UK foreign secretary visits Berlin after raising concerns about impact of moratorium
Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign secretary, will visit Berlin on Wednesday after urging Germany to exempt big defence projects from its efforts to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia, or face damage to both its economic and European credentials.
Related: UK's arms export supervisor attacks NGOs over Yemen deaths
Continue reading...Top Trump officials pushed plan to share technology despite objections, according to House oversight committee report
Top White House officials pushed a plan to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia, despite objections from career national security staff, according to a new congressional report.
Related: A public holiday and gold-plated gun: Saudi crown prince feted on Asia tour
Continue reading...While Absher is awful, having it removed will further restrict women. Let’s not let politicians off the hook for their complicity in how Saudi women are treated
Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.
Continue reading...Report finds UK arms ‘highly likely to be cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen’
The UK is on “the wrong side of the law” by sanctioning arms exports to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen and should suspend some of the export licences, an all-party Lords committee has said.
The report by the international relations select committee says ministers are not making independent checks to see if arms supplied by the UK are being used in breach of the law, but is instead relying on inadequate investigations by the Saudis, its allies in the war.
Continue reading...In rebuke of Trump’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, resolution would force administration to withdraw US troops
Asserting congressional authority over war-making powers, the US House of Representatives approved a resolution Wednesday that would force the Trump administration to withdraw US troops from involvement in Yemen, in a rebuke of Donald Trump’s alliance with the Saudi-led coalition behind the military intervention.
Lawmakers in both parties are increasingly uneasy over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and are skeptical of the US partnership with that coalition, especially in light of Saudi Arabia’s role in the killing of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the royal family.
Continue reading...US media quotes intelligence sources who intercepted a conversation between Mohammed bin Salman and an aide in 2017
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince told a senior aide he would go after Jamal Khashoggi “with a bullet” a year before the dissident journalist was killed inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate, according to a US media report.
US intelligence understood that Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s 33-year-old de facto ruler, was ready to kill the journalist, although he may not have literally meant he planned to shoot him, according to the New York Times ($).
Continue reading...Pope Francis’s visit to the United Arab Emirates this week will be greeted enthusiastically. Some 120,000 people are expected to turn out for his mass in a sports stadium in Abu Dhabi – as many as turned out in Dublin when he travelled to historically Catholic Ireland last year. The first visit by a pontiff to the Arabian peninsula, the birthplace of Islam, highlights the complications of the religious situation in the Middle East, and more widely the issues of Christian-Muslim relations.
There may be as many as 2 million Christians in the Middle East today. Despite nearly 16 years of war and sometimes brutal persecution in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, many remain in the lands that were the cradle of Christianity. In part this is because it is still made as hard as possible for them to leave the region. The Christians of Iraq have largely been driven from their homes by persecution, as have some of the Christians of Syria, where a number have taken the side of the Assad dictatorship. But they have ended up in refugee camps rather than reaching notionally Christian Europe.
Continue reading...Vessel moored near Hodeidah hosts meetings with Yemen government delegates and Houthi rebels
Yemen peace talks have been held onboard a UN-chartered boat anchored in the Red Sea in an attempt to find a neutral venue acceptable to both sides.
Patrick Cammaert, a retired Dutch general and head of the UN mission in Yemen, chaired the meeting on the ship moored off the port city of Hodeidah. Houthi rebel military officials had refused to meet in government-held areas in southern Hodeidah, citing security fears.
Continue reading...Plans for prisoner exchanges have also not gone to plan, says Martin Griffiths
Deadlines for a retreat of Houthi troops in Yemen, agreed in talks last month, have had to be delayed, the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has said. He also conceded plans for prisoner exchanges have not gone to plan.
Griffiths also had to deny that the retired general Patrick Cammaert, appointed by the UN to implement the ceasefire in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, had quit due to disagreements with Griffiths’s team.
Continue reading...Investigation comes as Saudi efforts to normalise relations with west move on to Davos
A UN expert on executions is to travel to Turkey next week to lead an “independent international inquiry” into the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian journalist killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
Agnes Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said she would evaluate the circumstances of the crime and “the nature and the extent of states’ and individuals’ responsibilities for the killing”. She will report on the findings from her five-day visit to the UN human rights council in June.
