Posts
THE ABSURD TIMES
Illustration: Frankly, I'm not sure this means anything, but I'm sure the Bush administration did not weep.Some Thoughts on CensorshipThen More on Iraq By Honest Charlie This announcement below is from an alternate site that I used to use a great deal but which is now a backup. I tried to find out which post it was that was so offensive, but had no luck. I can not remember ever using vulgar language or making sexual allusions, so it can't be that. Once Facebook took down one post I made when Sarkozy (now off to prison, I think) and Hillary especially, were excited to see Gaddafy butchered. I simply posted a factual and brief biography. Perhaps calling it Gaddafy the Cool is what caused the problem. At any rate, the next day I riposted it and it remained. That was it and nobody even seemed to notice it. Notices (1) This post was put behind a warning for readers because it contains sensitive content as outlined in Blogger's Community Guidelines All (2,110) MANAGE So, anyway, you have been warned and have to state you are 18 or above to read it. I have no idea, however, what it's title is. Very puzzling, to say the least, as are all the examples herein. The statement below may lead to repercussions for the writer as she does not use ZIONIST to distinguish and thus isolate the religious from the political. But, we shall see. I shall warn her. Your new Far right Israeli friends @RishiSunak @JamesCleverly If you sup with the devil you need a long spoon. Jewish radicals attack Jerusalem's Church of Gethsemane during Sunday's worship Well, I warned her and she said she quoted someone who was Jewish and wrote about Israel. (In fact, he writes about the entire Mid-East and is almost always right). Thus my good deed for the Month. This is my temporary, soon to become, no doubt, permanent banishment from one of the Social Media discussion sub-sites. I quite frankly can not figure out what I said that was so "unkind" (is their word for it) to this group of technophiles. The offending comment, I imagine, I made was to one entry in a massive debate or discussion. The string of comments in that string were so numerous that a switch (binary type, not equestrian) was employed to prevent any more than one comment from any single person until five minutes had passed. I imagine the problem had something to do with employing some sort of psychological or political verity in the discussion, but I have no real idea. The only specific response I got from anyone there was that I asked about the print spool some time ago, and that was not the issue. I do remember once a while ago mentioning a parody of a Senator from, I believe Kentucky, asking how big an algorithm was "bigger than a breadbox"? Someone told me that he had gone to college, so I guess that put me in my place. Still, that was not the "unkindness" involved. Just to end this part, I remember telling a Trumpnick that Donald was singled out by the perceptive Richard Nixon as having real potential as a politician. When asked about this, back in those days, he said "If I did run, it would be as a Republican as more of those voters are stupid." I heard him saying it a long time ago and also quoted in print somewhere, but not think that four or more decades later I would need documentation. I do know that it was not on one of his frequent appearances on the Howard Stern show. (As I've said in a previous post, unlike Donald, Howard grew up with the help of a therapist.) Here is the documentation from that group: Admin feedback An admin turned off your ability to post and comment. You won't be able to do these actions until Apr 15 at 5:53 PM. Group rules that were violated 1Be Kind and Courteous We're all in this together to create a welcoming environment. Treat everyone with respect. Debates are natural, but kindness is required. Read the code of conduct: http://codeofconduct.2600.ninja It's a very strange date as it seems to have something to do with the Federal Income Tax, the day set in an early version of it during the Roosevelt Administration. Be that as it may, we have more important things to point out. Just a quick note: MAGA stands for MAKE ATTORNEYS GET ATTORNEYS. TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: As we continue to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we're joined by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an award-winning Iraqi journalist and author. He was born in Baghdad in 1975 and was working as an architect when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Ghaith started his journalism career at The Guardian soon after the invasion as a translator for Guardian reporters. He has since received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, the British Press Awards' Foreign Reporter of the Year and the Orwell Prize. His book is just out on this 20th anniversary, A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is joining us from Istanbul, Turkey, today. Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Ghaith. This book is magnificent. It is a deep dive into understanding the effects of an invasion and occupation and, beyond that, the entire region. And we congratulate you for this work. Why don't we start off with the book's title, A Stranger in Your Own City? Describe Baghdad, a place you had hardly left by the time you had become an architect, and then what happened on March 20th, the bombing of your country. GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: Well, thank you, Amy, and thank you, Nermeen, for having me back. It's exactly like that. I grew up in Baghdad. I rarely left the city for 28 years. And I presume I knew the city very well. I used to walk everywhere. My school was in one part of the city. My family lived in another part. My friends are in the east and the west of the city. So I knew the geography of the city very well. It's a flat, open city, no marcations, no boundaries within the city itself. And then, within two years of the occupation, I was awake early in the morning in my hotel room, and I'm trying to find friends who can escort me to different parts of the city. And that's when it hit me that I have become a stranger in my own city, because I can't actually, literally, travel from the hotel where I was staying to where my school was or where my friends were, without having a someone to escort me, and often two people escorting me, you know, because you never know what kind of militia will be manning checkpoints on the road. And that was a direct effect of the war. I mean, my life, from an architect or a journalist, an accidental journalist, I would say, was upended by this war like so many other lives in Iraq, and in the region, of course. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ghaith, one of the things that's very instructive and interesting in your book is the account you give of your years in Baghdad — as you said, almost 30 without barely leaving — all of the events that led up to what the society and the context was in which the U.S. invasion took place. So, if you could begin with that? You were 5 years old when the Iraq-Iran War began, and then followed swiftly by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the sanctions. If you could just walk us through that period and what Baghdad was like in those years? GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: I mean, of course, Iraqis, and myself included, of a certain generation, their relationship to war did not start in 2003. As you said, I was 5 when I first time witnessed the bombing of my city. It was — you know, Iraq was bombing Tehran. The Iranians were bombing Baghdad. And that eight years' war, that although people in the cities, the major cities, were spared from, but we all lived through its dynamic, through its impact of the society, the militarization of the society — uncles, cousins, neighbors all being taken to the front. Every spring, you see the streets in Baghdad covered in this black cloth announcing the death of soldiers, conscript soldiers, at the front. So, that was part of the dynamic. And, of course, we all know, during these eight years, Saddam was, you know, supported by the West. He was the darling of the West. He was given weapons, he was given intelligence, because he was serving a purpose. And then, of course, that militarization of the society, that war, led to Saddam's disastrous, foolish, criminal decision to invade Kuwait, which led to the 1991 war. And I have to say the bombing of 1991 really destroyed Baghdad, really destroyed the infrastructure of the country. So, our relationship with America did not start in 2003. We've already been bombed by the Americans in 