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Felicity Arbuthnot
An Orwellian obscenity, backed up by the Western powers.
What next? Netanyahu for the Nobel Peace Prize?
Below: One of many beheadings in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is as ready to practice this form of medieval execution as ISIS, which they helped to spawn, anyhow, along with the US and other reactionary players in the Middle East.
In diametrical opposition to these fine founding aspirations, the UN has appointed Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the United Nations Human Rights Council to head (or should that be “behead”) an influential human rights panel. The appointment was seemingly made in June, but only came to light on 17th September, due to documents obtained by UN Watch (1.)
“… Mr Faisal Bin Hassan Trad, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador at the UN in Geneva, was elected as Chair of a panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council.
“As head of a five-strong group of diplomats, the influential role would give Mr Trad the power to select applicants from around the world for scores of expert roles in countries where the UN has a mandate on human rights.
Such experts are often described as the “crown jewels” of the HRC, according to UN Watch.
The “crown jewels” have been handed to a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Saudi Arabia will head a Consultative Group of five Ambassadors empowered to select applicants globally for more than seventy seven positions to deal with human rights violations and mandates.
SPECIAL: More on the real face of Saudi barbarism
CLICK ON THE BAR BELOW.
Originally published on March 29, 2013 \ The Muslim Issue
In Riyadh they perform beheadings at 9am every morning in a downtown public square equipped with a drain the size of a pizza box in its centre, surrounded by tea and coffee stalls and shops. Expatriates call it Chop Chop Square. That means that in Riyadh alone some 300+ beheadings take place a year, other regions not counted. So how can official reports claim that only 76 people got beheaded last year (2012) in Saudi Arabia?
The kingdom’s interior ministry announced the execution, stating that the man had murdered and sodomised another male. Both actions are punishable by death. ‘The Yemeni citizen Mohammed Rashad Khairi Hussain killed a Pakistani, Pashteh Sayed Khan, after he committed sodomy with him,’ said a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
The execution, in the southern city of Jizan, was followed by crucifixion, a punishment used by the ultra-conservative country for serious crimes. Saudi Arabia has been criticised in the international community for their harsh punishments, including executions by beheading and firing squad. Death by beheading has always been a source of tension between Saudi Arabia and the international community.
Human rights campaigners protest against beheadings in Saudi Arabia after eight Bangladeshi men were executed for an alleged murder.
In 2012, they executed 76 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, while the US-based Human Rights Watch put the number at 69. The oil-rich kingdom follows a strict implementation of Islamic law, or Shariah, under which people convicted of murder, rape or armed robbery can be executed, usually by sword.
The announcement comes after Amnesty International released the final words of a man sentenced to death by firing squad. He was allegedly forced to confess after the authorities threatened to torture his mother. As well, seven juveniles were arrested and convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death in the Southern city of Abha after their appeals to the king were rejected. One of the robbers was interviewed by the human rights charity before his death. Families of the men had pleaded to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for clemency but the executions were carried out as planned.
Faisal Bin Hassan Trad, now responsible for selecting the ‘crown jewels’ of the UN Human Rights Council. ITU Pictures under a Creative Commons Licence
One of the condemned men said: ‘I have nine hours left until I die. We found this out through friends and relatives who saw the market square being prepared for the execution. ‘There are now seven spots in the square for seven people to be shot. It’s going to be in public, in the market, in the city of Abha. ‘We don’t know what we are supposed to have done wrong. ‘We were forced to make confessions. We were mistreated by the investigators – they took our clothes and it was winter. They tortured us by suspending us from chains on the wall. ‘They also used psychological torture such as threatening they would bring in our mothers and torture them in front of us. ‘I didn’t kill anyone – we were tried for robbery and we were forced to confess. I hope the execution will be stopped. ‘I wish for it to be stopped and for a fair trial and for a reinvestigation. The trial was totally unjust.’
One of the men told The Associated Press that he was only 15 when he was arrested as part of a ring that stole jewelry in 2004 and 2005. It was also reported that they had no access to lawyers. The south has been marginalized and suffered discrimination by the powerful central Saudi region where the capital, Riyadh, and holy shrines of Mecca and Medina are located. It was reported on March 13 that the execution went ahead despite appeals from human rights charities. There was also an international outcry, including from human rights groups, after a Sri Lankan maid, Rizana Nafeek, was beheaded in public by sword.
