Saudi Arabia’s executioners got their new year off to a
flying start by killing 47 people, including the prominent Shia cleric and
critic of the royal family, Sheikh al-Nimr. Not a personal best for the
official loppers and shooters, they’d despatched 63 in one day in 1980, but a brutal
demonstration that Saudi rulers treat dissent and terrorism as the same capital
offence.
Such an obscenity should be a gift to those campaigning
to end state-sponsored murder, mass or otherwise. But will it work out that way?
The strongest reaction came from the Shia homeland, Iran, engaged in a struggle
with the Saudis for regional supremacy and whose record of dubious legal processes
and appalling execution rates is even worse. Amnesty International calculates
that in the first six months of 2015 Iran executed almost 700 people. This compared
to 150+ in Saudi Arabia for the whole year.
The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was ‘deeply
dismayed’ by the executions. But perhaps with an eye to oil, arms sales, and
Saudi Arabia’s vital role in ‘containing’ Iran, governments who preach hard and
long when their own citizens are involved gave the Saudis little pause for thought.
The UK said it regularly raised human rights issues with other countries ‘including
Saudi Arabia.’ The US state department stated the obvious in that Nimr’s execution
risked ‘exacerbating sectarian tensions’. Meanwhile in Australia, Julie Bishop
was ‘deeply disturbed’ and Opposition defence spokesman, Stephen Conroy said ‘it
was a worry’.
What a pity they couldn’t take a lead from The New York Times editorial headed ‘Saudi
Arabia’s Barbaric Executions’.
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