How should the British government respond to the grotesque punishment of Raif Badawi? As I write, the blogger and democracy activist sits in a cell, waiting for the wounds to heal from a first 50 lashes so that he is well enough to receive his next 50. Unless the Saudi supreme court intervenes, this obscene ritual will be repeated month after month until he has received 1,000 lashes for the “crime” of setting up a website to champion free speech.
While human rights groups try to marshal the world’s outrage into a decisive campaign, the British government remains all but silent. When challenged directly on the issue at PMQs last week, David Cameron hedged and fudged his way through some trite generalisations. When asked about it on the Today programme, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg claimed not to have heard of the case at all. Foreign secretary Philip Hammond, as far as I can establish, has yet to say a word. “Why do ministers keep wearing the Saudi muzzle?” asked Amnesty International’s Kate Allen, very reasonably. The cosy relationship between the British state and the theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia is neither new, nor news. Last year British arms dealers sold around £17m-worth of kit to the regime, including machine guns, grenades and military training equipment. Sales of arms from the UK to the Gulf are said to have increased considerably since the flowering of democracy protests in 2011. Many of us have become inured to shock at the revolving door between politicians, the civil service, high-ranking military personnel and the arms trade.
We barely raise an eyebrow at learning that when the authorities in Hong Kong stamped down on pro-democracy protests last autumn, the teargas they used was marked Made In Britain. Nonetheless, even hardened observers have been shocked by the latest revelations involving the governments of Britain and Saudi Arabia.
Last year, the Ministry of Justice, under Chris Grayling, established a trading body to sell the expertise and intellectual assets of the National Offender Management Service (Noms) to overseas clients. One of its first initiatives was to bid for a £5.9m contract that would help improve the efficiency of the Saudi prison service. In September, Grayling visited the kingdom in person to sign a memorandum of understanding to enshrine cooperation between the two countries in the operation of their judicial systems.
Saudi Arabia is not the only potential beneficiary of Grayling’s entrepreneurial spirit. Just Solutions International is also negotiating a contract with Oman. This absolute monarchy was another country that experienced protests for democratic reform during the so-called Arab spring. The regime responded by imprisoning dozens of alleged organisers. The Gulf Centre for Human Rights has said of Oman: “Torture has become the state’s knee-jerk response to political expression.”
A couple of weeks after Grayling visited Saudi, his junior minister Lord Faulks made similar visits to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, again promoting a business relationship over justice. It would appear that our government has identified a lucrative line in selling our skills at locking people up to any country that might be more flush in fossil fuels than human rights.
To be absolutely clear, this is not a case of the government reluctantly swallowing its principles to protect the interests of British companies and the jobs of British workers. Just Solutions International is wholly owned by the government and fully part of Noms, meaning any profits reaped are effectively going straight into the coffers of the exchequer. In pursuing these contracts, Grayling is making every one of us complicit in the administration of some of the world’s most brutal and oppressive judicial regimes. As British people conduct candlelit vigils for prisoners of conscience, as we proudly proclaim a reinvigorated belief in freedom of speech in the face of terrorism and oppression, our own government is betraying every one of us in a shoddy chase for a few filthy quid from the executioners, the torturers and the oppressors.
Last week, Saudi Arabia publicly beheaded a woman from Burma who had been convicted of murdering a child. It took three blows of the sword to kill her, and throughout the ordeal she continued to scream protests of her innocence to the watching crowd. It was the 10th such execution since 1 January. Last year, according to a tally by the news agency AFP, Saudi Arabia carried out 87 executions, up from 78 the year before.
While in Kyrgyzstan last year, Lord Faulks gave a speech proclaiming this country’s proud dedication to human rights. “These are our guide when we consider judicial cooperation with international partners,” he said. “We are bound by our laws to assess the quality of their justice systems and their willingness and ability to safeguard human rights.”
If his words are to stand as anything more than a sick joke, the government must immediately withdraw these ignominious pitches and allow this country to retain at least some shred of its once proud reputation.
