to drive and forced to wear dehumanising niqabs, burqas or if they’re lucky a hijab — although devout hardliners prefer a woman’s face to be covered in public — and are subjected to archaic restrictions.
It’s not just women who are treated as less than human; the country’s racist, homophobic and religiously intolerant attitudes are enshrined in law. Earlier this year, Middle East Eye, an independently funded news website, compared proscribed punishments for a list of offences in Islamic State and Saudi Arabia. The similarities were stark.
Both regimes believe death is the only just punishment for crimes including blasphemy, adultery, and acts of homosexuality. While the Saudis typically behead gay men, Islamic State prefer to throw them off buildings and then stone them to death if they survive the fall.
Both Islamic State and the Saudis proscribe hand amputation for theft, although sometimes the odd foot is also chopped off.
It’s clear that oil riches don’t buy acumen, decency or humanity but they do buy the international community’s friendship and a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council.
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