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Saudi Arabia’s System of Injustice
by Philippa Kaur 18 May 2021, 10:43
In February, Mohammed bin Salman announced an overhaul of the Saudi judicial system with plans to bring in four new laws: the personal status law, the civil transactions law, the penal code of discretionary sanctions and the law of evidence. The crown prince was quoted as saying that “The new laws represent a new wave of reforms that will … increase the reliability of procedures and oversight mechanisms as cornerstones in achieving the principles of justice, clarifying the lines of accountability.”
On April 25, in a nationally televised interview with the journalist Abdullah al-Mudaifer, bin Salman detailed his thinking behind the new laws:
“If you want tourists to come here … If you aim to attract 100 million tourists to create three million jobs, and you say that you are following something new other than common laws and international norms, then those tourists will not come to you. If you want to double foreign investments, as if we have done, from five million to 17 million, and you tell investors to invest in your country that is running on an unknown system that their lawyers do not know how to navigate nor know how those regulations are applied and enforced, then those investors will just cut their losses and not invest all together.”
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The laws, and the justification for introducing them, are the culmination of the campaign by the crown prince to wrench the power and control of the judiciary from the religious elite. That conquest is now complete. In the interview, bin Salman adopted the stance of a religious scholar, determining which hadiths — the sayings of the prophet — should be followed and which should be either challenged or ignored. “The government, where Sharia is concerned,” he told al-Mudaifer, “has to implement Quran regulations and teachings in mutawater hadiths, and to look into the veracity and reliability of ahad hadiths, and to disregard ‘khabar’ hadiths entirely, unless if a clear benefit is derived from it for humanity.”
He posited, too, that while jurisprudence remains rooted in the Quran, holding to the interpretations and edicts of Muhammed bin Abdulwahhab — the 18th-century theologian and founder of the harshly austere version of Islam that has come to be called Wahhabism — can be dispensed with: “If Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdulwahhab were with us today and he found us committed blindly to his texts and closing our minds to interpretation and jurisprudence while deifying and sanctifying him he would be the first to object to this.”
Neither Compassionate nor Fair
The centuries-long alliance between the House of Saud and Wahhabism was sundered in a sentence, an intolerant version of Islam replaced with tolerance, jurisprudence liberated from the shackles of a hidebound theology. It’s what the crown prince likes to call a return to “moderate” Islam. Or so he would have his kingdom and the world believe. But the legal system that bin Salman has appropriated to his own purposes is neither compassionate nor fair. One repressive system has been replaced by another.
Abdulrahman al-Sadhan is a 37-year-old humanitarian aid worker. He was arrested at his Red Crescent office in Riyadh in 2018 and disappeared into the kingdom’s vast and labyrinthine prison system. In nearly three years, his family had only one brief phone call from him. Then, according to his sister Areej, the family received a second call: “we were overjoyed to hear his voice on Feb. 22, and even more elated when he told us he would soon be released,” she wrote in a Washington Post article. But the joy was short-lived. On April 5, the Specialized Criminal Court that deals with terrorism offenses sentenced Abdulrahman to 20 years, with a 20-year travel ban to follow upon his release. His crime was that he had anonymously tweeted criticisms of repression in the kingdom.
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The rights group gc4hr.org details the travesty of a court process that Abdulrahman was put through. This is a description of just one of the proceedings: “On 22 March 2021, another secret hearing took place. The lawyer was informed of it at the last moment and when he attended the court, the hearing was over. The Public Prosecutor presented his objections to the defense’s response during the hearing. His father was unable to attend this hearing as he was not informed of it despite the fact that he was confirmed as a legal guardian.”
The rights organization ALQYST reported that during his detention Abdulrahman was “subjected to severe torture and sexual harassment including, but not limited to, electric shocks, beatings that caused broken bones, flogging, suspension in stress positions, death threats, insults, verbal humiliation and solitary confinement.”
Disappearing Into the System
Others who have fallen into Mohammed bin Salman’s legal system include the moderate cleric Salman al-Odah, detained in 2017. He was brought before the Specialized Criminal Court in 2018 with the public prosecutor declaring he was seeking the death penalty. On December 30 last year, his son tweeted that in denying his father medical treatment, the authorities were carrying out “a slow killing.”
The conservative cleric Sulaiman al-Dowaish disappeared in 2016, the day after he had tweeted criticisms of the crown prince. According to another human rights group based in Geneva, the cleric was brought before Mohammed bin Salman in chains. The prince “forced Dowaish onto his knees and began to personally assault him — punching him in the chest and throat, and berating him about his tweets. Dowaish, bleeding excessively from his mouth, lost consciousness.” Aside from a phone call in 2018, the family has heard nothing since and fear that he is dead.