1991, then the sanctions. And in all the wars I've witnessed, as a civilian Iraqi, as a journalist who later went to report on wars, I've never seen anything devastating on a society like the sanctions. It crushed the Iraqi society. It turned a proud, educated nation into a nation of hustlers, basically, everyone trying to get a job, everyone trying to get a little bit of money. And that enshrined the corruption, which we see its results now. You know, when you see the salaries of a teacher dropping into $2, a policeman getting $5, corruption becomes a way of survival. AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you — GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: That destruction of the society — AMY GOODMAN: I — GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: — was a prelude — AMY GOODMAN: Ghaith, I wanted to — GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: Sorry. AMY GOODMAN: — stick to that issue of sanctions, the way the president of the United States perceived them and the absolutely devastating effect in Iraq. On Election Day in 2000, I had a chance to speak with President Bill Clinton, who called in to our radio station, Pacifica Radio, WBAI, to get out the vote. So I had a chance to question him about the effect of sanctions in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: "They're wrong," President Clinton said. And, of course, there was the famous comment of Madeleine Albright, when questioned by Judy Woodruff of 60 Minutes about 500,000 children dying as a result of the sanctions, did she think the price was worth it, and she said yes. Your response, and for people to understand the effect of these sanctions alone? GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: I mean, I can't emphasize the impact of the sanctions. I think everything that has happened in Iraq in the last 30 years, through the life of this dictator, his adventures, the occupation that followed, the sectarian politics, it was the sanctions — that is the moment when you destroyed society. Look, during the sanctions, Saddam and his private clique, they didn't suffer. I mean, they were wealthy. Saddam went on building his palaces. His clan, his people close to him survived. Actually, they benefited even more, because, because of the sanctions, there was a very important black market. They controlled the black market. And they became wealthy, like it's happening in other different countries as we speak at the moment. The people close to the power, they benefit from the sanctions, because they become the only gate through which any source of income can be generated. It's us, as the Iraqis. It's the people who go to these hospitals, and there are no medicine. You go to schools, and there are no pencils, no books. I mean, literally, I and my friends were scavenging through the drawers of architectural school looking for used paper so they can use them on the back, because we don't have access to these things. You know, Saddam's children did not need papers. They didn't go scavenging for pencils. It's us. It's us who lived through these things. It's us who are dependent on this meager monthly ration given by the state. So, I mean, the delusion — I don't know it's delusional or it's deliberate — destruction of a society. And then you come in 2003, after all these things, after all — you know, the Iraqis looked at the Americans as the people who were causing, imposing these sanctions. 2003 happened, and yet there was a moment in which the Iraqis, I think, had this Faustian deal and thought, "OK, we don't want war. We don't want to be bombed again. But we don't want Saddam. Let's see what's going to happen." And what's happened is a civil war on such a magnitude that 20 years later — and this is the sad story about Iraq — 20 years later, people are yearning to the dictator. They think, "Oh, the days of the dictator were days of peace and prosperity and whatnot." And this is a direct outcome of the disasters that unfolded since 2003. The unimaginable happened, that led people to yearning to a strong dictator. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ghaith, yes, we'll just turn to that now, what followed the invasion of 2003. But if you could elaborate on that? You argue in the book that — and as you've said just now — that Saddam Hussein was not weakened — if anything, he was strengthened, his regime was strengthened — by the sanctions, even as millions of Iraqis suffered these devastating consequences. And you also say that the quality of his rule changed. I'll just quote a line from your book to you. You say, "The old obsolete revolutionary images of pan-Arabism and socialism were replaced by a new set of values based on Islam and the tribe, portraying himself" — that is, Saddam — "as the pious, father-like, tribal sheikh." Could you explain what happened and what that meant for what followed? GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: So, Saddam and the Baath Party, when they came to power in the '60s, the language of the — the narrative of the language was of this national liberation, the language of socialism — I mean, of course, it meant nothing; it was just kind of the theatrics of it — and, you know, supporting anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and all that kind of language. And he and his ministers were always dressed in military uniforms, you know, the sunglasses, the cigar — all the paraphernalia of a revolutionary leader. After 1990 and the invasion of Kuwait, as religiosity spread throughout the Middle East, and not only in Iraq, Saddam had to change the narrative. The party, the security forces were weakened because of the sanctions, because of the bombing, because of the [inaudible]. He needed a new way, a new narrative, to control the society. So, the religion served to — served multi-purposes. A, it created this — in a society that is suffering, the religion was a solace, was a way to find answers against those, you know, Americans who are imposing the sanctions. So that served a purpose. The spread of religious movements in the Middle East, Saddam, by adopting a religious narrative himself, he managed to kind of pull the carpet, basically, from all the Salafi jihadi movements that were spreading around in the region. That, religion, became a way to control the society — the mosques, the network of preachers. But also the tribes became another method to control the society. Where he cannot send his weakened security forces, he can depend on — what's the word? — faithful loyalists, loyalist tribes, tribe elders. And that happened all over Iraq, not in a specific region, not to a specific sect. Suddenly, Iraq moved from a secular, whatever, country, adopting secular rhetoric, let's say, into a country adopting tribal and religious rhetoric. That religious rhetoric, of course, it did — Saddam did not allow any extremist religious movement to exist in the country, Sunni or Shia, because any political formation would threaten his rule. But that religious narrative, that religious rhetoric allowed, created the basis upon which both Sunni and Shia religious movements emerged after 2003 to oppose the Americans and fight the jihad against the Americans. NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, let's go to that moment, when the Americans come in. You describe a scene in the book when you see an American marine covering a statue of Saddam Hussein with the American flag. So, if you could respond to that? I mean, explain what your response and the response of others there was to that, and then the fact that you yourself, a few days after the invasion, you were arrested. Explain what happened. GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: So, you know, I was in my neighborhood, in my house. I saw the Americans there, and I followed them, like many Iraqis, and stood in the square. We saw the statue being toppled — toppled by the Marines, by the way, not by the Iraqis. Iraqis couldn't bring it down, so the Marines pulled their vehicle, tied the noose, pulled the statue. And then we all saw on TV this iconic image of this U.S. marine pulling a U.S. flag from his pocket and covering the face of the statue with it. And, of course, at that time, there was this kind of collective gasp of, "Oh my god! What are you doing? You know, at least allow this — the charade of liberation to last for a day." Later, I came to realize that that American marine was a very honest person. I mean, he, unlike all the generals and the politicians and the people in the Pentagon and George W. Bush, who talked about liberating Iraq and liberation, that marine saw the war as it was, as a