Miss Nafeek was sentenced to death aged 17 in 2007 after her Saudi employer accused her of strangling his four-month-old baby two years earlier after a dispute with the child’s mother. A government spokesman said Riyadh: ‘deplores the statements made… about the execution of a Sri Lankan maid who had plotted and killed an infant by suffocating him to death one week after she arrived in the kingdom.’ The case soured the kingdom’s diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka, which recalled its ambassador to Saudi Arabia in protest. The UN’s main human rights body expressed ‘deep dismay’ at the beheading, while the European Union said it had asked Saudi authorities to commute the death penalty. Riyadh, however, rejected the statements as ‘external interference’ in its domestic affairs. The spokesman said: Saudi Arabia ‘respects… all rules and laws and protects the rights of its people and residents, and completely rejects any intervention in its affairs and judicial verdicts, whatever the excuse.’
And yet another case of Saudi brutality is documented below. These are the friends we keep.
“I did not kill. There is no God but God. I did not kill…Haram. Haram. Haram. Haram. I did not kill. I do not forgive you. This is injustice…” Final words of Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim seconds before being beheaded in the public streets of Mecca.
One of Islamic fanaticism’s latest acts of barbarism, is the beheading of a Burmese woman, Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a resident of Saudi Arabia, who was convicted of the sexual abuse (rape) and murder of her seven-year-old stepdaughter (beaten to death with a rod). The stepdaughter according to some reports was raped with a broomstick.
Basim proclaiming here innocence until the end was dragged through the public streets of Mecca by four police officers, forced down and beheaded. The incident occurred a week ago while the world was focused on the caliphate that has expanded into Europe (not that it would have made a difference).
Raymond Ibrahim: While being held down the woman screamed the Islamic shehada — ‘There is no god but Allah!’ (in an effort to safeguard her life) and the word ‘haram!’ (i.e., it’s a sin to kill her, based on her claim that she is innocent), and ‘You are unforgiven!’ The rest of her constant yells consisted of ‘I did not kill!’ and ‘this is unjust!’
According to human rights activist, Mohammed al-Saeedi, the Saudis normally administer some sort of painkillers (as if that makes their methods more humane?) to numb the prisoners prior to execution but chose not to do the same in this instant. They wanted Basim to suffer.
Independent.co.uk | The Saudi Ministry of the Interior said in a statement that it believed the sentence was warranted due to the severity of the crime…The beheading is part of an alarming trend, which has seen the kingdom execute seven people in the first two weeks of this year. In 2014 the number of executions rose to 87, from 78 in 2013…
Residents of Saudi Arabia such as Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim are forced to convert to Islam. Even worse, many are often accused, convicted and killed of crimes committed by their employers.
A Muslim Issue? (But where do Western liberals get the moral authority to criticize? That’s what a criminal foreign policy does: it destroys all semblance of honesty in a moral judgment. However, as documented here, and elsewhere, some pretty ugly things do occur with horrendous frequency in many countries where Islamic culture predominates. And for a culture that is so stiflingly conservative, some sexual crimes present huge contradictions. Consider:
The rape of young children is not an unusual crime in Saudi Arabia where Muslim men are legally entitled to sodomize their own daughters, even as newborns. There is no crime in Islam for a man to rape, beat or murder his own wife or child. A man may murder his own young child should he suspect the child to not be a virgin. This sounds completely bizarre in the West. But incest is common in Islamic societies, so many young children may not actually be virgins which is revealed through medical exams.
This lenient law that permits incest, sodomy and murder changes if the accusation is made against a foreigner, a foreign worker, or an accusation against (generally) a poor person by a rich person. Then the strictest measure of Sharia law is applied.
Compounding their never-ending acts of barbarism and cruelty, the incident has sparked outrage throughout Saudi Arabia but not because of the beheading of which the Saudis could care less. They are outraged that someone videotaped the execution and then posted it online.
Now Saudi authorities have arrested someone for filming the execution, local media reports. But it was not clear what crime he has been arrested for…Many Twitter users protested the video being circulated on the internet because it could be seen by the woman’s family, but did not object to the beheading itself. Basim was one of 10 people beheaded In Saudi Arabia so far this year. Saudi Arabia executed 87 people last year, up from 78 in 2013…
There is not one Muslim or non-Muslim nation where one can’t find [conservative] Muslims within its borders committing horrific acts against women and children.