In his interview, bin Salman told al-Mudaifer: “Extremism in all things is wrong, and our Prophet PBUH talked in one of his hadiths about a day when extremists will surface and he ordered them killed when they do so. … Being an extremist in anything, whether in religion or our culture or our Arabhood, is a serious matter.” The threat is as naked as it is explicit. In Mohammed bin Salman’s world of justice, an extremist is anyone who criticizes him or calls for curbs on the repressive police state he has enforced on the kingdom.
Abdulrahman al-Sadhan has filed an appeal, but his family has been denied any visits or phone calls. Their hope is that international pressure, and particularly an intervention from the Biden administration, will lead to his release. Other families of the incarcerated and the disappeared, who number in the thousands, cling to the same hope.
*[This article was originally published Arab Digest.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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in World Politics
Biden Washes His Hands of the Israel-Palestine Affair
by Philippa Kaur 17 May 2021, 15:01
Faced with a serious clash in Jerusalem between two communities divided on the subject of religion, the Roman Empire’s man of the hour, its colonial governor Pontius Pilate made the bold decision to suppress his own opinion and not to intervene in the debate. As a patriotic polytheist, he had no time to waste on disputes concerning monotheistic truth. Instead, he washed his hands before the raging mob. He let those who held local power and who shouted the loudest have their way. His action, dating from two thousand years ago, eventually spawned the proverbial expression, “To wash your hands of the affair.”
When a far more violent crisis broke out in Jerusalem last week, US President Joe Biden demonstrated his own firm resolution to steer clear of an escalating conflict that had begun in East Jerusalem and has now reached beyond Israel’s borders into Lebanon and Jordan. Biden has taken up his post at the washbasin to avoid having to speculate about the truth.
White America’s Burden in the Holy Land
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In a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Wednesday, Biden reaffirmed the position traditionally taken by all recent US presidents that consists of deferring to Israel’s every wish. Netanyahu appreciated Biden’s compliance. He reiterated to the media the logic the Biden administration endorsed: “They have upheld our natural and self-evident right to defend ourselves, to act in self-defense against these terrorists who both attack civilians and hide behind civilians.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Self-evident:
Unquestionably true, especially when the assertion corresponds to one’s self-interest
Contextual Note
When a modern politician bandies about the adjective “self-evident,” it inevitably evokes Thomas Jefferson’s famous words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
As a child of the European Enlightenment, Jefferson built his reasoning on philosophical grounds that appear beyond the scope of Bibi Netanyahu’s commitment to self-interested expediency. What Jefferson described as self-evident were “truths.” In contrast, Netanyahu evokes “rights” he considers self-evident, specifically the right to violate international law when Israel feels threatened. Jefferson’s “truths” are the equivalent of axioms in mathematics. They stand as true without being derived logically from any other truth. Netanyahu’s “rights” are self-declared rather than self-evident.
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Jefferson modeled his thought on the political philosophy of the English philosopher John Locke, a proponent of government by consent of the governed. Locke insisted on the government’s requirement to respect its citizens’ “life, liberty and property.” Jefferson extended the meaning of “property” by calling it “the pursuit of happiness.” Even non-property owners in a democracy could thus be deemed citizens. (That of course excluded slaves, including Jefferson’s own slaves, who existed as the property of property owners).
Most modern politicians have lost all interest in philosophy. They prefer to evoke half-remembered philosophical concepts and use them as meaningless rhetorical placeholders. In his attempt to sound Jeffersonian, Netanyahu expediently skips an important step in Locke’s and Jefferson’s political reasoning: the philosopher’s insistence that a government’s legitimacy is derived from the consent of the governed. That ultimately means that political rights exist not as self-evident principles but as an effect of the law, which is the expression of a social and political consensus serving to limit rather than expand the government’s capacity for aggression.
Netanyahu takes the Jeffersonian idea of a self-evident truth about political systems, turns it on its head and transforms it into the inalienable right of the government to violate the rights of the people under its jurisdiction. Concerning self-evident truths, Locke wrote: “I may warn men not to make an ill use of them, for the confirming themselves in errors.”
Some justly accuse Jefferson of cheating, having glossed over the paradox of slavery while asserting that all men are created equal. Netanyahu’s insistence on Israel’s “self-evident right” to self-defense places him closer to Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher of passive obedience to governmental authority, than to Locke. Hobbes’ emphasized the idea of “sovereignty by institution.” It supposes citizens voluntarily yield their rights to the institution and cannot contest its sovereignty.
