Copy letter to FCO Minister who deals with Saudi Arabia

Note: As expected, this example shows that letters to FCO Ministers about important human rights issues from several weeks before general election purdah started will not receive substantive answers.

From Lord Avebury                                                                                       P1501032

March 1, 20015

Dear Tobias,

 A new law has been enacted in Saudi Arabia  with effect from February 1, 2015,    The Penal Law for Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing (Royal Decree No. 44 (12/2013).   The effect of it is

a.       To criminalise any conduct that “disturbs public order” (a charge used frequently against dissenters and human rights activists) and anyone aiming to “infringe the interests of the kingdom, or its economy, or its national or social security.” This would cover any criticism of Saudi law, policy or the authorities within or outside Saudi Arabia.

b.       To grant extensive powers to the interior minister, undermining the due process rights of the accused in existing Saudi law. The minister is given power to order arrests of terrorism suspects without going through the public prosecutor, as well as powers to access the suspect’s private banking and communications information, all without any judicial oversight.

c.        To give the Saudi Specialised Criminal Court (SCC) authority to hear witnesses and experts without the presence of the defendant or the defendant’s lawyer.  It does not require the court to inform the defendant or his/her lawyer of the content of the testimony, and  allows the court to convict on evidence that the defendant is incapable of knowing or challenging. 

d.       To list offences that shall apply to anyone, whether of Saudi or foreign nationality, who commits or aids and abets in the commission of an offence described in the law while outside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia thus allowing those who are concerned about human rights in Saudi Arabia to be convicted in their absence and without knowing the evidence against them. 

e.        To restrict a suspect’s right to access to a lawyer for an undefined time, the period to be determined by the investigating agency.  This would deny access to a lawyer during interrogation in contravention of the provisions of the Saudi criminal procedure law.

f.        To raise the current legal limit on the time officials may hold a suspect in pre-trial detention from 6 months to 12, with power to the SCC to grant an unlimited extension, and increases detention of the terrorist suspect incommunicado from 60 to 90 days from the date of arrest.

Saudi Arabia is at the bottom of the list of countries in the world for observance of human rights (See the global survey of Freedom in the World 2015), below China, Cuba and Russia!  Its record in relation to the Shia minority and human rights activists is atrocious and many have been kept untried for years in Saudi jails. As you know, capital punishment is handed down frequently, and so is flogging, up to 1000 lashes at the rate of 50 a week in public.   

You are probably aware of the case of the British citizen Abdul Hakim Gellani, dob    December 11, 1964, director of a travel agency that specialised in pilgrimages to Mecca.  On November 19, 2005, while on a business visit to Saudi Arabia, Mr Gellani was arrested in Mecca by the Saudi Security Services. Following intervention by the FCO, as well as a law firm contracted by Mr Gellani’s family, the Saudi authorities finally acknowledged his arrest and detention on December 14, 2005.  On December 18, 2005, Mr. Gellani was transferred to Ruwais Prison in Jeddah  and received a welfare visit from the British Consulate the following day, but did not receive a full consular visit until March 12, 2006. He went on a hunger strike protesting his conditions of detention and lack of a fair trial. He was not charged in accordance with the Saudi Law of Criminal Procedure.  He was not brought before a judge until July 19, 2006, when he was released.  He then tried to leave Saudi Arabia and the FCO gave him a new passport, his existing passport having been seized by the Saudi authorities, but the Saudis refused to give him an exit visa.

Following an interview with Al-Jazeera that covered detention conditions in Saudi prisons, Mr Gellani was re-arrested by the Saudi Security Services on August 8, 2007 at Hotel Morjane, his temporary residence in Mecca. The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied Mr Gellani’s detention until September 23, 2007. Subsequently, his family learned that he had been transferred to Ruwais Prison, where he was held incommunicado until October 27, 2007 when he received a visit from the British Consulate, the first since his re-arrest. After that visit, he was allowed regular calls to his family and further consular visits.  

 Mr Gellani was held in solitary confinement and, on several occasions, had to sleep on the floor, without blankets and in a constantly lit cell. He was subjected to severe beatings and humiliation. On other occasions, he was denied the Koran and was handcuffed for several days. Such treatment, together with the fact that Mr Gellani did not know when his detention would end, amounts to torture or inhuman and degrading treatment and represents a grave breach of Mr Gellani’s rights under the Saudi domestic laws and international law.  In neither of his periods of detention was Mr Gellani   charged, and although he was brought before a judge several times, he was told that he could not be heard without a lawyer.

