Lashed Saudi blogger Raif: Prince Charles has word with new king The UK's Prince Charles has raised the issue of the fate of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi with Saudi Arabia's newly appointed King Salman during a six-day state visit to the region. Badawi was found guilty in 2013 of insulting Islam in Facebook posts and of running an online activist message board called Liberal Saudi Network that …
This always cheers me up. When the old Saudi king came on a visit to the UK in 2007 (I think) the Welsh guard played Darth Vader's Imperial March as a lightweight protest/commentary about Saudi policy and actions. It's a pretty good news report and goes to show that nothing much has changed.
All the receiving dignitaries have my undying respect for keeping straight faces...I would have howled.
I was over there many years ago when I was 15 and we were walking through Tabuk when we were accosted by a crowd and pushed to the front to view whatever it was they were looking at.
They were stoning a woman to death. For adultery. Apparently her husband had cast her off and she took a lover, but technically still being married she was sentenced to death and they tried to force us (children) to watch them carry out the sentence.
Fotrunately I was already 6ft and the other lad with us was quite stocky and we forced our way out of the crowd, but it makes my blood boil to this day.
Fucking animals.
"All the receiving dignitaries have my undying respect for keeping straight faces...I would have howled."
Yep, same from my side. Have an upvote.
Really good to see the ol' sacrcastic UK (Wales is still part of UK, I think :-) humor can also be put into official guard music.
I wish we french can do that as well. Sadly, it won't happen here.
as one of our (if not biggest) Arms customers, the best we can hope for is that the rest of his punishment isnt publicised.
Although i do have to agree with Jake, they are mostly barbaric bastards who we should have no dealings with at all....
Instead of buying their oil, we should invest in nuclear power.
by nuclear cars you mean electric where the electricity was generated by a nuclear reactor? because I'm all for it!!! As soon as batteries make a large leap forward in their ability to store energy and be charged faster... 150 miles isn't going to cut it, especially on this (the American) side of the pond.
thermonuclear icon for the batteries, not nuke plants :)
Chaz can speak to the new ruler but the judiciary and the executive are separate entities. The judiciary have passed judgement using the laws as they are now. The executive can change the laws to avoid this in the future but all that the current King can do is to offer a pardon.
"but all that the current King can do is to offer a pardon."
Yes, but I'm not sure why you say 'all' when that outcome is exactly what everybody would like. All that needs to happen is for the king to give him the pardon. (And ideally the laws get changed/no longer abused).
doing bad stuff? Huhm, OK.
I am reminded of a discussion some colleagues had recently in which one of my compadres absolutely railed against someone else. The substance of the accusations was correct, but the rest of us didn't think of that, we were too distracted wondering who pissed in my amigo's cornflakes that morning and those present who were new to the issue only took away that my amigo is an asshat.
All you people who are loudly claiming that this corporal punishment is "barbaric" need to see the actual video of him being "lashed".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd3dh9sy2SE
Each hit Is little more than a tap with a thin cane perfomed over clothing. It appears to hardly inflict discomfort, let alone any real pain or physical injury. The cane at our school in 1970's UK was way worse than that.
Since this is also taking place in a public square, It seems very clear that the punishment is actually all about public humiliation rather than anything corporal. Since seeing the video, I for one don't think its so bad as punishments go. if it was me I'd easily choose such a lashing over serving prison time.
if you really want to something worthwhile to complain about around this case, it should be his incarcertation, or better yet, the fact that he got punished at all for just blogging. The lashing part actually seems a relatively insignificant issue now I've seen it.
But one week after 50 of these "little more than taps", doctors state he cannot undergo a repeat of this "public humiliation rather than anything corporal" as it might kill him?
Utter crap. You should be ashamed of yourself, and I hope you are.
Well, I don't think the doctor is likely to be risking his* own skin in order to delay the patient suffering, given the ease of obtaining a second opinion and dislike that legal systems worldwide have of anyone trying to stymie their sentence.
And hypertension doesn't normally carry a significant risk of death in the short term, so I doubt very much that that has much to do with the punishment/delay. It can be present from pain, so perhaps the pain from 50 lashes is sufficient to drive an already elevated BP to dangerous levels, but this would appear to suggest physical injury... I don't actually know enough to provide a firm professional opinion however, as my medical education did not include how to mediate torture.
Hypertension is merely a risk factor for vascular (arterial) badness (such as heart attacks/strokes/aortic aneurysms/peripheral vascular disease), so maybe the doctor was concerned that his BP of say 160/90 was enough that he'd have a chance of being >220/110 during the torturelashes, and this was concerning enough that the doc didn't want to be responsible for signing off on him being in a fit state. This is guesswork, based on how doctors behave and what you state about the hypertension being the reason for delay.
* somehow I think it's unlikely to be a her.
Okay, I fully understand (and agree with) all the comments about how barbaric this is and so forth. BUT, am I really the first to be more surprised that someone is suggesting that Prince Charles is a good person to raise a sensitive international issue without causing offence?
Prince Charles is a chip of the old block if ever there was one.
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