Bibi naturally assumes the Jews have transferred their rights to his government. He also expects the Israeli Arabs — citizens who theoretically, but not in practice, have equal rights with the Jews — to do the same, but they now may be revolting. As for the Palestinians in the occupied territories, the only rights they can claim are derived from international law, which the Israeli government routinely flouts.
The current strife in Jerusalem began with the cynical, supposedly legally justified expulsion of Palestinians, who had been living in their homes in East Jerusalem for decades after the forced reassignment of residency that followed the Palestinian exodus in 1948. This demonstrates how far from the self-evident truths of Jefferson and Locke the supposedly democratic Israeli government has veered. Property even for Arab citizens of Israel is a purely relative concept. As for life and liberty, the Gazans, in their open-air prison, have no hope of enjoying such rights.
Historical Note
When the Israelis destroyed the building housing the offices of AP and Al Jazeera in Gaza City on Saturday, they demonstrated their disdain for the liberty of the press. Americans and the US government should be appalled at this violation of what they deem to be sacred “constitutional” values. But it has become evident — if not self-evident — that the Biden administration has no interest in promoting a moral reading of the events in Israel. Calling for a voluntary ceasefire is admirable but will have no effect. When he expressed his “hope … that we will see this coming to a conclusion sooner than later,” he appeared hopeful but helpless.
In his victory speech in November, Biden insisted that the nation’s vocation was to “lead by the force of its example and not the example of force.” Faced with the current crisis, he is neither showing an example nor leading, but rather following Israel’s example of leading by force. Many are wondering whether the very idea of leadership by the United States hasn’t lost its former meaning.
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In February, clownish UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson effusively announced that “Joe Biden has put the United States back as leader of the free world in a fantastic move that has helped the West to unite.” Johnson was reacting to the speech in which Biden promised to return to the Paris Climate Agreement and move forward with the Iran nuclear deal. The return to the climate accord took place effortlessly but appears to be of little consequence. As for the Iran deal, negotiations have been engaged but possibly too late to expect any enduring success.
The Biden administration’s anemic reaction to the growing crisis in the Middle East demonstrates that, rather than confirming the nation’s status as “leader of the free world,” it would be more apt to call it “the follower of an apartheid state.” A 2017 article in The Atlantic pointed to the persistent but absurd habit reigning in the media of referring to the US president as the “leader of the free world.” The idea of dividing the globe into the free and the unfree worlds theoretically disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union. This time around, what has disappeared is the very idea of American leadership. Fewer and fewer countries believe in it. Biden’s hesitations and inaction on various important issues illustrate why.
Martin Indyck, writing for Foreign Affairs, offers a realistic analysis of the stakes and tactics underlying the superficial game the various concerned parties have been playing in the current crisis. He concludes that “the most basic instincts of the Biden administration are correct.” This is reassuring for the administration, but Indyck may not have noticed the long-term deterioration of the world’s perception of US leadership. He may be mistaken when he sees little risk in simply throwing up one’s hands at yet another Middle East crisis and hoping for a return to “normal.”
Pontius Pilate’s disinfected hands played a role in launching the religion that would eventually dominate Europe. Still, Pilate’s Roman Empire thrived for another three centuries before one of its emperors, Constantine, decided to turn it over to the Christians. How long does Biden expect his empire to last?
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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in World Politics
Israel Must Accept ICC Jurisdiction Over Palestine
by Philippa Kaur 6 May 2021, 15:32
On February 5, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Seven years after the 2014 Gaza conflict, in which war crimes were committed by both Israel and armed Palestinian groups according to the United Nations, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda confirmed a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine, which Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been calling for since 2016. On April 27, HRW released a 213-page report detailing Israel’s “crimes of apartheid and persecution.” An ICC investigation is a crucial step toward regional peace, which cannot be achieved without accountability and transitional justice.
However, amidst the process of diplomatic normalization with Arab states, Israel is compromising the prospects of peace by refusing to take responsibility for the injustices committed against Palestinian civilians, including children. To achieve peace in the Middle East, and particularly with the Palestinians, Israel must recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and be held accountable for any war crimes committed.
The ICC Has Stepped on a Political Minefield in Palestine
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labeled the ICC ruling as “pure anti-Semitism” and claimed that the court is a “political” body rather than a judicial one. He said that the ICC should be investigating Syria and Iran instead. This is but one example of the pattern of deflection displayed by the Israeli state when confronted with the reality of the war crimes committed during its occupation of Palestinian territories.