In September 2010, Mr Gellani’s family, with the help of a London-based law firm and the intervention of the FCO, succeeded in obtaining a Saudi lawyer to represent him in court proceedings. However, the lawyer was prevented from appearing in court at Mr Gellani’s last hearing, scheduled for September 26, 2010 as he was arrested on the day of the hearing and detained for three days by the authorities for interrogation. Thus Mr Gellani was not given a fair trial, nor had he proper access to legal counsel, let alone to information regarding the length of, or reasons for,  his continued detention. The matter was considered by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in late 2010 and they produced an Opinion.   The Opinion was communicated to the Saudi Government on December 28, 2010 but no response was ever received.  Mr Gellani was released over nine months after the Opinion was communicated and no compensation has ever been paid to him.  

 In light of the gross and persistent violations of human rights by Saudi Arabia, and their treatment of UK citizens in particular, it is manifestly inappropriate for the state to be a member of the Human Rights Council, and I would be grateful if you could let me know whether there is any mechanism by which they can be ejected from the Council?

As regards the new law mentioned above, could you please tell 

a.    How the Government will protect British Citizens detained under this new law.

b.     What guidance they intend to give to companies and individuals engaged in trade with Saudi Arabia or conducting business in Saudi Arabia.

c.    What amendments they will make to the travel advice given on the FCO website on the risks visitors to Saudi Arabia may incur under the new law.

Tobias Ellwood Esq MP,

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH.

David says "... the failure to find a just settlement and a genuine peace process, has led to a further 35 years of hatred, lost lives, and lost opportunities.

David Alton's photographs of our visit to Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, 1980

''

More from Alex's lunch

At Lyulph's farewell lunch for Alex, who leaves for Nashville next week

At the NSS Awards

Speaking at the National Secular Society's Annual Awards, Saturday March 28 

YouTube video of speech.

At the National Secular Society's Awards celebration this afternoon, with Keith Porteous Wood, NSS Executive Director

Haematology

Blood results last 6 months

	25.03	2.03	21.01	24.12	26.11	29.10	Normal
Hb	98	98	101	104	109	100	130 - 180
WBC	3.15	3.36	3.52	4.0	3.02	3.1	4.5 - 10.0
Neutrophils	1.57	1.78	1.6	1.8	1.16	1.43	2.0 - 7.5
Plt	369	449	494	551	391	427	150 - 450

Platelets well inside normal range. They deal with clotting and if they get too high they cause thrombosis. Haemoglobin rather low but hydroxycarbamide dose, now 500 mg 5 days a week, stays the same. If it was lowered it would tend to improve Hb, but possibly reverse the Plt trend. WBC apparently on a downward trajectory, no comment on that, or on Neutrophils.

Lualua TV

Interview with Lualua TV http://bit.ly/1FXwRKZ

Alcohol duty

Osborne has reduced alcohol duties in this budget to the tune of £920 million over the next Parliament, on top of the much bigger loss of revenue from the earlier cancellation of the alcohol duty 'escalator' see bit.ly/19UxnOf. Not only do these concessions have to be paid for by equivalent cuts in public services, but they also increase the burdens on the health service and criminal justice system. It is the height of fiscal irresponsibility to encourage the consumption of alcohol when it already costs society £19 billion a year.

Progressio seminar March 17

With Bernie Morgan, Business Development Manager; Vanessa King of The Fire Inside; Mark Lister, Progressio CEO, and Safiye Ozuygun, founder of WAM Microfinance

With my old friend Dr Charles Tannock MEP, also a staunch supporter of the Ahmadiyya Muslims, at their National Peace Conference

Ahmadiyya Muslim National Peace Conference at the Baitul Futuh Mosque, Morden, March 14, 2015

With Idris Ahmad Bhatti, Vice President Ahmadiyya Muslim Association Slough and Idris Bowden from Burnham Park Academy in Buckinghamshire.
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My speech:

It is always a great privilege to attend the National Peace Symposium of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, an event which enables us to come together under the wise leadership of Your Holiness, and speak out for the forces of peace and of tolerance, across the boundaries of politics and religion. The Buddha said:

“Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed”

A statement that is echoed by the principle of the Ahmadis of Love for all and Hatred for none.

Yet we are having to confront forces of hatred and aggression that believe in promoting hatred and inciting violence against anybody who disagrees with them. I am concerned about the relentless campaign against religious minorities in Pakistan, and particularly the organised incitement against the Ahmadis by the Khatm-e-Nabuwwat, which is condoned by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Muslim League Nawaz Party. 

Ahmadis are already denied all the rights of citizenship, but fanatics and terrorists want to exile or exterminate them. They say so, and when they murder Ahmadis they openly declare their responsibility on the social media. 

The Foreign Office lists Pakistan as a Country of Concern in its world human rights report published earlier this week in which it specifically condemns the religiously motivated murder of at least 11 Ahmadis in 2014.

