Published in MTimes 26 Oct 2018
AVAAZ.org
was recently canvassing support to stand up to the Saudis for human rights.
Saudi Arabia sentences women to death by stoning, brutally whips peaceful
activists, and with their allies, bombed school buses full of kids in Yemen.
Canada had protested against
their jailing of women activists and
Saudi reacted by slamming them with sanctions.
This typical bullying Saudi response was to make an "example"
of anyone who dares stand up to them.
Seeing that the world’s democracies were accepting their
mindless brutality and the brazen impunity of their rogue behaviour, they felt emboldened
But
this time they have gone too far with the premeditated and "savage"
murder of the 59-year old columnist and critic, Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi
consulate in Istanbul on 2nd October. Many believe that the most powerful
figure in the kingdom, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had ordered the
killing. Some 15 men who were from the
state’s security apparatus and from the crown prince’s security detail,
including the head of forensics in the
kingdom’s General Intelligence were involved. Some recordings are showing that
Khashoggi was killed during seven horrific minutes in which he was first
tortured, then mutilated, injected with a sedative, and finally dismembered and
his body parts carried away in bags.
Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund is organising the “Future
Investment Initiative” (FII) a three-day event from 23 to 25 October. The
conference is a forum for business figures, politicians and civic society
groups to discuss topics related to economic development, including technology,
global governance and the environment. More than 40 participants including some
big names may have pulled out. But as usual some hundreds are still attending -
in some cases representing the very companies whose bosses decided it was no
longer expedient for them to attend. Some are arguing about pragmatism as there
is a big future at stake in Saudi Arabia and this obnoxious obstacle - however shocking and overwhelming – they
believe will eventually be overcome.
Here
also, there are many who are arguing that we should stay out of it. These are big power politics. We have little
choice because of our proximity to the Saudi regime which has just lent us some
Rs 3.5 billion from the Saudi Fund for Development on quite concessionary
terms. Others however disagree. Similarly as we have been concerned about the
massive killings of Rohingya muslims in
Rakhine State of Myanmar, of the shooting of Palestinian kids and the
extermination of the Yazidis, a religious minority from the mountains of north-western
Iraq and we went to La Hague, against the advice of the big powers, to support our Chagossian brothers to end up
one of the last remnants of decolonisation, now it is our turn to stand up and
boycott this rogue state and join the call to expel Saudi Arabia from the Human
Rights Council! Did you hear anything, on this issue, from the usually vocal
opposition parties-with few exceptions ? As for the Uber v/s Taxi lobbies case,
ena perdi vote la dan !!!!