Netanyahu’s claims that the ICC decision is politicized or anti-Semitic are an unfounded effort at deflection and denial. First, though Syria and Iran have not been prosecuted by the ICC, these regimes are subject to a wide range of US and UN-sponsored sanctions, as well as political isolation, to which Israel is unlikely to be subjected. In a sense, these countries are already being “punished.” Second, holding Syria and Iran accountable for their own crimes and investigating possible Israeli war crimes are not mutually exclusive processes. Finally, the ICC ruling did not exclusively target Israel or its defense force, the IDF; Palestinian Hamas was also named as a potential perpetrator of war crimes and will be investigated as such.
This deflection strategy is not an unusual response to ICC investigations. It parallels the US attempt to thwart ICC investigations of American military misconduct in Afghanistan, which is similarly delaying the Afghan peace process.
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Accountability matters, not only for Palestinians who have been denied their human rights during the conflict but also for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and for cooperation in the region more broadly. The climate of impunity enjoyed by Israel only fuels the frustration of Palestinians and, worse, makes the rhetoric of groups such as Hamas more compelling. Peacebuilding experts have also long argued that accountability is central to a successful peace process. For example, the indictments of Charles Taylor of Liberia and Radovan Karadzic of Bosnia strongly contributed to peaceful outcomes in both countries.
Before Israel can be held accountable, it must first recognize ICC jurisdiction. However, given the Israeli government’s continued push for annexation and the US sanctions against the ICC, this scenario is unlikely. Nonetheless, any form of accountability would be a positive start and an important step toward peace. Accountability can take many forms, ranging from state recognition of injustice to judicial punishment of individual perpetrators.
Any accountability process should also include Palestinians at the table. It is time for the Israeli leadership to spearhead the peace process — not through other Arab states, but through an honest accountability process with Palestinians. The best starting point would be for Israel to recognize ICC jurisdiction.
*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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in World Politics
Israel Is the Rock on Which US Foreign Policy Is Built
by Philippa Kaur 27 April 2021, 13:09
International military cooperation can take many forms. When pushed to the extreme, it can even turn into its opposite. What was meant to protect from danger can sometimes become the fact that precipitates an unwanted conflict. For that reason, most nations now seek to avoid the once popular idea of mutual defense treaties. Such agreements tend to bind each of the parties to supporting and participating in a war that one of them may provoke or be provoked into. It may also have the effect of alienating otherwise friendly nations, who suddenly find themselves cast in the role of the enemy. This not only constrains the ordinary foreign policy of both nations but may, at unforeseen moments, force them into situations over which they have no control.
One example of the risk attached to a mutual defense treaty is currently playing out in the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte. The Biden administration is attempting to mobilize its historical allies in a complex effort to counter Chinese expansion. For over a century, the US and the Philippines have been militarily joined at the hip. All that changed with the arrival of the mercurial Duterte. An article in The Diplomat recounts the successive phases of a truly rocambolesque relationship marked by “the volatility and unpredictably that Duterte has injected into the U.S.-Philippine alliance since 2016. … Despite the Biden administration’s attempts to reset the U.S.-Philippine alliance, Duterte remains an unstable factor in the equation.”
Whereas most nations studiously avoid engaging in mutual defense treaties, the US has long been an exception. This is the consequence of positioning itself as the leader of multiple military alliances and its imperial need to establish hundreds of military bases across the entire globe. But unlike traditional bilateral mutual defense partnerships, the US typically cultivates an asymmetrical balance.
Israel Will Continue Disregarding International Law
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In Europe it’s a different story. However close its relationship with developed nations such as the UK, France or Germany following the Second World War, the US could not be bound bilaterally to follow the eventual warlike initiatives of any of those nations. Europe and the US solved that problem by creating NATO, effectively spreading the responsibility across a range of partner countries while creating and entertaining the belief that the only real threat came from the Soviet Union.
Then there’s the case of the curious military alliance between the US and Israel. Never has an alliance appeared more subject to irrational emotion than this one. This past week its irrationality led to a skirmish between lawmakers in Washington over the memorandum of understanding on “security assistance” signed by President Barack Obama in 2016. This was Obama’s parting gift to Israel, a country with whom he had maintained a somewhat uncomfortable relationship due largely to the brazenly irrational behavior of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The MOU was a pledge of American support with hard cash over 10 years.