Continue reading...Bodies of Rotana Farea and Tala Farea were found taped together, lying on rocks along the river last October
The tragic and mysterious death of two Saudi Arabian sisters whose bodies were found, taped together, along New York City’s waterfront last October appears to have been a double suicide.
Rotana and Tala Farea both drowned and the cause of death was suicide, New York medical examiner Barbara Sampson said in a brief report on Tuesday evening.
Continue reading...For all its rhetoric, the US under Donald Trump is on a clear path of disengagement in international matters
America’s ambivalence about engagement with the world beyond its shores is nothing new. Isolationist instincts are deeply rooted in the national psyche. Large constituencies opposed US involvement in both world wars. Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign was the most recent manifestation of a longstanding desire to avoid the “foreign entanglements” that the first US president, George Washington, warned against in his 1796 farewell address.
Yet, as US power expanded, this yearning for separateness grew increasingly at odds with another national urge – to demonstrate America’s pre-eminence, and propagate its values and interests, through global leadership. This process climaxed in the early 1990s when America’s main rival, the Soviet Union, imploded and the US claimed the mantle of sole superpower.
Continue reading...Immigration chief says country ‘will now follow international norms’ yet is still considering extraditing refugee Hakeem al-Araibi
Thailand’s immigration chief has pledged a reversal of the country’s notoriously harsh treatment of refugees following the global furore around a young Saudi woman’s attempt to seek asylum.
Speaking on Wednesday, the newly appointed head of immigration, Surachate Hakparn, said refugees would no longer be returned home “involuntarily”.
Continue reading...Rahaf Mohammed said she will work in support of ‘the same freedom’ she experienced after arriving in Canada
Rahaf Mohammed, the Saudi teen who shot into the headlines after barricading herself into a Thai hotel room, has pledged to fight for women fleeing persecution after she successfully escaped abuse and the fear of death in her home country.
“Today and for years to come, I will work in support of freedom for women around the world – the same freedom I experienced on the first day I arrived in Canada,” she told reporters at a press conference in Toronto.
Continue reading...Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, the young woman who hit global headlines after barricading herself in a Thai hotel room to flee abuse, has said she hopes to be an 'agent for change' in Saudi Arabia, a country where women are denied basic freedoms and are not allowed to work, marry and travel without the permission of a male guardian
Continue reading...Saudi woman begins new life in Canada after her family disowns her
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, the Saudi woman who captured the world’s attention by barricading herself in a Thai hotel room after fleeing abuse in her own country, has said she hopes to inspire other Saudi women to be “brave and free”.
Speaking in her first interview after being given asylum in Canada, and landing in Toronto on Saturday, Qunun, told the ABC Australia her case might be the “agent for change” in Saudi Arabia, a country where women are denied basic freedoms and are not allowed to work, marry and travel without the permission of a male guardian.
Continue reading...Saudi teen was granted asylum by Canada after flying to Thailand to escape her family
The Saudi woman who barricaded herself in a Thai hotel room in a desperate attempt to flee abuse landed in Canada on Saturday, capping a tumultuous and uncertain journey towards safety.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun arrived in Toronto, the country’s largest city. As she entered the airport’s arrivals area, she was accompanied by Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, who has been a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s jailing of female dissidents.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch says government should have acted with more urgency to help Rahaf al-Qunun
Human Rights Watch Australia has criticised the government’s handling of a Saudi teenager’s bid for asylum, after the 18-year-old was granted safe haven in Canada.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun fled from Kuwait to Thailand, saying she had been abused by her family and feared for her life if deported back home.
Continue reading...Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, 18, fled to Thailand last week accusing her family of abuse
An 18-year-old Saudi woman who said she was abused by her family and feared for her life if deported back home has left Thailand for Canada, which has granted her asylum, officials said.
The fast-moving developments capped an eventful week for Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun. She fled her family while visiting Kuwait and flew to Bangkok, where she barricaded herself in an airport hotel to avoid deportation and grabbed global attention by mounting a social media campaign for asylum.
Continue reading...Bill Shorten urges Scott Morrison to accept Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun now that the UN has validated her refugee claim
Labor has said the Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun should be resettled in Australia now that her refugee claim had been validated.
The party’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, told ABC radio on Thursday Bill Shorten had written to Scott Morrison urging him to accept Qunun.
Continue reading...