[Serious] G-20 leaders, don’t forget the women’s rights advocates rotting in Saudi prisons

[WinterHold]

G-20 leaders, don’t forget the women’s rights advocates rotting in Saudi prisons

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html

[...]
Hathloul, 31, is the best known of the at least 28 women’s rights advocates who have been jailed in Saudi Arabia since 2018. A number of them have been viciously tortured; none has been convicted of an offense. MBS’s bet is that his crimes against them, and their continuing suffering, will be ignored for the sake of an elite but all-but-meaningless confab; the G-20, formed at the time of the 2008 financial crisis, has accomplished nothing of import in the past decade.
That can’t be said of Hathloul, who while still in her early 20s became a leader of protests by Saudi women seeking the right to drive and an end to the system of male guardianship. Mohammed bin Salman, seeking global prestige and foreign investment, elected to lift the driving ban in June 2018 — but not before crushing those who had demanded the reform.

Hathloul, living in exile in the United Arab Emirates, was abducted from there in March 2018 and forcibly transported to the kingdom. She was briefly released, but on May 15, 2018, she and a number of other women were seized and taken to secret detention facilities, where they were held incommunicado for months and, according to their later accounts, badly tortured.
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Hathloul is still in prison in part because she bravely told her family and the official Saudi Human Rights Commission what happened: She was stripped, sexually abused, beaten, given electric shocks and waterboarded. Her torture was overseen by Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide to MBS, who threatened to personally rape and kill her.

In all, 14 women’s rights activists were arrested in 2018, and 14 more the following year, according to Alqst, a Saudi human rights group. But their cases were overshadowed by another MBS-ordered operation overseen by Qahtani: the murder and dismemberment of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

[...]

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I agree that it's a horrible, intolerable abrogation of human rights. But, as the article said, I wouldn't get too warm expecting the G20 to do anything about it.

I'm a little puzzled, however, why you're calling for help from a group whose make up is 80% Western. You despise the West and everything it stands for, but you seem to want their help whenever things get a little sticky.  Isn't that kind of hypocritical?

Boru

[The Valkyrie]

I wouldn't put too much stock in these groups. They are among those who gave the Saudis a place on the Human Rights Council at the UN.

[WinterHold]

I agree that it's a horrible, intolerable abrogation of human rights. But, as the article said, I wouldn't get too warm expecting the G20 to do anything about it.

I'm a little puzzled, however, why you're calling for help from a group whose make up is 80% Western. You despise the West and everything it stands for, but you seem to want their help whenever things get a little sticky.  Isn't that kind of hypocritical?

Boru

The western politics are hypocritical, but right now it began to evolve under the leadership of a new wing which has Trump as its most dominant name along with non-western allies like Putin, Kim, MBS and MBZ.

A portion of the west mutated, they hijacked America under Trump and trying to hijack other places in the world. It's a mutation that is not racial at all; but rather multicultural.

The old fashioned "west" is hypocritical, but the new wing under Trump is more hypocritical and will devour the old fashioned west.

---

I wouldn't put too much stock in these groups.  They are among those who gave the Saudis a place on the Human Rights Council at the UN.

As long as the old fashioned west stays hypocritical, it will be chopped by the new "alliance" under Trump.
It is very obvious now that SA got its seat in the HRC by paying a huge bribe
I don't put much stock in them either, but spreading awareness is one mighty weapon.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I agree that it's a horrible, intolerable abrogation of human rights. But, as the article said, I wouldn't get too warm expecting the G20 to do anything about it.

I'm a little puzzled, however, why you're calling for help from a group whose make up is 80% Western. You despise the West and everything it stands for, but you seem to want their help whenever things get a little sticky.  Isn't that kind of hypocritical?

Boru

The western politics are hypocritical, but right now it began to evolve under the leadership of a new wing which has Trump as its most dominant name along with non-western allies like Putin, Kim, MBS and MBZ.

A portion of the west mutated, they hijacked America under Trump and trying to hijack other places in the world. It's a mutation that is not racial at all; but rather multicultural.

The old fashioned "west" is hypocritical, but the new wing under Trump is more hypocritical and will devour the old fashioned west.

---

I don’t disagree that the West can be hypocritical, but you haven’t answered my question. I’ll try again. 

Isn’t it hypocritical of YOU, who have long made clear your dislike of Western dealings in the Middle East, to expect a group made up of mostly Western nations to interfere in an internal matter in Saudi Arabia? The West didn’t put these women in prison, didn’t torture them, didn’t take away their basic rights. Isn’t it up Saudi Arabia to right this wrong?

Boru

[Divinity]

They'll forget. They like oil, and selling weapons more than they do people. This isn't something exclusive to the West. It's the whole goddamn world.

[Anomalocaris]

I am not sure it is right to say G-20 is 80% western considering 66% of total population and 47% of the total GDP on purchasing power parity basis Of G-20 Is accounted for by China, Japan, India and Indonesia.

G-7 is primarily western, G-20, not so much.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I am not sure it is right to say G-20 is 80% western considering 66% of total population and 47% of the total GDP on purchasing power parity basis Of G-20 Is accounted for by China, Japan, India and Indonesia.

G-7 is primarily western, G-20, not so much.

Fair point. I was counting the EU as 27 countries with G20 representation, which was a mistake. Well, they all DO have representation, but count as a single member.

I accept the correction.

Boru

[WinterHold]

The western politics are hypocritical, but right now it began to evolve under the leadership of a new wing which has Trump as its most dominant name along with non-western allies like Putin, Kim, MBS and MBZ.

A portion of the west mutated, they hijacked America under Trump and trying to hijack other places in the world. It's a mutation that is not racial at all; but rather multicultural.

The old fashioned "west" is hypocritical, but the new wing under Trump is more hypocritical and will devour the old fashioned west.

---

I don’t disagree that the West can be hypocritical, but you haven’t answered my question. I’ll try again. 

Isn’t it hypocritical of YOU, who have long made clear your dislike of Western dealings in the Middle East, to expect a group made up of mostly Western nations to interfere in an internal matter in Saudi Arabia? The West didn’t put these women in prison, didn’t torture them, didn’t take away their basic rights. Isn’t it up Saudi Arabia to right this wrong?

Boru

You can read the red line and the underline in my past comment to you.
The west gave birth to a beast. And beasts from allover the world got under its wing. Bibi, Putin, Kim, Trump, MBS, MBZ...did you see the new wing yet ?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So, you DON'T think the Saudis should deal with a Saudi issue?

Boru