Detained Saudi blogger released

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.

The Last King of Africa - Part 2

I’ve been watching developments in Zimbabwe with a mixture of hope and resignation: hoping that Mugabe would step aside and retire somewhere cosy and resigned that he would never be able to relinquish power.

It was nearly a year ago that I wrote this post on him. Coincidentally I saw the Last King of Scotland again recently and was struck by something very clear: all these dictators want one thing and that is love. Yes I’m serious they want to be loved, to be accepted and they will do anything to get it. However, they end up not getting it and lash out destroying anything in their path and so the descent in sociopathy begins.

Mugabe has tried so hard to make the Motherland love him, no not Zimbabwe but Great Britain. But that love never came and so he reacted with violence against his own people, with suitable groups identified as the enemy. We’ve seen it all before.

Like Amin, he’d love to go out on top….loved not loathed but his end was written many moons ago. Like all the others before him he will die miserably in some place of exile surrounded by a few loyal servants who have long resigned themselves to his fate.

Amin went to Saudi Arabia but it’s hard to know where Mugabe will end up. Maybe with his mate Mbeki in South Africa? I think not.

I like the quote from Reed Brody at Human Rights Watch, “If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,00, you get political asylum.”

As they say in New Zealand, sweet as.

What will the U.N. do? What will South Africa do? The time has come to act before the killing really gets into gear.

Pervez may be saved but Islamic Law still treats women like chattels

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.

Loving the hate out of child killers

I wanted to share this story about the rehabiltion of child soldiers in Africa. It’s nothing short of a human tragedy and deserves our attention. About 10 years ago I did a course on the International Dimensions of Human Rights. One fact that really troubled me was the sheer numbers of children who had been co-opted by force into becoming soldiers and ultimately killers. The use of drugs and torture was commonplace and the results horrific.

Yet out of this comes a story of healing which has lessons for all of us especially those in developed countries where teenage crime is on the rise. I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions.

Remember remember the 5th of November

I finally got round to watching the film “V for Vendetta“. Shades of 1984 and more recently Children of Men. It’s quite topical given the current issue of domestic terrorism and how to deal with it.

In New Zealand we are still experiencing protests against the mass raid on people suspected of unlawful activities under the Supression of Terrorism Act. What constitutes terrorism on a domestic scale? And more to the point how far can the authorities go in their protective capacities?

This is not an easy question to answer. Intelligence services are meant to forewarn and forestall any action against the State. This will always lead to a presumption of guilt even though an act may not have been carried out. This leaves a bit of a vacuum in the traditional legal process of innocent until proven guilty.

The authorities are stuck in a tight spot here. Blamed for not preventing an attack and blamed for arresting innocent people.

For activists of a more moderate nature this presents potential pitfalls. How far can you go? Certainly for activists with a bent for civil non-violent disobedience this can put them squarely in the firing line.

It seems to me that New Zealand is better than most. At least the media, with their general liberal bias, have no problem in reporting openly what takes place. In the US this may not be so easy. There is considerable concern over the loss of civil liberties and privacy for even the average citizen.

There’s no easy answer. That’s why governance and participation in the democratic process is so important. As long as there are clear sanctions against governments and those in power, through the ballot box, and freedom to air grievances then there is a balance.

However, when fear takes over then there is a big problem. If this is really happening in the US then one can only hope for some change and for the issue to be aired openly in the electoral debate.

Fear and freedom have a lot in common. You cannot be free if you live in fear.  Whilst I think we are still fortunate in NZ in our openness we still need to keep an watchful eye.

Meanwhile be careful out there on the 5th November

Freedom to be

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.