General Article Cancelled UK deal won’t change Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record

Topic Selected: Human Rights
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Cancelled UK deal won't change Saudi Arabia's appalling human rights record

Rosa Freedman, University of Birmingham

Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system – if you can call it that – has suddenly started to attract increased international scrutiny. Reports of the crucifixion sentence for a teenage protester and the planned lashing of Karl Andree, a British grandfather caught with a few bottles of homemade wine, have been deeply unflattering for a state that likes to keep its domestic human rights record off the agenda.

Saudi Arabia is, for once, being excoriated in headlines around the world. And despite protestations to the contrary, it seems likely that those headlines might have had some impact on the UK government’s withdrawal from a prison consultancy bid worth almost £6m.

Cancelling that deal is all very well, but it shouldn’t take a death sentence for a British national for the UK to act. Saudi Arabia, as is well known, is a gross and systematic abuser of human rights. As wit...

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