Increasingly, commentators are looking at hatred and its ideology on a wider international basis. The Khatm-e-Nabuwwat has branches all over the world including the UK where they try to persuade other Muslims to boycott Ahmadis and to organise against Ahmadi candidates at elections.

The terrorists who murder Ahmadis in Pakistan are also killing Shia, Christians, and Hindus. Their ultimate objective is to religiously cleanse the state of all who disagree with their brand of fundamentalism, which is similar to that of the Daesh, and the Daesh has announced its plans to extend their so-called caliphate into Pakistan and Afghanistan, naming individuals who were formerly leading figures in the Pakistan and Afghan Taliban as the local leader and deputy leader.

But the existence of a territory described as the reincarnation of the 7^th century caliphate and operating a system of governance and law based on how the nascent Islamic state was ruled under the rightly guided caliphs who succeeded the Prophet has a powerful romantic attraction. It cannot be overcome solely by military force, but requires an alternative vision of Islam such as the Ahmadiyya faith provides. 

Islam, like Christianity, has fragmented into different sects, the overwhelming majority of which believe in peaceful coexistence with other religions and beliefs. We have to be careful that in combating the Daesh we also deal at the same time with Islamophobia and acknowledge that the west contributed to the growth of extremism by military operations in Iraq and Libya which are widely seen as anti-Islamic. 

In the case of Afghanistan, as we remember the British servicemen who gave their lives for the creation of the present government of national unity, there is some hope that their sacrifice will ultimately lead to stability and to the elimination of the corrupt system of patronage that President Ghani is committed to removing.

The influence of the Ahmadiyya Jamaat in promoting peace in more than 200 countries, and through its aid organisation Humanity First in combating poverty and disease in the developing world, is immensely valuable and it is a matter of great pride to all of us that the international centre of the Jamaat is here in the UK. We are grateful to Your Holiness and your followers for the huge contribution you make to the welfare of humankind, and the example you set to the rest of us.

Bahrain Press Conference March 12, 2015

Video report see http://youtu.be/BRocAFVaCjY

My introductory remarks:

This press conference is being held to mark the fourth anniversary of the Saudi military intervention to help put down the uprising against the al-Khalifa autocracy that began in February 2011.

Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian feminist who lived in Saudi Arabia for six years between the ages of 7 and 15, condemns the hypocrisy of world leaders who flocked to pay their respects after the Saudi King Abdullah died in January. The Independent on Sunday reported her as saying

“I am horrified by the moral ambiguity that develops when a dictator dies”.

She says that Saudi Arabia is a “black hole of misogyny” that operates a system of “gender apartheid”, and that human rights abuses in the kingdom are ignored because of oil and because they spend billions of dollars on weapons.

She argues that if you want to cosy up to an ally, to do a business deal or to sell them weapons, say you will turn a blind eye to women’s rights and you will get what you want.

Saudi Arabia, unlike Bahrain, is listed as a Country of Concern by the Foreign Office. Their report is said to have been updated in January 2015, but the text refers entirely to events that happened in 2013 such as the expulsion of 150,000 unregistered migrant workers. There is no mention, for example, of the sentence of 10,000 lashes, a fine of $266,000, and ten years imprisonment passed on the writer Rauf Badawi in May 2014 for an article he published criticising the Saudi clerical establishment on his Free Saudi Liberals website.

Amnesty International reports that in 2014, the government severely restricted freedoms of expression, association and assembly, and cracked down on dissent, arresting and imprisoning critics, including human rights defenders. Many received unfair trials before courts that failed to respect due process, including a special anti-terrorism court that handed down death sentences. New legislation effectively equated criticism of the government and other peaceful activities with terrorism. The authorities clamped down on online activism and intimidated activists and family members who reported human rights violations. Discrimination against the Shi’a minority remained entrenched; some Shi’a activists were sentenced to death and scores received lengthy prison terms. Torture of detainees was reportedly common; courts convicted defendants on the basis of torture-tainted “confessions” and sentenced others to flogging. Women faced discrimination in law and practice, and were inadequately protected against sexual and other violence despite a new law criminalizing domestic violence. The authorities continued to detain and summarily expel thousands of foreign migrants, returning some to countries where they were at risk of serious human rights abuses.

Cornell University’s death penalty database records that the Saudis executed at least 87 people in 2014, and so far this year at least another 39.

Not a word of all this appears on the FCO website.

US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Saudi Arabia a week ago, but the US, like Britain, has been largely silent about executions and other gross and persistent human rights violations carried out by the Saudi autocrats.

