King Salman and the 1,000 Lashes
http://www.wsj.com/articles/king-salman-and-the-1-000-lashes-1433715427
A liberal Saudi reformer may not survive his Medieval sentence.
Saudi Arabia’s highest court on Sunday upheld a 1,000-lash flogging sentence against the country’s leading liberal dissident, Raif Badawi. The blogger and activist will also be jailed for 10 years and fined $266,000. Mr. Badawi has now exhausted the appellate process, and the ruling can’t be overturned save for a pardon by King Salman.
Mr. Badawi’s alleged crimes include founding the Saudi Liberal Network, an online-only forum promoting reform, individual rights and gender equality in the Kingdom, where women are still barred from driving cars and authorities behead people suspected of practicing witchcraft.
He was convicted last year of “insulting Islam” and committing cybercrimes. Mr. Badawi has already received the first 50 of the 1,000 lashes, and there is a real concern that he won’t survive the other 950 when the flogging resumes, perhaps as early as this week.
It is up to King Salman, who ascended the Saudi throne earlier this year, to undo this horrific and unjust sentence. The threats to the House of Saud come from Islamic jihadists who are suicide bombers, either Sunni or Shiite, not from liberals who want a modicum of more personal autonomy.
The King has been praised, rightly, for galvanizing the Sunni Arab states to act against growing Iranian hegemony in the region. But he can ensure a larger legacy if he adds to his foreign policy a domestic-reform agenda. Pardoning Raif Badawi would be a good start.
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