Prioritizing Human Rights in Relations with Saudi Arabia
September 6, 2023
“Rather than assist people afflicted by droughts, impoverishment and
intensifying wars, the United States is acting in its own perceived self-interests
and entertaining Saudi demands for even more military power.”
There's a refugee trail from the Sahel drought region in Africa, into war-ravaged
Yemen, and up through Saudi Arabia towards Iraq and Turkey. It’s known as “the Eastern
route,” or sometimes “the Yemeni route.”
The Saudi monarchy, already leading an eight-year starvation and
bombardment campaign against Iran-aligned, rebel-governed Yemen, has been
massacring Ethiopian (and other African) refugees, allegedly in the thousands, to
send a message that drought-stricken Africans should choose to die at home and
not risk their lives to die in Yemen. It’s a chilling, cruel message.
U.S. imperial policies in the region, which have propped up the brutal Saudi
monarchy, ensure continued bloodshed, hunger, division and destabilization.
These degenerate policies undermine desperately needed collaboration in the
face of ecological collapse. Rather than assist people afflicted by droughts,
impoverishment and intensifying wars, the United States is acting in its own perceived
self-interests and entertaining Saudi demands for even more military power. The
purpose of wooing Saudi Arabia with military contracts is, apparently, to head
off a further economic integration of Saudi Arabia with China and Russia, global
rivals of the United States.
Sometime during the week of September 3, two U.S. State department
representatives will arrive in Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, to resume
negotiations with the Saudi royals. A recent report suggests
that the meetings will discuss a NATO-like agreement between Saudi Arabia and
the United States, a measure which might then move Saudi Arabia closer toward
normalizing relations with Israel. What does Riyadh seek in return? "Riyadh
has been seeking a NATO-like mutual security treaty that would obligate the US
to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense if the latter is attacked,” according to The
Times of Israel. The Saudis also seek to strengthen a US-backed civilian
nuclear program in Saudi Arabia and they want assurance about acquiring more
advanced weaponry from U.S. military contractors.
At
the recent summit of the BRICS+ coalition led by U.S. rival, China, Saudi
Arabia was announced as a new member to join in January 2024. Earlier this year
China had brokered a resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia
and its (and the U.S.') chief regional rival, Iran, which has also been invited
to join BRICS+ early next year. The U.S.
State Department's Brett McGurk and Barbara Leaf, in their Riyadh trip, will be working to counter integration
of the oil-rich Saudi nation into a coalition of nations the U.S. fears as threats
to U.S. unipolar hegemony. Routinely, the United States condemns China and
Russia for human rights abuses, – abuses
paling beside the worst of Saudi Arabia's.
Since
2015, Saudi Arabia has bombed, starved, blockaded and tortured Yemeni
civilians. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to persecute and execute its
own civilians for speaking out about cruel wrongdoings.
Human
Rights Watch, in their 73-page report, “‘They Fired on Us Like Rain’: Saudi
Arabian Mass Killings of Ethiopian Migrants at the Yemen-Saudi Border,” alleges that Saudi Arabian
border guards have fired machine
guns and launched mortars at Ethiopians trying to cross into the kingdom from
Yemen, likely killing hundreds of the unarmed migrants in recent years.
This widespread and systematic pattern of attacks
featured incidents, the report states, when “Saudi border guards asked migrants
what limb to shoot, and then shot them at close range. Saudi border guards also
fired explosive weapons at migrants who were attempting to flee back to Yemen.”
The rights group cited eyewitness
reports of attacks by troops and images that showed dead bodies and burial
sites on migrant routes, saying the death toll could amount to “possibly
thousands”.
Also of interest to the two U.S. envoys
should be a report from the Guardian which says the U.S. and German
militaries have trained and
equipped Saudi border guards.
There
is a reason for the massive migrant flight from the Sahel into the killing zone
that Saudi Arabia, with its international partners, has made of Yemen: The
planet is boiling.
Collaboration is surely needed among all peoples in order to cope with and
solve the tragic problems, including horrific human rights abuses, certain to escalate
because of intensifying climate catastrophes. But military agreements with
Saudi Arabia will increase the readiness of Saudi Arabia to attack weaker
countries and persecute its own citizenry. Green lighting development of
nuclear technology will exacerbate the environmental assaults caused by war.
The United States' policy of confrontation to beat down economic rivals can
only worsen these crises.
During
years when the United States collaborated with and armed dictators, militaries
and paramilitaries in Central and South America, several notable leaders
demanded an end to the violence. El Salvador’s Archbishop
Oscar Romero, now canonized as a saint, spoke up:
“I would like to appeal in a
special way to the men of the army, and in particular to the troops of the
National Guard, the police, and the garrisons. Brothers, you belong to our own
people. You kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill
that is given by a man, the law of God that says ‘Do not kill!’ should prevail.
“No soldier is obliged to obey an
order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It
is the time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather
than the command of sin. . . . Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name
of this long-suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven every day more
tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: ‘Cease
the repression!’”
In
a sense, he signed his own death warrant when he signed this statement. On
March 24, 1980, Romero was assassinated for his courageous words and deeds.
President
Joe Biden would do well to heed this Catholic saint, revise the mandate he
gives to diplomats working in Saudi Arabia, and rely on Archbishop Romero’s
words: Recover your conscience! Stop the repression, stop the killing.
Rather
than normalize militarism and human rights abuses, the United States should
seek, always and everywhere, to salvage the planet and respect human rights.
This article first appeared in The Progressive https://progressive.org/latest/prioritizing-human-rights-kelly-09052023/
Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is the board president of World
BEYOND War (worldbeyondwar.org) and a co-coordinator of the Merchants of Death War
Crimes Tribunal. (merchantsofdeath.org)