Al Jazeera describes the showdown. When “progressive Democratic legislators proposed a bill seeking to regulate American assistance in an effort to stop human rights abuse against Palestinians,” they didn’t have to wait long for the response of their colleagues, who were in no mood for a subtle debate. Citing “particularly strong bipartisan backing” for unconditional support by the US government of Israel, a group of 300 legislators made it clear that Israel is the one country of whom no questions will ever be asked and on whom no conditions may ever be imposed. The legislators explained why no debate is possible: “American security assistance to Israel helps counter these threats, and our rock-solid security partnership serves as a deterrent against even more significant attacks on our shared interests.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Shared interests:
A basis of agreement and mutual indulgence between two or more people ranging from cultural tastes in the consumption of music and art and participation in mutually profitable activities at one extreme to the taste for domination and genocidal pacification at another extreme.
Contextual Note
In a paragraph listing the reasons for their unwavering support, the lawmakers begin by citing the most recent assault on Israel’s well-being: “Israel continues to face direct threats from Iran and its terrorist proxies. In February, an Israeli-owned ship in the Gulf of Oman was hit by a mysterious explosion that Israel has attributed as an attack by Iran.” The lawmakers feel no need to mention that only days earlier, the Israelis had admitted to assassinating an Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in November 2020. Nor did they feel compelled to cite Israel’s spectacular attack on Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz this month. Israel has created a state of ongoing war that could at any moment spin out of control, setting the entire Middle East ablaze.
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To complicate things, all observers are aware of the fact that the Israelis are driven by their opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, President Obama’s initiative that, as candidate, Biden had said he would seek to piece back together after Donald Trump’s impetuous withdrawal and aggressive attack on the partners who wished to maintain it. In short, Israel has been actively and boldly seeking through legal and illegal means (assassination, sabotage) to undermine the Biden administration’s official US foreign policy. In normal times, the last thing lawmakers would suggest is offering that nation “unconditional” support.
What precisely are the “shared interests” the American lawmakers are referring to? They mention “U.S. national security interests in a highly challenging region.” Recent history has shown the US challenging the region rather than the region challenging the US. Initiating violent and endless wars, from Pakistan to Libya and Somalia, can hardly be called a case of being challenged. Neither is supporting Saudi Arabia’s catastrophic war in Yemen — as the US is continuing to do despite the Biden administration’s pullback — a case of being challenged.
Historical Note
The entire history of Israel since its creation in 1948 is fraught with moral and political ambiguity. At the time, the West in general and Britain in particular played a neo-colonial game that has led to decades of violence, oppressive behavior and permanent regional instability. The plight of the Palestinian people constitutes one of the modern tragedies of history. This week, Human Rights Watch reported that “Israel is committing ‘crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.’”
Morally ambiguous situations such as this should logically require nuanced policies aimed at resolving tensions and establishing some sort of permanent equilibrium. Biden’s secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, solemnly announced in Israel last week that “Our commitment to Israel is enduring and it is iron-clad.” Unconditional support, “rock-solid security partnerships” and iron-clad commitment should not even be considered in such cases. And yet those are the only metaphors permitted within the Beltway when speaking of Israel.
The lawmakers cite Israel’s support for “security partners like Jordan and Egypt,” which they see as instrumental in helping to “promote regional stability and deal with common challenges from Iran and its terrorist proxies.” Egypt happens to be a brutal military dictatorship, but so long as dictators can ensure some form of stability, they seem to correspond to the lawmakers’ essential criterion as “partners.”
In their conclusion, the lawmakers write, “Just as foreign assistance is an investment in advancing our values and furthering our global interests, security aid to Israel is a specific investment in the peace and prosperity of the entire Middle East.” This might have sounded slightly less irrational had they simply eliminated the phrase “advancing our values.” What values? The rule of law? Israel itself has been violating all the laws and resolutions imposed by the international organization that validated its creation, the United Nations. The “security partners” with whom the US has built alliances are essentially sanguinary military dictatorships who have no time for democracy, freedom, due process, “liberty and justice for all” or any of the “values” Americans traditionally vaunt and flaunt as their legacy.
There is little doubt that the legislators will get their way. The progressive attempt to offer even a small margin of maneuver to US foreign policy with regard to Israel will be dismissed out of hand as an obvious act of impertinence. Everything will return to normal. That is, after all, what Biden himself promised.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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The Case of Forced Cremations in Sri Lanka
by Philippa Kaur 25 April 2021, 19:47
From 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka saw a bloody civil war between the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The conflict led to invaluable losses both economically and politically. To this day, the deep socio-religious wounds have yet to heal on the island in South Asia.
Since the war ended, there have been intermittent episodes of violence between ethnoreligious groups. Although the patterns seem similar, different communities are now involved in the confrontations. The focus has shifted to make Sri Lankan Muslims — who make up around 9.7% of the country’s total population — the new target of extreme Buddhist Sinhalese factions that jumped on the bandwagon of rising Islamophobia.