See also: U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies (New York Times, Sept. 20, 2015)
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ARTICLE BY MS ARBUTHNOT CONTINUES HERE
In a spectacular new low for even a UN whose former Secretary General, Kofi Annan, took eighteen months to admit publicly that the 2003 invasion of, bombardment and near destruction of Iraq was illegal, UN Watch points out that the UN has chosen: “a country that has beheaded more people this year than ISIS to be head of a key Human Rights panel …” (2)
In May, just prior to the appointment, the Saudi government advertised for eight extra executioners to: “ … carry out an increasing number of death sentences, which are usually beheadings, carried out in public” (3.)
Seemingly: “no special qualifications are needed.” The main function would be executing, but job description: “also involves performing amputations …”
The advert was posted on the website of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of the Civil Service.
By 15th June this year executions reached one hundred “far exceeding last year’s tally and putting (the country) on course for a new record” according to The Independent (15th June.) The paper adds that the Kingdom is set to beat its own grisly, primitive record of one hundred and ninety two executions in 1995.
The paper notes that: “ …the rise in executions can be directly linked to the new King Salman and his recently-appointed inner circle …”
Late King Abdullah and new King Salman.
In August 2014, Human Rights Watch reported nineteen executions in seventeen days – including one for “sorcery.” Adultery and apostasy can also be punished by death.
In a supreme irony, on the death of King Salman’s head chopping predecessor, Salman’s half brother King Abdullah in January (still current decapitation record holder) UK Prime Minister David Cameron ordered flags flown at half mast, including at the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, leading one MP to question: “On the day that flags at Whitehall are flying at half-mast for King Abdullah, how many public executions will there be?”Cameron apparently had not read his own Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report citing Saudi as “a country of concern.”
Reacting to a swathe of criticism, a spokesperson for Westminster Abbey responded: “For us not to fly at half-mast would be to make a noticeably aggressive comment on the death of the King of a country to which the UK is allied in the fight against Islamic terrorism.” (sic)
The Abbey’s representative appears to have been either breathtakingly ignorant or stunningly uninformed. In December 2009 in a US Embassy cable (4) the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton wrote that:
“While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) takes seriously the threat of terrorism within Saudi Arabia, it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.”
Moreover: “ … donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide … engagement is needed to … encourage the Saudi government to take more steps to stem the flow of funds from Saudi Arabia-based sources to terrorists and extremists worldwide.”
At home women are forbidden: “from obtaining a passport, marrying, traveling, accessing higher education without the approval of a male guardian.” (HRW Report, 2014.) Saudi Arabia is also of course, the only country in the world where women are forbidden to drive.
The country is currently preparing to behead twenty-one year old Ali Mohammed al-Nimr. He was arrested aged seventeen for participating in anti-government protests and possessing firearms – the latter charge has been consistently denied. Human rights groups are appalled at the sentence and the flimsy case against him, but pointing out that neither “factors are unusual in today’s Saudi Arabia.” (Rule by intimidation, terrorising the population, is common in autocratic and fascistic societies.—Editors)
Following the beheading, al-Nimr’s headless body will be allegedly mounted: “on to a crucifix for public viewing.”(5)
What was that mantra issued unceasingly from US and UK government Departments in justification for blitzkriegs, invasions and slaughters in countries who “kill their own people”?
Numerous Reports cite torture as being widespread, despite the Saudis having subscribed to the UN Convention Against Torture.
There are protests at Saudi embassies across the world highlighting the case of blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to a thousand lashes – fifty lashes a week after Friday prayers – and ten years in prison for blogging about free speech.
Since March, Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen – with no UN mandate – destroying schools, hospitals, homes, a hotel, public buildings, an Internally Displaced Persons camp, historical jewels, generating: “a trail of civilian death and destruction” which may have amounted to war crimes, according to Amnesty International. “Unlawful airstrikes” have failed to distinguish between military targets and civilian objects. “Nowhere safe for civilians”, states Amnesty (6, pdf.)
Further, the conflict … has killed close to 4,000 people, half of them civilians including hundreds of children, and displaced over one million since 25 March 2015.” There has been: “ … a flagrant disregard for civilian lives and fundamental principles of international humanitarian law (killing and injuring) hundreds of civilians not involved in the conflict, many of them children and women, in unlawful (disproportionate and indiscriminate) ground and air attacks.”