war between the United States, between his army, and the Iraqis. The Iraqis were defeated, and he was victorious. It was his — in that act, he was more honest in reflecting the realities of the ground, because that quickly became the reality on the ground. Those soldiers were no longer liberators. I mean, that facade of liberation probably lasted for a day. But very soon you see them pointing their guns, manning checkpoints. Like all arrogant hubris empires throughout histories, once you send your soldiers into, you know, occupying another foreign land, the soldiers, the young people, who have no idea, if never exposed, they will see all the Iraqis as their enemies. I mean, look at the previous segment. They see part of their own society as the enemy. Imagine how they saw us Iraqis. A few months later, I was driving back with another Iraqi friend. It was the day Saddam was arrested. We were stopped at an American checkpoint, Army checkpoint, at night. They were suspicious of us. Why are two Iraqis driving at night? Because it's our country. And then we were put in jail. We were released next day, but as I woke up in the morning — we slept in this bare, former Iraqi military police cell. The irony of it — I, someone who had dodged the Iraqi military police for five years, end up in their cell by my supposed liberators. But this next morning, they take us to a yard, and there's a long line of Iraqis. We're all crouching on the ground, some of us blindfolded, others not. That was the face of the supposed liberation, which was never liberation. It became occupation very, very quickly. And, of course, insurgency starts, for whatever reasons — some jihadi, religious, some nationalist. They fight against the Americans. The Americans will behave — you know, they will — one village, a few people fight from one village. Thanks to American policies, by rounding up men, by putting them in detention, by humiliating, by breaking into houses, you will see the whole village, and then the whole community, and then the whole province fighting against the Americans. So it was doomed from day one. There was no scenario in which an American Army, with all its legacies in Iraq, in the Middle East, in the region, can transform that adventure, which soon it called it occupation, with all the connotation of the word "occupation" in the Middle East — turned it into something else. And that's the disaster that led. AMY GOODMAN: Ghaith, I wanted to stick with April 9th, 2003, that day that the statue of Saddam Hussein was brought down. I remember CNN so clearly. You have CNN domestic and CNN International. On CNN International, they were showing a split screen of the statue coming down, repeated over and over again. Of course, the marine was just outside the frame. It looked like Iraqis brought down that statue. But on the other side were the casualties of war. Now, CNN domestic had the same access to that video, but that's not what they were showing. They were just showing Saddam Hussein's statue coming down. In the same way, on March 20th, "shock and awe," Americans love fireworks, and that's exactly what it looked like. So you see the bombs in the sky, and you see a statue coming down, but not the casualties of war. Can you talk about what that was on the ground — ultimately, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died — and how that led to, as you talk about, the rise of ISIS? What everyone thought in the United States, there's this huge division between Sunni and Shia. You said you didn't even want to ask that question to people when you were translating for other journalists, because you said you didn't often know who was Sunni or who was Shia growing up, that this was also aggravated in a fractured society by the occupation and invasion. GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: So, to go back to that kind of point about the CNN and the domestic CNN, in 2005, I came to New York for the first time in my life. And I switched on the TV, and I — you know, 2005, Baghdad was burning. In the fighting, the insurgency, Americans were dying every day. And I thought, like, I would see this kind of war being broadcasted daily to the American audience. And there was nothing. There was nothing. I don't remember the channels on local TV in New York, but there was nothing, as if, you know, the life was going on. I come from Iraq. Your country has been occupying my country. There was nothing. Anyhow, the point is, after 2004 — 2003, the 9th of April, that occupation, with all its problems, did not stop there. It created its own dynamic within the society. With the occupation came a group of exiled Iraqi politicians who had evolved their sectarian political thoughts in exile, in kind of very claustrophobic, very traumatized places, in Tehran, in London. They have all lost people. They have all lost friends and cousins. So they saw the regime, they saw Iraq, in this binary way of Sunnis versus Shia. And because they were outside the country, they were isolated from the country, so we never had any connections with them. The way they saw the invasion — and let's remember that kind of the regime change in Iraq started in the mid-'90s, late '90s, with the Iraq, whatever, act in 1998. So it did not start in 2003. The narrative that was sold to the Americans was a narrative of a part of the society dominated by another part of the society. And that was criminal, a horrible way of thinking of the Iraqi society. I grew up in Baghdad. I don't want to say there are no Sunnis or Shia or Kurds. I don't want to say there is no oppression against political Shia parties. I don't want to say that we were all equal. But it was not a sectarian regime. It was a Saddam, his clan and his tribe regime that dominated. And in the army, some Sunni officers in the army tried to topple Saddam in the '90s. So, the narrative that was sold was a sectarian narrative. And, of course, in every narrative based on victimhood, if one part of the population are victims, then the others are the victimizers. When the Americans came, they saw Saddam as a Sunni, so, by association, every single Sunni in Iraq became tainted by the regime, was pushed into a corner. The process of de-Baathification, of purging the army — or, kind of the army was totally disbanded — all these policies were directed against the Sunnis. So, of course, what do the Sunnis do, who had never a communal identity of themselves? They are pushed into a corner, and they had to reject this American adventure in Iraq, this American occupation in Iraq. The lack of security in Iraq after 2003 allowed everyone who had grievances against the Americans to flood into Iraq, and that includes the jihadis but also includes the Iranian establishment, who wanted to defeat the Americans in Iraq because they were the second on the "axis of evil." All these different elements led to the establishment of a civil war. In the common narrative of Iraq, people talk about the civil war as it happened in 2005 after the bombing of the Shia shrines in Samarra. For me, personally, I think civil war, in terms of fighting, in terms of killing, started early in 2004. But also, the civil war starts in a society not when men carry guns, but when the society is divided between us and them. That is a prelude to a civil war. And, of course, that civil war, you know, coupled with corruption of the Iraqi establishment, with the sectarianism of the Iraqi security forces, led eventually to the emergence of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, because — who were benefiting from the chaos in the region to reestablish their alliances. NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Ghaith, could you say, because you also — just to go back, you attended Saddam Hussein's trial. Could you describe the scene at that trial and what you think the repercussions were of how that trial was conducted for what followed? GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: You know, Nermeen, the problem with Iraq is we don't know the history, and we don't know our history. We still don't know why Saddam started the war against Iran. We still don't know what are the dynamics, what are the policies that led him to invade Kuwait and all the madness and upheaval that we lived through after that. So, I thought, finally, here is Saddam on trial. Why don't we do an international tribunal? Why don't we put him in front of U.N., like what happened in Bosnia and Serbia and other countries? But, no, because of the Iraqi politicians, the sectarian Iraqi politicians did not want — and the Americans, both of them — the Iraqi sectarian politicians did not want to hand him to