Islamophobia in Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka, Muslims are defined by faith, not ethnicity since they are neither Tamil nor Sinhalese. During Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidential term in office from 2005 to 2015, as well as under incumbent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Muslims experienced a rise in Islamophobia. Acts perceived as anti-Muslim include calls, in 2013, by a hardline Buddhist Sinhalese group to boycott halal food items. In 2019, the government banned burqas following the Easter Sunday bombings in which Islamist militants killed 269 people at churches and hotels.
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The most serious incidents involving the Muslim community since the end of the war took place in Aluthgama in 2014, Gintota in 2017 and the Ampara and Kandy’s districts in 2018. Acts of violence involved the burning of mosques, the destruction of Muslim-owned property, the displacement of thousands of civilians and the loss of lives.
The brutal attack on Easter Sunday led to, among other things, the draconian application of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which increased pressure on an already scrutinized minority. A well-known example of this backlash against Muslims was the case of Mohamed Shafi, a gynecologist at the Kurunegala Hospital. Shafi was arrested in 2019 under the PTA on trumped-up charges of illegally sterilizing Sinhalese women. Hejaaz Hizbullah, a senior lawyer, peace advocate and human rights activist, is currently in detention under the PTA. He has been accused of “aiding and abetting” one of the suicide bombers who attacked churches on Easter Sunday and “for engaging in activities deemed ‘detrimental to the religious harmony among communities.’”
Forced Cremations
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided the perfect breeding ground for far-right governments to bulldoze the human rights of minorities. In Sri Lanka, Muslims have been the target.
Embed from Getty Images
In December 2020, Fahim, a three-wheeler taxi driver, and his wife mourned not only the death of their 20-day-old son, but the forced cremation of his tiny body by state authorities. The newborn was admitted to the hospital, where he passed away after contracting COVID-19. Fahim was denied access to his son’s corpse and, despite refusing to give his consent, the baby was cremated just days later.
That family’s grief was felt by many Muslims across Sri Lanka. Since COVID-19 first reached Sri Lanka in early 2020, the government announced a mandatory cremation-only policy. The government claimed this was to prevent the possible spread of the disease by coming into contact with infected corpses. The policy alarmed Sri Lankan Muslims as cremation is forbidden in Islam. Several petitions and pleas were made by the minority community to allow for the burial of their loved ones. Yet the Sri Lankan state, which has a long history of violence against minorities, refused to change its policy for over a year.
The anguish experienced by Sri Lankan Muslims was by itself a great burden to bear during these unprecedented times. But the state did not hold back on delivering further blows to the community. According to Amnesty International, families were “forced to bear the cost of cremation, typically around LKR 50,000-60,000 (approximately USD270-325), in a year that has economically strained many families.” The human rights organization stated, in December 2020, that many families led a difficult and painful protest by refusing to accept the ashes and making the associated payments required for cremating their loved ones.
Burying the Dead
In April 2020, Sri Lankan Muslims saw a glimmer of hope when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that burials were safe. The WHO announced that there is no evidence to suggest that the coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, can spread from an infected corpse. Meanwhile, in December, top Sri Lankan doctors released a statement urging for the burial of Muslim victims of COVID-19. They stated that “each citizen of Sri Lanka should be allowed to be cremated or buried as per his/her and the family’s desire within the strict guidelines recommended by the Ministry of Health.”
Despite expert opinions and recommendations to allow COVID-19 victims to be buried, the Sri Lankan government claimed that doing so “could contaminate ground water.” In an interview with the BBC, Professor Malik Peiris, a world-renowned Sri Lankan virologist, stated that COVID-19 is “not a waterborne disease.” He added: “I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest it spreads through dead bodies. A virus can only multiply in a living cell. Once a person dies, the ability of the viruses to multiply decreases. … Dead bodies aren’t buried right in running water. Once you bury the body six feet under wrapped in impermeable wrapping, it is highly unlikely it would contaminate running water.”
In January 2021, an expert panel appointed by Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Health revised its initial guidelines by approving either burying or cremating COVID-19 victims. But the minister of health, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, chose to ignore the recommendation. She said in parliament that “the decision to cremate COVID dead in Sri Lanka will not be amended on religious, political or any other grounds.” She claimed a sub-committee said corpses should be cremated.