Mr Kerry wasn’t in Riyadh to discuss human rights, but to reassure Prince Saud al-Faisal, the world’s longest serving foreign minister and son of the late King Faisal  that the US administration “was not pursuing a broader rapprochement with Iran that could come at the expense of its Arab rivals. “ (now where have we heard of a similar case of a record-breaking minister closely related to a monarch ).

It must be apparent, though, to Mr Kerry and Prince Saud that Iranian intervention in the military operation to clear the Daesh out of Tikrit, and later probably out of Mosul as well, helps enormously to accelerate the eradication of the terrorists from Iraq and Syria, and hence to eliminate the attraction of the so-called ‘caliphate’ to jihadists from all over the world, as well as its medium term threat to the whole region.

Returning to the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, the intention is clearly to help fellow hereditary autocrats to counter and extinguish the popular uprising that began four years ago and continues today. The al-Khalifas have no doubt learned some lessons from their Saudi big brothers about how to deal with bloggers, human rights defenders and peaceful opponents like Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and holder of awards from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Silbury Fund and Index on Censorship.. His appeal against a six month prison sentence for “denigrating government institutions” is being heard this coming Sunday, and he is facing a new charge of ‘inciting hatred against the regime’, which carries a three year prison sentence. These legal attacks on freedom of expression may well have been inspired by the Saudis, who enacted a law in February 2014 equating acts deemed to “undermine” or “destabilize” the state or society could   with terrorism.  

Nabeel’s plight, as well as the charges against Maryam and Zainab al –Khawaja, are ignored in the FCO Report mentioned earlier, and incidentally, we should note that as International Women’s Day was celebrated earlier this week, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights highlights the cases of 6 women activists out of the 300 who have been arrested, imprisoned, and tortured on false charges ranging from misuse of social media to harbouring fugitives to plotting terrorist attacks. We might suggest to the International Bar Association that they undertake a comparison of the laws criminalising the right to criticise the monarch or the government in Gulf states. 

Saudi Arabia’s ideology includes the doctrine that Wahabi Islam should have a monopoly of religious life in the kingdom, so Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and every other world religion is prohibited.  But since they can’t get rid of the one in five of their population who are Shia, they can only do their best to discourage and discriminate against their Shia subjects. The close alliance with Bahrain is based on that principle. Yesterday a new report on discrimination against the Shia in Bahrain was published by a consortium of human rights NGOs detailing the legal actions against Shia religious groups; the destruction of their mosques, and violence against their clergy.

Because the population of Bahrain is much smaller, however, its rulers think the problem can be solved by demographic engineering. Immigration of Sunnis from Jordan, Yemen and Pakistan is encouraged and the immigrants are given citizenship, housing and jobs, frequently in the security forces. Shia citizens are excluded from the public services, denied the rights of freedom of expression and assembly, subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture, extrajudicial execution and deprivation of citizenship, all under the protection of the Saudi armed forces.

This is not treated as a violation of the UN Charter, Article 2(4) of which prohibits states from using the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”, because Bahrain is deemed to have invited the Saudis in. The Charter doesn’t envisage the situation that exists here, where the inviting state is governed illegitimately by an autocracy that is opposed by two thirds of the people. Nor is there anything in the UN’s Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits he demographic engineering being practised by the al-Khalifas. We can only say from a distance what would be treated as a serious criminal offence if we could say it in Manama, that the political and military link with Saudi Arabia is profoundly inimical to the freedom of the people of Bahrain, but ultimately, the freedom and democracy we hoped for in the Arab spring will prevail.

March 14, 2015

This is the 53rd anniversary of the Orpington byelection bbc.in/1FlmaC7


Yesterday's debates on a fresh intrusion of religion into the business of local authorities: http://bit.ly/1NV2d91

UK and UNICEF help Syrian refugees

With Michael Sheen at UNICEF tea reception March 10

LibDems celebrate the passing of
Michael Moore's Bill requiring
future Governments to spend 0.7%
of national income on overseas aid.
March 9, 2015

Haematology

	02.03.15	21.01.15	24.12.14	26.11.1	29.10.14	Normal
Hb	98	101	104	109	100	130 - 180
WBC	3.36	3.52	4	3.02	3.1	4.5 - 10.0
Neutrophils	1.78	1.6	1.8	1.16	1.43	2.0 - 7.5
Plt	449	494	551	391	427	150 - 450

The latest results came from the GP, so I telephoned them to the cancer specialist nurse at Kings, to pass on to the haematology consultants in case they were minded to reduce the dose of hydroxcarbamide. This would halt the decrease in platelets over the last two readings, and increase the haemoglobin, which is now below the 100 mark. The next haematology consultation isn't until the end of the month.