the U.N., because he will not be executed, of course. And he was going to be executed, regardless of the result of the trial. And the Americans, who didn't want — didn't want to hand anything to the U.N., didn't want any U.N. involvement. And probably the U.N. didn't want to be involved in that project itself. Instead, what did we have? Instead of Saddam being put on trial in front of the Iraqi people and us knowing what he did and why he did that to our community, to our life, to our society — instead, we have a charade of a trial in which Saddam not only emerged as this hero in the Arab world, he exonerates himself. He reinvents himself as this dignified man carrying his Qur'an, going there in front of a bunch of, you know — I don't know how to describe them. It's just like a circus court, a charade. The Americans, through that trial, turned Saddam into a hero in the Arab world, in an Arab world defeated, looking for a savior, for a hero. And they look at him. So, since then, you drive in the streets of Amman, Kabul, Sana'a, you always see a picture of Saddam on the back of, you know, taxi windows. Why? Because he was reinvented for them, thanks to that kind of trial, thanks to the charade of the trial. And, of course, we never got any reason. But then, of course, what happened with his execution, in mutilating his corpse, and the sense of — iihana, we call it in Arabic — it's to defeat a defeated segment of the society. It was all playing into the sectarian narrative. AMY GOODMAN: Ghaith, we don't have much time, but I wanted to ask you: 20 years later, what do you want the world to understand about the U.S. invasion, about your country Iraq, and if you have any hope at this point? GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: Amy, I just want accountability. I don't want people to go to jail. I don't want people to, when they die, that — I want accountability. I want all the people who executed this war, who planned this war, the people who murdered Iraqi civilians, be it Americans or be it Iraqis themselves, you know, militia commanders, politicians, I want all those people held accountable — accountable not to go to jail or shot and executed, no. I want the history to be told properly, so that people in Iraq now, 20 years later, can have a peace of mind, can have a moment of reconciliation with themselves. This is what we are lacking. I mean, you look at Iraq now. What is Iraq now, 20 years later? It's a very wealthy country, $100 billion, $120 billion a year. And yet parts of Baghdad and parts of the south of the country are really poor, in wretched state. And you look at the Iraqi political establishment, and you see many people there who still command militias, who had committed atrocities during the civil war, who led to the death of thousands of people, and they're there sitting in the parliament or appearing on TV every day. Why? Because there is no accountability. Same thing with your country. I mean, people are either dying peacefully or going to paint and reinventing themselves as ski resort trainers and whatnot. This is a disaster. You know, all these lives, Iraqi and American, by the way, are lost, are wasted for nothing. And accountability. AMY GOODMAN: Ghaith, we have to leave it there, but we're going to do Part 2 and post it at democracynow.org. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, his new book, A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War. I'm Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
Read AbsurdTimes's Newsletter in the app Listen to posts, join subscriber chats, and never miss an update from AbsurdTimes. © 2023 Honest Charlie
|
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Friday, March 24, 2023
Fwd: 20 YEARS IRAQ -- CENSORSHIP
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Censorship and Death
THE ABSURD TIMES
The dead guy
We assume "new details" will continue to "emerge," so perhaps it is time to discuss this and let it go.
First, let's learn how to pronounce this man's name: Ka shoeg [alternatively "showg") she. Networks, even in the U.S. have begun to get it relatively correct. A major problem is caused by the transliteration which is strange and mysterious at the very least and has never been explained to our satisfaction, although not through lack of interest on our parts. Similar problems exist in The Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, but this is beyond anything like that.
The Prince, who runs things over there in Mohammed Bin Salamon, which people have taken to calling MBS for good reason. So now, what happened?
Kashoggi (see what I mean?) was a columnist for the Washington Post. He also seemed to be somewhat of a patriot and supported MSB in many things, including giving women the right to drive. He seems to have written some things a bit too critical and, thus, he had to go. He fled here in order to escape death. He also wanted to marry a Turkish citizen. In fact, that may have been his ultimate crime.
At any rate, he asked for the paperwork and the consulate in Washington, and they told him he would have to go to Turkey to get the papers. He seemed to find this reasonable, although going along with it casts some doubts on his credulity. At any rate, after he eventually entered the building in Turkey, he never left alive. His fiancé waited outside and was given the name of two people to call if he never got out, and she called them.
Just before he entered, 15 killers had arrived at the consulate. Various accounts exist to explain the existence of the recordings to what happened to him while he was there, accounts including that he had an Apple watch to and then including that the Turks had the place bugged. Whether or not there were cameras tucked away is still unexplained, but the Turks claim they have both audio and visual proof.
According to accounts, the proceedings were quite vicious and cruel. The regular functionnaire at the place did say "if you are going to do that, do it somewhere else. I could get into trouble."
He was told it was best for him if he kept his mouth shut if he ever wanted to survive in Arabia.
Accounts relayed to sources say that the killings were "brutal" and shook him, and this person was a veteran of torture sessions. We do know that the journalist was strapped down on a table, injected with some sort of liquid, his fingernails and then fingers were separated for his body all the while he was screaming. One of them, a forensic doctor, had a bone saw and he was cut up into pieces and, presumably, the pieces placed in bags. The "blood curdling screams" lasted about seven minutes. The bags were then disposed of somehow and the 15 returned by plane to Saudi Arabia without hours the same days. In face, the fifteen were there only for a few hours.
Donald Trump explained the situation as caused by "rogue elements", although 15 well-coordinated rouges seem a bit convenient. More and more explanations are developing. Our Secretary of State visited with MBS and suggested we give them a few more days to investigate.
Meanwhile, the Turks did manage to gain access to the place after about two weeks and report smells of cleaning fluid and repainting. They were not allowed to visit the residence.
Kashoggi's last column was printed just hours ago, and it warns about suppression of the press and suggests that some sort of Radio Free Europe is needed for the entire Arab world. He limits this to since the quickly aborted "Arab Spring", although we know that the process continues under every despotic regime in the world and to some extent even here, although the suppression here is done more though economic means.
Everyone not in Trump's world remembers Jefferson's words to the effect that if he needed to choose between a free press or a safe government, he would favor the press. The press is unpopular everywhere. We can remember Russia Nobel prize winners defecting here and being criticized, but mainly their comments went unheeded. One of them pointed out that in "The Soviet Union" he works were sought out and devoured. Here, there was so much junk and clutter that whatever he had to say went virtually unnoticed unless some government figure sought to criticize him with taunts such as "If you don't like it here, why don't you go back to wherever?" Strange how many Americans were given the same treatment and still are.
At any rate, that's that.
It may be worthwhile to point out that the penalty for murder in Saudi Arabia is death in public by sword, sometimes followed by crucifixion. Death is also the penalty for espionage, homosexuality, and atheism (which makes any 19th century German philosophic discussions rather risky.
