News comes of Fouad al-Farhan and his release after 137 days in jail. He was detained for being critical of the Kingdom and its repressive approach to government. Following on from my previous post on human rights in Saudi Arabia, this is no surprise.

The Kingdom is very sensitive to any mention of reform or greater freedom of expression. It has huge strategic importance in the Gulf area and has always been a major bulwark for the West against Iraq and Iran. At the same time its treatment of its own citizens has left a lot to be desired. In some ways its an example of the ultimate trade off between human rights and strategic concerns.

But the key issue here is one of freedom of speech. Many organizations have worked long and hard around the world to support people like Fouad who are imprisoned on no charge and on spurious grounds at best.

Amnesty is one and needs no introduction but Index on Censorship is another organization doing great work in preventing and informing us on cases of repression and curtailment of speech.

It’s a cause all bloggers should support.

Following a huge campaign the death sentence on Pervez Kambaksh was lifted and we finally heard from him about his experience at the hands of the Afghani justice system.

Stories about the Taliban’s treatment of women and those who try to help them are legendary in their barbarism.

Now we hear about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. It’s one thing to treat women with violence (we have plenty enough of that terrible behaviour in the non-Islamic world) but the dis-empowerment via lack of rights and education is really unacceptable at the most basic level. It means there really is no escape from a life of slavery.

This extremist form of Islam does a dis-service to mainstream Islam and shows how vast and wide that congregation is in terms of beliefs and practices.

You wont hear anyone in power being critical of Saudi Arabia because their strategic position is so important and of course they buy a lot of weapons and sell a lot of oil. The hypocrisy of human rights and trade is summarised nicely here.

This year it’s the 60th Anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights. The UN better start pulling its finger out before it gets done under the trades description act.

We’ve just finished Freedom Week here in New Zealand, a campaign run by Amnesty International to raise money and awareness. Also MyAmnesty has been launched. Get online and participate.

Some 130 collectors braved the southerly on Friday to collect in Christchurch (yes i was one of them) so well done to all those and to those who donated and stopped for a chat.

Without basic freedom we have nothing. Freedom to be, to think, to speak, write, draw or blog!

Whatever your political persuasion it is hard to to look away from the constant abuses of personal security whether for reasons of censorship or war. It’s all the same.

We can’t have a functioning economy without personal security. We can’t have functioning communities without personal security and we most certainly cannot have a decent environment without personal security.

We wouldn’t be sitting here in the blogosphere expounding our thoughts and views on whatever we fancied.

We should be grateful for the life we have here in New Zealand. It’s pretty good.