The US government continues to turn a blind eye to the medieval forms of torture meted out by its Saudi allies, argues Medea Benjamin.

On January 9, two days before the massive Paris march condemning the brutal attack on freedom of the press, a young Saudi prisoner named Raif Badawi was removed from his cell in shackles and taken to a public square in Jeddah. There he was flogged 50 times before hundreds of spectators who had just finished midday prayers. Those 50 lashes — labeled by Amnesty International a “vicious act of cruelty” — were the first installment on his sentence of 1,000 floggings, as well as ten years in prison and a fine of $266,000.

Badawi’s Crime?

The father of three young children, Badawi hosted the website known as Free Saudi Liberals, a forum intended to promote a lively exchange of ideas among Saudis. He wrote about the advantages of separating religion and state, asserting that secularism was “the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.” He accused Saudi clerics and the government of distorting Islam to promote authoritarianism. And unlike the Saudi rulers, Badawi cheered the Egyptian uprising against Hosni Mubarak, calling it a decisive turning point not only for Egypt, but “everywhere that is governed by the Arab mentality of dictatorship.”

In mid-2012, Badawi was arrested for his blogging and accused of ridiculing the kingdom’s religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. He was also charged for failing to remove “offensive posts” written by others. The prosecution originally called for him to be tried for “apostasy,” or abandoning his religion, which carries the death penalty.

If nothing changes, Badawi will be flogged every Friday for the next 19 weeks. And he will not see his wife or children, who were forced to flee to Canada to avoid public harassment at home, for ten years.

Badawi’s case is not unique. In 2014, Reporters Without Borders described the Saudi government as “relentless in its censorship of the Saudi media and the Internet,” ranking Saudi Arabia 164^th out of 180 countries for freedom of the press.

Last year, four members of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, an organization documenting human rights abuses and calling for democratic reform, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to ten years. The fourth member sentenced was Omar al-Saeed, who was handed four years in prison and 300 lashes because he called for a constitutional monarchy.

Or look at the case of another human rights lawyer, Walid Abu al-Khair, in prison since 2012. On January 13, a Saudi court increased his prison term from 10 to 15 years after he refused to show remorse or recognize the court that handed down his original ten-year term for sedition. Al-Khair, founder of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (MHRSA) and legal counsel for blogger Badawi, was convicted on charges of disrespecting King Abdullah and the Saudi authorities.

Saudi Arabia also remains the only country in the world to maintain a ban on female drivers. According to this law, women are strictly restricted to the passenger seat of vehicles. This ban is so harshly imposed that two women — 25-year-old Loujain al-Hathloul and 33-year-old Maysa al-Amoudi — were not only arrested for driving to the United Arab Emirates, but they were also referred to be tried by a terrorism court. In the past, punishments for female drivers have included loss of jobs, passport revocation and even floggings.

The US government’s response to these egregious and inhumane punishments from its ally usually takes the form of a State Department spokesperson expressing “concern.” But there is no major public condemnation. No threats of cutting arms sales. No sanctions against government officials. The US government basically turns a blind eye to the medieval forms of torture the Saudis still mete out.

One major reason is oil. Since before World War II, the United States has viewed Saudi Arabia as a strategic source of petroleum. In 1933, the Arab American Company (ARAMCO) was established as a joint venture by both countries. Currently, Saudi Arabia is the second largest supplier of petroleum to the US.

With the money it receives from oil, the Saudi government purchases vast amounts of weaponry from the United States. In 2010, the US government announced that it had concluded a deal to sell $60 billion of military aircraft to Saudi Arabia — the largest American arms sale deal in history. One use of US tanks was seen in Bahrain, where the Saudis intervened to crush a democratic uprising against the Bahraini monarchy.

There’s now congressional legislation being introduced to declassify a 28-page section of the 9/11 commission report, which allegedly exposes the direct role of the Saudi government in the Twin Tower attacks on 9/11.

After all, Saudi Arabia supplied 15 out of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001, and was the home of Osama bin Laden. The country exports a radical version of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, that fuels extremism throughout the Middle East. It treats its women as second-class citizens. And it’s the world capital of beheadings, with the government carrying out 87 public beheadings in 2013 and at least nine already this year.

Being a top oil provider does not give a country the right to dehumanize its own people. The US is certainly no model for respecting freedom of expression — as we saw in the streets of Ferguson, where peaceful protesters were tear-gassed and beaten — but it shouldn’t overlook the human rights abuses carried out by an allied country that imprisons, tortures and executes its citizens for simply speaking their minds.

So, take a moment to call the Saudi Embassy in Washington DC and tell them: “Free speech is not, and should never be, a punishable crime. Je suis Raif!”

*[This article was originally published by CodePink.]

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