We could go on, but we seem to have already done so. Here is documentation as we know it:
* * *
New details have emerged in the disappearance and probable death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was reportedly still alive when his body was dismembered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul more than two weeks ago. A Turkish source says it took Khashoggi seven minutes to die. The New York Times reports four of the 15 Saudi men implicated in the killing are directly linked to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's security detail. We speak with Jamal Elshayyal, an international award-winning senior correspondent for Al Jazeera. He wrote a piece for the Middle East Eye last year titled "The rise of Mohammed bin Salman: Alarm bells should be ringing."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: More details have emerged about the disappearance and probable murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who has not been seen since he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd. The Middle East Eye is reporting Khashoggi was killed soon after he entered the consulate. The Turkish government reportedly has audio recordings showing that he was dragged screaming from the consul general's office, forced onto a table in a neighboring room and injected with an unknown substance. Khashoggi was reportedly then dismembered by a Saudi forensic doctor and autopsy expert, who allegedly listened to music on headphones as he used a bone saw to cut a still-breathing Khashoggi into pieces. It reportedly took Khashoggi seven minutes to die.
Meanwhile, more information has come to light about the Saudis suspected of being involved in his killing. According to Turkish officials, 15 Saudis flew into Istanbul shortly before Khashoggi entered the consulate. They then left the country just hours later. The New York Times reports four of the Saudi men are linked to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's security detail. One of the men, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, has traveled frequently with the crown prince, including on his recent trip to the United States. According to The Washington Post, several other of the Saudi suspects have ties to the Saudi security services.
AMY GOODMAN: The reporting directly contradicts President Trump's claim that, quote, "rogue elements" might be to blame for The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance. On Tuesday, Trump refused to criticize Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi's disappearance and probable murder. He told the Associated Press, "Here we go again with, you know, you're guilty until proven innocent. I don't like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh. And he was innocent all the way as far as I'm concerned."
Trump's comment came as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Saudi Arabia Tuesday to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He said the Saudi leadership strongly denies any knowledge of what took place in their consulate in Istanbul.
SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO: They told me they were going to conduct a thorough, complete, transparent investigation. They made a commitment to, to hold anyone connected to any wrongdoing that may be found accountable for that, whether they are a senior officer or official. They promised accountability.
AMY GOODMAN: Pompeo met with both the Saudi king and the crown prince. He then traveled to Turkey to meet with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Well, we go now to Turkey, to Istanbul, just outside the Saudi Consulate, where we're joined by Jamal Elshayyal. He's an international award-winning senior correspondent for Al Jazeera. He has been outside that consulate for days.
For people who are not familiar with this story, since you have been reporting on this now since almost the beginning—it was October 2nd that Jamal Khashoggi walked into that consulate, where you are standing now, and has not been seen again—tell us what you know at this point, right through to yesterday, when you were snapping photographs of a cleaning crew going in with bleach before the Turkish authorities went in to investigate.
JAMAL ELSHAYYAL: Well, Amy, it has been a very bizarre, but also obviously sobering, story to cover. I mean, you're talking about a journalist who entered a consulate in order to process some paperwork to get married, essentially, to start a new chapter in his life, but never to come out again. Initially, Jamal Khashoggi, as you mentioned, entered on the Tuesday over two weeks ago for a couple of hours. His fiancée waited for him outside. He never came out. She then asked for the security guards at the door of the consulate to inform her where he was, to which they responded saying that he wasn't actually inside and that, they claimed, he left 20 minutes after entering—obviously, a claim that was never substantiated by any sort of evidence.
The first bizarre thing to come out from the Saudi authorities was they claimed that this seven-story building behind me, that has dozens and dozens of CCTV cameras installed around it, wasn't recording on that day, which cast a lot of doubt as to what exactly happened. A few days after Jamal Khashoggi went missing, the Turkish authorities released their CCTV footage of their cameras that are positioned outside the door of the consulate, which clearly established that Jamal had entered, putting the onus of responsibility on the Saudis to then prove that he exited. They failed to do that.
After that, we started getting some leaks and information from sources close to the investigation who were speaking on condition of anonymity, and they established to us on Saturday evening—so roughly about four days after Jamal entered—that he had indeed been killed, assassinated, murdered inside. They then released footage of a 15-man hit squad that, as you mentioned, flew in earlier on that day. And it included members of Saudi—the security personnel of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, members of the special forces of Saudi Arabia. And most importantly, it included one of the kingdom's top forensic experts, a man who prides himself in his career as being one of the top autopsy experts in Saudi Arabia. They flew in that morning, as you mentioned, on several flights, and they all flew out, bar two of them, on private jets that are linked to or are owned by a company linked to—also directly to Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi Royal Court.
Since then, the evidence that the Turkish authorities have has been shared with the U.S. intelligence community. It seems that the Turks, diplomatically speaking, have been trying to walk a tightrope. They were looking to get some sort of support from their allies in NATO, as well as the Europeans. There was, interestingly enough, comments that were made by the U.S. intelligence community to several American outlets where they described the evidence that they were shown by the Turks as truly shocking. Now, for them to describe it—considering that they are the intelligence community that were behind things like Abu Ghraib prison, as well as Guantánamo and other hugely distasteful, let's say, or outrageous incidents, it goes a long way to show just how gruesome the details of those recordings are, if the U.S. intelligence community is saying it was shocked by what they saw.
The problem about this case, or maybe what is making it so significant, is it's not just a case about a journalist who entered and was murdered. There is so much more at stake—geopolitics, diplomacy, the future of Saudi Arabia and, dare I say, the future of the Middle East—because, up until now, people were looking at Saudi Arabia's future under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He, through his very aggressive foreign policy in Yemen, in Egypt, in Libya and so forth, allied with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, have been dictating how things are moving in the Arab world.
If indeed the Turks are able to prove beyond doubt that he is the one, as they say, who ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, if indeed the international community is to step up and maybe respond as it should to a crime of this magnitude, one that essentially ignores the Vienna Convention in terms of what diplomatic missions should be used for, one that targets journalists, one that essentially demembered—dismembered, rather, somebody while he was allegedly still alive, then that could very well see at least Mohammed bin Salman's influence not necessarily vanish, but at least clipped to an extent.
And I think, in that, considering the huge amount of investments that the Trump administration has made in Mohammed bin Salman and the links it has, that is what's maybe making things take a lot longer than they should in terms of wrapping up this criminal investigation and establishing what sorts of retribution should be placed on the criminals behind it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jamal, I wanted to ask you specifically about the Turkish government's release of information. It's been coming out sort of in drips and drabs over the period since Khashoggi entered the consulate. I wanted to ask you, first, why they took so long to actually go in and investigate, since they knew early on, apparently, that a crime had been committed. And what do you think is behind the partial releases of information over this period of time?