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Sri Lankan Muslims have raised concerns at how the community reacted to the state-sanctioned racism. In January, Sri Lanka’s Muslim Council (SLMC) claimed that more than half of the island’s COVID-19 victims were from the Muslim community. “We have a disproportionate number of fatalities because Muslims don’t seek treatment fearing that they will be cremated if they are diagnosed with the virus after going to hospital,” spokesman Hilmy Ahamed told AFP.
The SLMC and Sri Lanka’s justice minister, Ali Sabry, accused the government of trying to provoke the youth into doing “something rash” by refusing to allow Muslims to bury their dead. There have been no reports of isolated incidents or evidence of young Muslims taking to violence in response.
Under Pressure
While Muslims were singled out by the state and Buddhist Sinhalese hardliners, they received support from religious leaders and Sri Lankans of other faiths. Acts of solidarity took place in recent months and many Sri Lankans spoke out against the cremation-only policy. The government, which is losing public confidence over its handling of the pandemic, had been under intense pressure to overturn its decision. Aside from concerned citizens, international bodies such as the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemned the forced cremations.
On February 22, as the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) commenced its 46th annual session, Sri Lanka was in a precarious position. With a backlog of war crimes that remained unaddressed, a UNHRC resolution against Sri Lanka loomed. On February 25, the Sri Lankan government issued its official gazette, finally allowing Muslim and Christian victims of COVID-19 to be buried.
*[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Athletes Shake Up Sports Governance
by Philippa Kaur 14 April 2021, 14:30
Sports governance worldwide has had its legs knocked out from under it. Yet national and international sports administrators are slow in realizing the magnitude of what has hit them. Tectonic plates underlying the guiding principle that sports and politics are unrelated have shifted, driven by a struggle against racism and a quest for human rights and social justice.
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The principle was repeatedly challenged over the last year by athletes and businesses forcing national and international sports federations to either support anti-racist protest or, at the very least, refrain from penalizing those who use their sport to oppose racism and promote human rights and social justice — acts that are political by definition. The assault on what is a convenient fiction that sports and politics do not mix started in the US. This was not only the result of Black Lives Matter protests on US streets, but also the fact that, in contrast to the fan-club relationship in most of the world, American sports clubs and associations see fans as clients — and the client is king.
From Football to F1
The assault moved to Europe in the last month with the national football teams of Norway, Germany and the Netherlands wearing T-shirts during qualifiers for the 2022 FIFA World Cup that supported human rights and change. The European sides added their voices to perennial criticism of migrant workers’ rights in Qatar, the host of next year’s World Cup. Gareth Southgate, the manager of the English national team, said the Football Association was discussing migrant rights in the Gulf state with Amnesty International.
While Qatar is the focus in Europe, greater sensitivity to human rights appears to be moving beyond. Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton told a news conference in Bahrain ahead of this season’s opening Grand Prix that there “are issues all around the world, but I do not think we should be going to these countries and just ignoring what is happening in those places, arriving, having a great time and then leave.” Hamilton has been prominent in speaking out against racial injustice and social inequality since the National Football League in the US endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement and players taking the knee during the playing of the American national anthem in protest against racism.
Embed from Getty Images
In a dramatic break with its ban on “any political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images” on the pitch, FIFA, the governing body of world football, said it would not open disciplinary proceedings against the European players who wore the T-shirts. “FIFA believes in the freedom of speech and in the power of football as a force for good,” a spokesperson said.
The statement constituted an implicit acknowledgment that standing up for human rights and social justice was inherently political. It raises the question of how FIFA will reconcile its stand on human rights with its statutory ban on political expression. It makes maintaining the fiction of a separation between politics and sports ever more difficult to defend. It also opens the door to a debate on how the inseparable relationship that joins sports and politics at the hip like Siamese twins should be regulated.
Georgia’s Voting Law
Signaling that a flood barrier may have collapsed, Major League Baseball this month said it would be moving its 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to a new law in the US state of Georgia that threatens to potentially restrict voting access for people of color. In a shot across the bow to FIFA and other international sports associations, major companies headquartered in Georgia, including Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines and Home Depot, adopted political positions in their condemnation of the Georgia voting law.
The greater assertiveness of athletes and corporations in speaking out for fundamental rights and against racism and discrimination will make it increasingly difficult for sports associations to uphold the fiction of a separation between politics and sports. The willingness of FIFA, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), and other national and international associations to look the other way when athletes take their support for rights and social justice to the sports arena has let the genie out of the bottle. It has sawed off the legs of the FIFA principle that players’ “equipment must not have any political, religious or personal slogans.”