It is alleged that US-supplied cluster bombs have also been used. One hundred and seventeen States have joined the Convention to ban these lethal, indiscriminate munitions since December 2008. Saudi Arabia, of course, is not amongst them.
Saudi Arabia was also one of the countries which bombed Iraq in 2003, an action now widely accepted as illegal. It is perhaps indicative of their closeness to the US that the bombardment of Yemen is mirror-named from the Pentagon Silly Titles for Killing People lexicon: “Operation Decisive Storm.” Iraq 1991 was of course: “Operation Desert Storm”?
Saudi Arabia is also ranked 164th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. All in all the Saudis leading the Human Rights Council at the UN is straight out of another of George Orwell’s most nightmarish political fantasies.
Oh, and of course we are told that nineteen of the hijackers of the ‘plane that hit the World Trade Centre were Saudis – for which swathes of Afghanistan and region, Middle East and North Africa are still paying the bloodiest, genocidal price for the “War on Terror”– whilst Saudi’s representatives stroll in to the sunlight of the UN Human Rights body.
On the UN Human Right’s Council’s website is stated: “The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) represents the world’s commitment to universal ideals of human dignity. We have a unique mandate from the international community to promote and protect all human rights.” Way to go, folks.
With former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Co-ordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, she was senior Iraq researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: “Paying the Price – Killing the Children of Iraq” (Carlton/ITV March 2000), which has been aired worldwide and sent shockwaves through Washington and Whitehall. Arbuthnot has been nominated for a number of Awards for her coverage of Iraq, including the (EC) Lorenzo Natali Award for Human Rights Journalism, the Millenium Prize for Women; the Courage of Conscience Award and an Amnesty International Media Award. 
Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist specialising in social and environmental issues with special knowledge of Iraq, a country which she has visited thirty times since the 1991 Gulf war. Iraq, she describes as: ‘sliding from the impossible, to the apocalyptic.’
- http://yournewswire.com/outrage-as-saudi-arabia-is-chosen-to-head-key-human-rights-panel/
- http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2015/09/20/saudi-arabia-wins-bid-to-behead-of-un-human-rights-council-panel/
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32791233/saudi-arabia-advertises-for-eight-new-executioners-as-beheadings-rise
- http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242073
- http://qz.com/506932/saudi-arabia-is-preparing-to-behead-and-crucify-a-21-year-old-activist/
- https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde31/2291/2015/en/
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5 comments
The UN under Ban Ki Moonie is a sad mockery of even its usually impotent self.
The Saudis are an odious, revolting regime—a royal mafia in the clearest sense of the term— for a variety of reasons.
First, they hypocritically and ALSO at times fanatically endorse and proselitise for Wah’bism, one of the most reactionary strands of Islam, and Islam can be pretty reactionary. Consistent with this, as just about anyone semi-well informed knows by now, they have spent considerable sums supporting the expansion of this Sunni ideological cancer around the world;
Second, they are rancid, rotten plutocrats by dint of their immense wealth. They would be just as reactionary without the religion on this account alone, it’s a class question.
Third, in return for military support, they are willing pawns of Western imperialism in the Middle East, betraying every aspiration of the Arab masses for a decent way of life and at least a modicum of modernity and popular rule. As the author astutely notes, the Saudis can be laughable in their copycat attitude toward their imperial masters, especially the perfidious US. They even copy the way the Orwellian Pentagon calls its military crimes!
I could go on, but enough said I think.
Thank you for this brilliant piece of real journalism.
This piece by Felicity Arbuthnot is superb and deserves to be on the front page of The Greanville Post until the vile cesspool of Saudi Arabia, with its malignant wellspring of Takfiri terrorism is flushed from the face of the Earth. That Saudi Arabia is a major ally of the U.S. speaks for the moral depravity of the U.S. Sarah Abdullah is absolutely correct — the only solution is destruction of the Takfiri monsters.