JAMAL ELSHAYYAL: I think Turkey's foreign policy establishment is under a lot of stress. It has been before this. When you look at the war in Syria, when you look at the GCC crisis, when you look at the Kurdish separatists and many, many other issues—the EU Essay and all of that—I think they are not happy that this has landed on them. And they've suddenly found that they are currently now being dragged into a confrontation with Saudi Arabia, which although on paper is an ally, they don't really see eye to eye on several issues.
In the beginning, it seemed that the Turks were trying to exhaust diplomatic corridors between them and—or, avenues, rather, between them and Riyadh, by trying to maybe get the Saudis to own up to what happened, and therefore it wouldn't be seen so confrontational. When that didn't happen, they started leaking bits here and there to try and maybe garner support from other countries, like the United States, like Britain and Germany and France, in order so that it doesn't be—so it's not framed as a Turkish-Saudi spat, but more so an international outrage at what Saudi Arabia have done.
More interestingly, I think, the latest two leaks that we were able to get, or the latest two bits of information we were able to get from the Attorney General's Office the night that his team entered the consulate behind me, and then, later, the details or the gruesome details of how Jamal Khashoggi was indeed murdered—I think the timing is very important. They came right after Trump initially tried to float the idea that this was rogue elements that were behind this. And therefore I think the Turks wanted to dismiss that completely by showing, "Well, how can it be a rogue element if indeed it took place in a consulate—that is, a diplomatic mission—under the direct order or control of the government?"
And secondly, the details of this taking place was done when Trump tried to maybe float the idea that this was somehow a rogue operation, an interrogation that went wrong. The fact that you would send your head autopsy expert, the fact that Jamal Khashoggi was barely questioned, if at all questioned, and was in fact descended upon by these special forces officers and beaten and killed in the way he was would cast a lot of doubt on the idea that it was simply an attempt to interrogate or question him and that people didn't really listen to the orders that they were given.
Obviously, the Turks themselves have a lot at stake here, not just in the sense that they don't want to cause this rift or fallout. The Turkish economy has been suffering quite a bit recently. They've been trying to maybe make amends of Ankara's relationship with Washington, and we've seen that in recent days with the comments coming out of the Trump administration following the release of the pastor. So, like I say, this is a case that's got to do much more with geopolitics and the interests of power groups than it is about, unfortunately, just the case of freedom of expression and a journalist who has been assassinated.
AMY GOODMAN: You are friends with Jamal Khashoggi's brother. Is that right? You just saw him? Can you talk about how his family is responding right now, what they're demanding? You have President Trump, it seems, even before the Saudi regime has publicly floated that there were rogue elements who did this, though they did this—it hasn't been explained how they did this in the Saudi Consulate or the Saudi consul general's residence—you have Trump himself saying this was rogue elements possibly.
And you have Pompeo, who's now gone to Turkey, where you are, but going to Saudi Arabia yesterday. Many questioned: Why wouldn't they be calling in the Saudi ambassador in Washington? Why would he be going directly to Riyadh and taking smiling pictures with both the king as well as the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman? How is the family responding to all of this? And explain who—just who Jamal Khashoggi is and was. This is not a dissident within the Saudi regime.
JAMAL ELSHAYYAL: Let me just correct you there, Amy. I am not friends with his brother. Jamal Khashoggi—may he rest in peace—was very good friends with my brother. I had met Jamal on several occasions as a journalist in different conferences and conventions and symposiums, but I do not know Jamal Khashoggi's brother. It is my brother who was very good friends with Jamal, and they worked together extensively, and I had met Jamal, as I mentioned, on different occasions.
I am aware that one of Jamal's sons is currently actually in the United States. I'm also aware that one of his other sons has been under, essentially, house arrest in Saudi Arabia for many months and that the Saudi authorities put a travel ban on him in a way to try and force Jamal to come back. It does seem that there is a lot of pressure that has been put on his family. One of his sons in the United States recently created a Twitter account, which he released through it a statement where he's demanding full transparency as to what happened to his father.
You can only imagine, obviously, in a situation like this, what kind of toll it could take. I mean, not only do you suffer the loss, but you're suffering the everyday agony of not knowing or not having closure, not being able to bury, not being able to pay respects or to pray, from a religious perspective, and to ensure that that person is resting in peace. So, obviously, that would have a lot of stress. And it goes to show, and it speaks volumes, that the Saudi authorities would maintain a travel ban on his son. It speaks volumes that one of his other children is too scared to go back home or to travel and is in the United States.
And that would give you an idea of the contempt, maybe, that some believe the Saudi authorities have to anybody who is—as you mentioned, Jamal wasn't an opposition figure. He wasn't somebody who was calling for the downfall of the monarchy. He never once spoke of regime change. All of his writings were about reform. In fact, he was somebody who was very close to the Royal Court. He worked very closely with the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, previously the former ambassador to London and previously one of the head of intelligence for the kingdom.
He was just an independent mind, so he had an idea on what he saw with the aggressive rise of Mohammed bin Salman, the aggressive policies of Mohammed bin Salman, and the apparent hypocrisy of the international community to buy into this concept that Mohammed bin Salman was a reformer, when, in fact, female activists who had been calling for equality were being arrested whilst the world was applauding him for somehow allowing women to drive as being some sort of emancipation of women, as some of the U.S. media were calling it. It was those things that maybe put him on the radar.
And it seems that going after him shows that the Saudi regime and the Saudi current system under the rulership of Mohammed bin Salman is not even willing to have critical voices or even independent voices from within, let alone opposition voices. So, if you are to consider that there are some genuine opposition activists that are in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in Australia and other countries, imagine what kind of fate could befall them.
And the fact that, as you mentioned, you have these pictures of Mike Pompeo smiling and laughing with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, knowing full well that the U.S. intelligence community is very much aware of the details that the Turkish intelligence agencies have—and I can—I know this based on my sources, that they did share the information with them, making it very clear the link between the crown prince and what happened. So, for the secretary of state to then go and do that, obviously, will not send confidence to the pro-democracy movements or the independent journalists or the women activists in the kingdom or in the region.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jamal, one of the things that you—you've raised the issue of the very good press that Mohammed bin Salman has gotten now for months in the—especially in the American media, and you've raised the issue that part of that has been, conceivably, the closer relationship that has developed between Saudi Arabia under the crown prince and Israel. Could you talk about that and the information that you've received previously about that?