Already, the US committee has said it would not sanction American athletes who choose to raise their fists or kneel on the podium at this July’s Tokyo Olympic Games as well as future tournaments. The decision puts the USOPC at odds with the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) strict rule against political protest. The IOC suspended and banned US medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos after the sprinters raised their fists on the podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to protest racial inequality in the United States.
Regulation
Acknowledging the incestuous relationship between sports and politics will ultimately require a charter or code of conduct that regulates it and introduces some form of independent oversight. This could be something akin to the supervision of banking systems or the regulation of the water sector in Britain, which, alongside the United States, holds privatized water as an asset.
Human rights and social justice have emerged as monkey wrenches that could shatter the myth of a separation between sports and politics. If athletes take their protests to the Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 World Cup, the myth would sustain a significant body blow. In December 2020, a statement by US athletes seeking changes to the USOPC’s rule banning protest at sporting events said: “Prohibiting athletes to freely express their views during the Games, particularly those from historically underrepresented and minoritized groups, contributes to the dehumanization of athletes that is at odds with key Olympic and Paralympic values.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Antony Blinken says the US will 'stand up for human rights everywhere'
by Evelyn Reynolds 30 March 2021, 21:57
The United States will speak out about human rights everywhere including in allies and at home, secretary of state Antony Blinken has vowed, turning a page from Donald Trump as he bemoaned deteriorations around the world.Presenting the state department’s first human rights report under President Joe Biden, the new top US diplomat took some of his most pointed, yet still veiled, swipes at the approach of the Trump administration.“Some have argued that it’s not worth it for the US to speak up forcefully for human rights – or that we should highlight abuse only in select countries, and only in a way that directly advances our national interests,” Blinken told reporters in clear reference to Trump’s approach.“But those people miss the point. Standing up for human rights everywhere is in America’s interests,” he said.“And the Biden-Harris administration will stand against human rights abuses wherever they occur, regardless of whether the perpetrators are adversaries or partners.”Blinken ordered the return of assessments in the annual report on countries’ records on access to reproductive health, which were removed under the staunchly anti-abortion Trump administration.Blinken also denounced a commission of his predecessor Mike Pompeo that aimed to redefine the US approach to human rights by giving preference to private property and religious freedom while downplaying reproductive and LGBTQ rights.During Pompeo’s time in office, the state department was aggressive in opposing references to reproductive and gender rights in UN and other multilateral documents.“There is no hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others,” Blinken said.In another shift in tone from Trump, Blinken said the United States acknowledged its own challenges, including “systemic racism.”“That’s what separates our democracy from autocracies: our ability and willingness to confront our own shortcomings out in the open, to pursue that more perfect union.”Blinken voiced alarm over abuses around the world including in China, again speaking of “genocide” being committed against the Uighur community.The report estimated that more than one million Uighurs and other members of mostly Muslim communities had been rounded up in internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang and that another two million are subjected to re-education training each day.“The trend lines on human rights continue to move in the wrong direction. We see evidence of that in every region of the world,” Blinken said.He said the Biden administration was prioritising coordination with allies, pointing to recent joint efforts over Xinjiang, China’s clampdown in Hong Kong and Russia’s alleged poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny.Blinken also voiced alarm over the Myanmar military’s deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, attacks on civilians in Syria and a campaign in Ethiopia’s Tigray that he has previously called ethnic cleansing.The report, written in dry, factual language, did not spare longstanding US allies.It pointed to allegations of unlawful killings and torture in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, quoting human rights groups that said Egypt is holding between 20,000 and 60,000 people chiefly due to their political beliefs.Biden earlier declassified US intelligence that found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorised the gruesome killing of US-based writer Jamal Khashoggi.While the human rights report remained intact under Trump, the previous administration argued that rights were of lesser importance than other concerns with allies such as Saudi Arabia – a major oil producer and purchaser of US weapons that backed Trump’s hawkish line against Iran, whose record was also heavily scrutinized in the report.The latest report also detailed incidents in India under prime minister Narendra Modi, an increasingly close US ally.It quoted non-governmental groups as pointing to the use in India of “torture, mistreatment and arbitrary detention to obtain forced or false confessions” and quoted journalists as assessing that “press freedom declined” including through physical harassment of journalists, pressure on owners and frivolous lawsuits. More
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'Reclaim These Streets' and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures
by Evelyn Reynolds 27 March 2021, 08:30
A ‘Reclaim These Streets’ protest outside Cardiff Bay police station on 15 March. The Labour party announced it would oppose the government’s plan to give police greater powers to crack down on peaceful protest.
Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty More

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Antony Blinken says the US will 'stand up for human rights everywhere'

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