Dilip Simeon's blog

Samar Badawi, a prominent Saudi human rights advocate – and the sister of  jailed blogger Raif Badawi  – has been arrested and is being held in the same prison as her brother, according to activists and family members.  In a series of tweets Raif Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, said Samar had been arrested and transferred to Dharhan central prison after four hours of questioning.  Samar Badawi received the 2012 International Women of  Courage award for her efforts to promote women’s equality  in Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Tw itter Indian Citizens Appeal for the Release of Raif Badawi... According to Haidar, Amnesty International and the  Raif Badawi Foundation  – a Canadian advocacy group – Samar is believed to have been arrested Tuesday for posting to a Twitter account used to campaign for the release of her former husband, Waleed Abu al-Khair, and for publishing of photo of him in jail.  Abu al-Khair is a Saudi human rights law...

It will be a travesty of justice to not even allow the police to question the Saudi diplomat accused of raping two Nepali women at his Gurgaon residence and for his embassy to invoke diplomatic immunity to shield him from the withering gaze of law. Arguably the most notorious of the Gulf countries for exploiting unskilled workers, Saudi Arabia is veritably the land of nightmare for migrant domestic maids. They are compelled to work for back-breaking hours, denied or paid less than their promised wages, beaten and sexually exploited. Culture of impunity:  Should Delhi fail to convince Riyadh on the need to have its diplomat even cooperate with the police, it would imply India accepting the culture of impunity that surrounds the exploitation of female domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. Evidence of this culture of impunity can be gathered from reports of the media and human rights groups. In a March 2015 report, the London-based  Guardian  quoted Rothna Begum, a West A...

NB : Those who thought a Trump administration would be an answer to Islamic terrorism should think again. The American economy and polity are now inextricably linked to perpetual war; and arms sales are a crucial mode of maintenance of US world hegemony. In September 2015, the Pope commented on this commerce in blood in a speech to American lawmakers. The latest arms deal is part of a long-standing commitment to the poisonous Kingdom of Saud. The U.S. is the largest arms supplier in the world, with domestic manufacturers selling more than  $23.7 billion in weapons  in 2014 to  nearly 100 different countries . Under Obama weapons sales   surged to record levels , in large part due to huge shipments to Gulf States & Saudi Arabia. The sales to Saudi Arabia include  cluster bombs  and other munitions being used to hit  densely populated areas , schools and even a camp for displaced people in Yemen. And a healthy chunk of those arms sa...

Only six of our British military chaps, it seems, are helping the Sunni Saudis kill Shia Yemenis. And they’re not actually in Yemen, merely helping to choose the targets – which have so far included hospitals, markets, a wedding party and a site opposite the Iranian embassy. Not that our boys and girls selected those particular “terrorist” nests for destruction, you understand. They’re just helping their Saudi mates – in the words of our Ministry of Defence – “comply to the rules of war”. Saudi “rules”, of course, are not necessarily the same as “our” rules – although our drone-executions of UK citizens leave a lot of elbow-room for our British warriors in Riyadh. But I couldn’t help chuckling when I read the condemnation of David Mephan, the Human Rights Watch director. Yes, he told us that the Saudis “are committing multiple violations of the laws of war in Yemen”, and that the British “are working hand in glove with the Saudis, helping them, enhancing their capacity to prosecut...

Bitter rivals for predominance in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Iran are waging proxy wars against each other in Syria and Yemen, but have so far avoided direct conflict. Yet they have been playing with fire for years, so it is no surprise that their latest clash has quite literally sparked a conflagration in one of their capitals. It remains unlikely that there will be any head-on military confrontation between the two.  Yet Saudi Arabia’s  execution at the weekend of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr , a leading Shia cleric, and the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran which was the response to it, must worsen what is already a toxic relationship. It could also weaken pragmatists and inflame internal differences in both countries at a time when efforts to bring about settlements in Syria and Yemen need all the help they can get. The parallels between the Saudi kingdom and the Islamic republic are in some ways very close. Both are influenced by a sense of Islamic mission, a...

The Swedish government this week decided to scrap an arms deal with Saudi Arabia, effectively bringing to an end a decade-old defence agreement with the kingdom. The move followed complaints made by the Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom that she was blocked by the Saudis from speaking about democracy and women's rights at a gathering of the Arab League in Cairo. Tensions between Stockholm and Riyadh have grown so acute that Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Sweden on Wednesday. The Swedish foreign ministry had published Wallstrom's planned remarks in Cairo, which made no specific reference to Saudi Arabia but did urge reform on issues of women's rights. Nevertheless, the Saudi foreign ministry deemed the statement "offensive" and "blatant interference in its internal affairs," according to the BBC. Saudi Arabia bought some $39 million in Swedish military equipment last year alone. The kingdom recently became the world's biggest...

NB: Abdullah al-Zaher, was arrested when he was and faces beheading and crucifixion for participating in protest rally. With their beheadings and lashings, the norms of justice in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are a blot upon the very concept of justice. Hopefully there will be a global campaign to shame this monarchy and to free this child from the clutches of a cruel system: DS The family of a teenage protester who faces beheading in  Saudi Arabia  has come forward in public for the first time to plead for his life.  The father of Abdullah al-Zaher, 19, called on the world to help before it is too late and his son is executed in the kingdom along with  a reported 51 others .  “Please help me save my son from the imminent threat of death. He doesn’t deserve to die just because he participated in a protest rally,” Hassan al-Zaher told the Guardian. UK accused of dropping commitment to oppose death penalty Arrested in March 2012, just shy of his 16th ...