JAMAL ELSHAYYAL: Well, I mean, it's no secret that for several years there has been an attempt to normalize a relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Mohammed bin Salman belongs to a political school of thought that is juxtaposed to that which erupted in 2011 calling for freedom and democracy in the Arab world, which was then called the Arab Spring. It was more of, I would say, a protest movement, an intifada. It never really blossomed for those who were looking for some sort of freedom.
And in that school of thought, it is one that is allied with ensuring anything must be done to maintain a status quo, a status quo which is that it is the few that rule the many, it is the wealth of the many that is in the pockets of the few, and it is in the interest of "stability" that you have to ensure that these absolute monarchies or the autocratic military regimes, like in Egypt or Syria and so forth, remain.
It would seem, from political scientists and commentators, that Israel's existence as a superpower within that region—so, in order to maintain its upper-hand existence, it requires that those dictatorships or those absolute monarchies are also there, because what we saw, for example—and I covered Cairo—from January 26th, 2011, I was on the ground in Egypt, up until the end of that uprising, and then I covered in Libya and Yemen and Syria. And I was on the ground in all of these countries. And I can tell you, whenever there were these main protests, particularly on the Fridays, because that was the weekend, you would see hand in hand with the flag of that country—so with the Egyptian flag, you would see a Palestinian flag, as well. And you would see that in Benghazi. You would see that in Tripoli. And you would see that in Sana'a and in Aden and other places around.
And it became very apparent that the Arab people believe that the reason why Palestinian land continues to be occupied is because the dictatorships that exist are more concerned with putting their efforts in quashing dissent and ensuring that they continue to rule than they are to liberate those lands. And maybe that would explain why Mohammed bin Salman is seen to cozy up a lot more to Israel than he is to the pro-democratic movements in the Arab world. We've already seen, for example, over the past year and a bit, Saudi airspace being opened up to flights to Israel, something that had never been done before. We've seen Saudi officials meeting with Israeli officials in different countries. There were even reports that there were senior Saudi officials who flew to Israel and met with officials there.
But, I mean, you can divide it very simply as those camps that are looking for freedom and democracy, on the one hand—who may not necessarily have an issue with Israel as Israel, but they have an issue with occupation, they have an issue with inequality, they have an issue with lack of freedom—and you have another camp which wants to maintain that status quo, and therefore anybody who even rocks the boat, be it a journalist, be it an activist, be it a reformer, be it an independent voice like Jamal Khashoggi, is suddenly seen as an existential threat. And, unfortunately, without the checks and balances of international law, without any form of retribution, then they are given a green light to do what they wish, when they wish, to whomsoever they wish.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamal, just before you go, I wanted to go back to the scene where you're at right now, standing just outside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul where Jamal Khashoggi was just seen October 2nd—last seen. Just before Turkish investigators were allowed into Saudi Arabia's Consulate yesterday to carry out an inspection and search for evidence in the disappearance of Khashoggi, cameras captured a team—and you tweeted out photos of this—armed with mops, trash bags, bleach, entering the building. You wrote in your tweet, "You couldn't make this up!!! Literally minutes after #Saudi authorities said Turkish investigators could enter the consulate–a cleaning team arrived and entered the building!!!" As we wrap up, explain the significance of this, as President Trump says that the Saudi regime is conducting a thorough investigation.
JAMAL ELSHAYYAL: I think the way in which this operation happened, happened, and it is very much reflective of the policies we've seen of Mohammed bin Salman so far. It is, essentially—excuse me to put it in this way—but it's a big two fingers up to the world: "We can do whatever we want, and nobody's going to do anything about it." We saw that in the war in Yemen. We see it every day when you're bombing school buses and children and nothing happens. We saw that on the blockade on Qatar. We saw that with the abduction of a prime minister, the Lebanese prime minister, who was literally kidnapped. And nothing happened.
So, as far as the Saudis are concerned, in the beginning, they thought, "You know what? We're going to get away with it." When the Turks maybe put a bit of effort or pressure on them, and they said, "OK, we'll allow the investigators to come," before the investigators, in front of the world, they were like, "OK, we're going to clean up what we can clean up." I mean, obviously, in the end of the day, people will say, "Well, you know, you can't really clean it up all. Why would you do that after so many days?" and so forth. But it's about the message, that you can reach any opponent or critical voice in any country whenever you want, and nobody's going to punish the regime for it, and even if they do catch the regime, they can do what they want as a result.
I mean, you would think that an active crime scene, even people walking into it—forget about cleaners–that, in itself, would be something that was prohibited. But the fact that that was allowed to happen in front of the cameras speaks more to the brazen nature, the shameless nature of the regime, which has been given a green light and enabled—not just by the Trump Administration, by the way, but by the entire free world, and for many decades, not just now. And therefore, that's what's happened.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jamal Elshayyal, we want to thank you so much for being with us, international award-winning senior correspondent for Al Jazeera, currently reporting outside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Last year, Jamal wrote a piece for the Middle East Eye headlined "The rise of Mohammed bin Salman: Alarm bells should be ringing."
When we come back, we continue with the latest on Khashoggi's disappearance and probable murder with Sarah Aziza, an investigative reporter who spent the summer in Saudi Arabia. Stay with us.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
As international outcry grows louder amid new revelations about the shocking death of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, we speak with investigative journalist Sarah Aziza about Saudi Arabia's long history of targeting dissidents. Just weeks before the ban was lifted on women driving in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government arrested several of the country's most prominent feminist activists, including women who had been campaigning for decades for the right to drive. Sarah Aziza has been reporting from Saudi Arabia with the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Her latest piece for The Intercept is headlined "Jamal Khashoggi Wasn't the First—Saudi Arabia Has Been Going After Dissidents Abroad for Decades."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We continue our discussion on Jamal Khashoggi as gruesome new details emerge in the disappearance and probable death of the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist. He was reportedly still alive when his body was dismembered inside the consulate in Istanbul more than two weeks ago. A Turkish source says it took him seven minutes to die. The New York Times reports four of the 15 Saudi men implicated in the killing are directly linked to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's security detail.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we're joined here in New York by Sarah Aziza, investigative reporter who's been reporting from Saudi Arabia with the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, her latest piece for The Interceptheadlined "Jamal Khashoggi Wasn't the First—Saudi Arabia Has Been Going After Dissidents Abroad for Decades."
It's great to have you with us, Sarah.
SARAH AZIZA: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: We were just speaking with Jamal Elshayyal. If you can add to what he was saying, what you think it's important for people to understand at this point? Many wondering why President Trump is doing PR work for the Saudi regime, even before they say publicly—he says maybe it's "rogue elements," when we're talking about an official government building in Saudi Arabia—I mean, in Turkey, the Saudi Consulate, Khashoggi disappearing there October 2nd, with his fiancée standing outside for hours waiting for him to come out, and he never did. First, Saudi Arabia said he did walk out, and now it's been two weeks, and they've had to change their story.
