Saudi Arabia has been having a difficult time on the PR front lately – and deservedly so. The harsh sentence imposed on Raid Badawi for mocking the kingdom’s infinitely mockable religious establishment has attracted an unusual amount of international attention. Then this month, and partly as a result of the Badawi case, Sweden announced it would be cancelling a military cooperation agreement with the kingdom because of human rights abuses.

Saudi Arabia retaliated by blocking a speech about human rights and democracy that Sweden’s foreign minister had been due to make at a meeting of the Arab League. It also withdrew its ambassador from Stockholm.

Not content with that, the kingdom has now stopped issuing business visas to Swedes. In what appears to be a gesture of solidarity, another of the Gulf's rights abusers, the United Arab Emirates, has also recalled its ambassador from Sweden. The Saudi-dominated Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has joined the fray too, laughably insisting that the kingdom upholds such values as justice, compassion, equality and tolerance.

It's high time that western governments listened to public opinion and started challenging Saudi Arabia robustly over its rights abuses, and the Swedish government should be congratulated for its stand. Unfortunately, though, it's getting precious little support from elsewhere and may end up being hung out to dry. Besides reprisals from the Gulf, the Swedish government is also coming under pressure from business interests to recant and other EU governments have responded by running for cover instead of speaking out.

Even so, the ferocity of the Saudi reaction suggests Sweden has touched a raw nerve. The kingdom is fighting back on multiple fronts. 

The Jeddah-based Arab News, for example, has run two whole pages entitled "Educating Sweden", with such headlines as:

• Islamic rights system honors all human beings

• Anti-Saudi policy 'hurts Sweden'

• Shariah guaranteed human rights long before Magna Carta

• Honestly, what are the Swedish ministers up to?

• Saudi Arabia right to reject interference in its affairs

• 'Behind Sweden's tirade is a hidden Western agenda to tarnish Islam'

An article headed "Swedish foreign minister forgot to look within" says:

"Before making any false accusations against Saudi Arabia's supposed violation of human rights, the Swedish [foreign] minister should have paid attention to Sweden's violations of human rights, which were revealed in the report at the Human Rights Council last week in Geneva."

Sweden's transgressions in this regard, though not to be minimised, are of course on nothing like the scale of those committed by Saudi Arabia.

A coarser version of this whataboutery can be found on Twitter, where Sweden is variously described as the "rape capital" of the world, or Europe or the west. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, appears comparatively rape-free since any woman who dares to report a rape to the police is liable to be arrested and charged with adultery.

The kingdom's official stance has been to flatly deny rights abuses. A statement from the foreign ministry earlier this month (Arabic here, English translation here) hailed the "independence and integrity" of the notoriously rotten judicial system and claimed that because the constitution is based on Islamic law, the "blood, money, honour and dignity" of human beings is guaranteed.

It went on to make the startling claim that "Saudi Arabia was one of the first countries that supported human rights".

For the record, Saudi Arabia abstained (along with seven other countries) during the UN General Assembly's vote on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It objected to Article 16 which states that men and women "are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution" and Article 18 which states that everyone has the freedom to change their religion or belief. Neither of these articles prevented other Muslim countries that were UN members at the time – Syria, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan – from voting in favour of the declaration.

The ministry's statement added a further – highly misleading – claim that Saudi Arabia has "respected all international conventions in accordance with the Islamic Sharia".

The reality is that while Saudi Arabia has indeed signed up to several international human rights conventions it consistently cites "Islamic Sharia" as a pretext for ignoring many of their provisions.

    
Posted by Brian Whitaker
Thursday, 19 March, 2015