The level of geopolitical and historical ignorance is off the scale in the U.S. The great majority are in complete tow to the crystalline Orwellian propaganda of the mainstream media. The meme in the Doctors Dining Room is “Assad is a vicious dictator”. These are the same people who bought the Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” lies, but how that turned out is now a distant memory for them, and it does not occur to them that they are AGAIN swallowing a load of government/media lies. Deja vu all over again… These are people who could not tell you anything about what happened in Iran before the Shah. These are people who do not know about Z-Big Brzezinski’s role as the father of Al Queda or the influence that Brzezinski has in the current, Obomba administration. These are people who don’t understand the root causes of the Syrian/North African refugee crisis and thus, unwilling and unable to accept responsibility, make puerile and sociopathic comments like: “They should all just go to Iran.”
Sartre said, “Hell is other people”. But he didn’t distinguish the various circles of hell. The ninth circle of hell is being forced to eat lunch with supposedly highly educated people who, with arrogant and supercilious confidence, exhibit and propound this ignorance, intellectual laziness and factually/morally bankrupt ideation. Well fed and with nice cars in the parking lot, geographically safe and mentally/emotionally insulated from the scourge which their government has unleashed for decades, causing profound morbidity and mortality counted in the millions. No sense of responsibility or conscience about the harm caused in their name, not only by their acquiescence, but often their cheerleading. Instead, sociopathically blame the death, destruction, chaos and instability on someone else. “Assad is a vicious dictator”? No, idiots, Assad (with Russian help) is about the only one seriously fighting the ISIS Takfiris. While the U.S. pretends to fight them, but in reality supports them as a proxy for its geopolitical goal of regime change in Syria in the service of imperialism and hegemony. While U.S. allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and others join the U.S. in this project of supporting and funding Takfiri terrorists.
Sometimes the crystalline Orwellian matrix is so toxic that just about the only respite is dark humor. Luciana Bohne’s satirical piece on Saudi Arabia is still very useful in this regard:
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2015/02/03/a-salute-to-the-royal-house-of-saud-and-its-visionary-modernity/
This piece by Felicity Arbuthnot is superb and deserves to be on the front page of The Greanville Post until the vile cesspool of Saudi Arabia, with its malignant wellspring of Takfiri terrorism is flushed from the face of the Earth.
That Saudi Arabia is a major ally of the U.S. speaks for the moral depravity of the U.S. Sarah Abdullah is absolutely correct — the only solution is destruction of the Takfiri monsters.
The level of geopolitical and historical ignorance is off the scale in the U.S. The great majority are in complete tow to the crystalline Orwellian propaganda of the mainstream media.
The meme in the Doctors Dining Room (my place of employment) is “Assad is a vicious dictator”. These are the same people who bought the Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” lies, but how that turned out is now a distant memory for them, and it does not occur to them that they are AGAIN swallowing a load of government/media lies. Deja vu all over again…
These are people who could not tell you anything about what happened in Iran before the Shah. These are people who do not know about Z-Big Brzezinski’s role as the father of Al Queda or the influence that Brzezinski has in the current, Obomba administration. These are people who don’t understand the root causes of the Syrian/North African refugee crisis and thus, unwilling and unable to accept responsibility, make puerile and sociopathic comments like: “They should all just go to Iran.”
Well fed and with nice cars in the parking lot, geographically safe and mentally/emotionally insulated from the scourge which their government has unleashed for decades, causing profound morbidity and mortality counted in the millions. No sense of responsibility or conscience about the harm caused in their name, not only by their acquiescence, but often their cheerleading. Instead, sociopathically blame the death, destruction, chaos and instability on someone else. “Assad is a vicious dictator”? No, idiots, Assad (with Russian help) is about the only one seriously fighting the ISIS Takfiris. While the U.S. pretends to fight them, but in reality supports them as a proxy for its geopolitical goal of regime change in Syria in the service of imperialism and hegemony. While U.S. allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and others join the U.S. in this project of supporting and funding Takfiri terrorists.
Sometimes the crystalline Orwellian matrix is so toxic that just about the only respite is dark humor. Luciana Bohne’s satirical piece on Saudi Arabia is still very useful in this regard:
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2015/02/03/a-salute-to-the-royal-house-of-saud-and-its-visionary-modernity/
NOTE: Daniel Wirt, MD, a firm supporter of single payer and authentic democracy, serves as a senior contributing editor with The Greanville Post.
Correction to my comment above:
Syria, under Assad’s leadership, with help from Russia, Iran and Hizbullah, is the one seriously fighting ISIS and the other Takfiri terrorists.
As Sarah Abdallah points out, the Resistance Axis and Moscow are all that stand between a total US-Israeli-Takfiri takeover of the region.