SARAH AZIZA: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think, in many ways, while this story is incredibly shocking in its details, it's really just a difference in degree rather than kind, as far as what we've seen Saudi Arabia capable of doing over the years, and particularly under this crown prince. So, as the reporter pointed out, many activists and journalists have found themselves silenced in one way or another or placed under pressure even while abroad. And the latest developments with Khashoggi's case have only further reinforced the feeling that many activists and writers and students and any everyday Saudi who may be abroad feels. They're never quite beyond the reach of the Saudi government. And as your previous guest just mentioned, Jamal was not even a dissident. He was very clear on that while he was alive. He was a reformer. For a long time, he was a loyalist. And it was only in very recent—
AMY GOODMAN: And got criticized by many dissidents.
SARAH AZIZA: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, for not going far enough. He wanted to even believe that Mohammed bin Salman could deliver on some of his promises early on, but it was only when he saw the crown prince taking actions that directly contradicted all the promises of reform and liberalization that he felt the need to step out. So, yeah, we've seen all of this before, in a sense.
I've spoken to many Saudis who have spent years abroad, who, maybe like Jamal Khashoggi, put themselves in self-imposed exile because they felt it was no longer safe for them to be speaking out or writing freely within the kingdom. But then, as some of Jamal Khashoggi's own family experienced, some of their family might have been placed under house arrest, under travel bans, threatened or harassed by the government. So, none of this—in many ways, this is not a departure for Saudi Arabia.
And in the same way—you mentioned Trump's response—unfortunately, we've seen him very, very willing to be flexible on the truth, to change his story, to really not honestly be apparently looking for the truth, but looking for a story that fits as a justification for what he wants to do.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, there's been a lot of attention, obviously, in the world press to the right of women to be able to drive in Saudi Arabia under the Crown Prince bin Salman. But what is the actual situation for dissident women in Saudi Arabia today?
SARAH AZIZA: Thank you for asking about that. That's something I think that we—those of us who were following this story this summer were really confounded at the world's lack of response when Mohammed bin Salman made a lot of pomp and circumstance about finally giving women the right to drive. Up until this past year, women in Saudi Arabia were the only women on the planet who didn't have that right.
So it was very symbolic, and it was a meaningful change for many women, but the world was willing to ignore the fact that at the same time Mohammed bin Salman was jailing the very women who had worked for years or decades calling for the right to drive, among other human rights and rights for women.
Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, among many others, Hatoon al-Fassi, some of the most prominent women activists—some of them had been working since the '70s for equality—were jailed without any real public charges, or, in the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, government-propagated rumors that they were foreign agents, agents of Qatar. And—
AMY GOODMAN: And explain.
SARAH AZIZA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: You wrote this brilliant piece over the summer about when the decision came down, what they had been fighting for, for years, sometimes getting behind the wheel, being arrested. When the decision came down, they got calls—like Loujain al-Hathloul—not to speak or to tweet about this.
SARAH AZIZA: Absolutely. Yeah, let's talk about Loujain for a second. So, Loujain was a prominent women's rights activist, and she was in Riyadh when this announcement came from Mohammed bin—or, from King Salman, but as part of Mohammed bin Salman's grand agenda. She was in Riyadh only because she had been abducted from the UAE a few months before. She was studying for her master's in the UAE and was arrested, forced to return to Saudi Arabia, placed under a travel ban, not allowed to leave the country again, and then, a few months later, was arrested.
But before that, when she was sitting at home watching the announcement come down about women driving, she knew about that from a few days prior, when the Royal Court called her personally and told her to remain silent, to not speak publicly, even in praise of the new lifting of the ban, as a way of controlling the narrative that tightly. That's one of the many instances where we saw how MBS, the crown prince, is so really obsessed with controlling the narrative from the right and the left.
AMY GOODMAN: Even in praise.
SARAH AZIZA: Yeah, even in praise. He didn't want to appear to be giving something to activists, responding to activists.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what happened, ultimately, very quickly? She tweeted—
SARAH AZIZA: Yeah, she eventually tweeted, "Al-Hamduililah," which means "Thank God"—that's it—and got a—
AMY GOODMAN: That one word, "Hamduililah."
SARAH AZIZA:* Yeah, "Thank God" for, you know, the right to drive, and very quickly was sent a message from someone from the Royal Court saying, "We told you not to speak, and if you know what's good for you, basically, you'll shut up."
AMY GOODMAN: Next week, another woman activist, Israa al-Ghomgham, faces a trial and death.
SARAH AZIZA:* Yeah. There are several people going on trial in Saudi Arabia next week, including Israa, who may face the death penalty. The prosecutors are asking for the death penalty. There's likely to be appeals—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the charges against her?
SARAH AZIZA:* Basically, undermining the state. She has a connection with minority groups and activists in the kingdom. And the Saudi government, especially under MBS, has been expanding its definition of terrorism. It's cracked down on cybersecurity laws, using the phrase "fake news." Spreading fake news or defamation against the royal family is incurring higher and higher penalties, including imprisonment and fines. So, it really doesn't take anything substantial to be jailed or silenced by or imprisoned by the government. Hundreds have been jailed under MBS, including in the last year, 15 journalists just in the kingdom alone.
So, this is, again, something that MBS has been showing us—his intent and his willingness to trample on human rights and to be completely intolerant of free speech among his own citizens. So, while the case of Jamal is grisly and bizarre and shocking, it's, again, not a departure from what we've seen from MBS and from prior Saudi rulers.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, not to mention what's happening in Yemen every single day—
SARAH AZIZA: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, backed by the United States, the Saudi-UAE coalition's constant bombing of this country.
SARAH AZIZA:* Yeah, yeah. And I might add, I've spoken to—I have many contacts within Saudi Arabia and among the Saudi diaspora who are probably the least shocked of anyone who is following this story. You know, the world has sort of turned aghast at what's gone on in Istanbul, but in the case of many Saudis, Saudi dissidents or just Saudis who are aware of their government's ongoings in the world, they are perhaps the least surprised by this, although it is incredibly sobering and chilling and just a confirmation of their greatest fears. Same with the U.S. response—we don't hold out a lot of hope for substantial change.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah Aziza, we want to thank you for being with us.
SARAH AZIZA: Thank you.
This is Democracy Now! In 20 seconds, we'll be going to Washington to a BuzzFeed exposé on an assassination team in Yemen made up of U.S. special forces, a U.S. mercenary firm. Stay with us.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
