The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gave an official response this week to criticism of its sentence of flogging for writer Raif Badawi. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia responded to Amnesty International, Prince Charles, the German foreign minister, the Canadian foreign minister, the millions of petition creators and signers around the world, the tens of thousands who have marched in protest of a country’s policy of whipping as a punishment for writing. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia delivered a response to a young woman and mother of three whose husband has been sentenced to a caning for writing.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wants us to know that it is angry about the criticism, does not like it even one bit, and would like us all to mind our own business. In more diplomatic language, it released an anonymous statement which said in part: “Saudi Arabia expresses its intense surprise and dismay at what is being reported by some media about the case of citizen Raif Badawi and his sentence. Saudi Arabia at the same time emphasises that it does not accept interference in any form in its internal affairs.”

It took a visit from the German foreign minister to elicit this cold response. The only response that could have been even more cruel, a Friday flogging of the writer this morning, the same week as the official statement was released, did not take place:

The fact that I am celebrating the absence of that response this one week, the “see? we told you not to interfere” response that all abusers know to deploy on occasion, underlines the sad state of this affair. Here we see the abuser blame the victim for causing them the hassle of abusing them. Other people were flogged publicly today in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, some for the crime of having ideas; one writer just happened to not be a part of the parade this morning.

This is a country in which the penalty for not sharing the state’s official religion is death by public beheading. Last year, Raif Badawi was found not guilty of that particular charge, but guilty of the thought-crime for which he was sentenced to 1000 lashes by a cane. There is a fear that he is about to be retried for the religion crime, for apostasy, however. Last week, Elham Manea, a passionate writer about human rights abuses, released a statement on behalf of his family:

Is this an “internal affair” that ought not be commented on? How audacious to protest a policy of beheading someone for possessing an unofficial idea. I suppose I owe an apology. My email address is public and so is my phone number.

The 31-year-old husband and father has now spent 1000 days and three weeks in jail with little to no contact with the outside world.

The reasons for today’s non-flogging were not given by officials, which has been their practice. What is known is that he was not publicly flogged. Raif was not a part of a procession of prisoners driven to a public place and, without announcement, brought forth to be whipped. The one time he was whipped fifty times, on January 9, that is how the public learned that the punishment was being carried out. “Public” is a part of his decreed punishment, so one hopes that this means he is not being whipped in prison. As I noted above, impartial doctors have not been allowed in to see him.

As with any prisoner, one of conscience or otherwise, the prisoner’s family is held captive as well. (I have some experience with this.) It is not known if Raif spends his week anticipating a Friday flogging like the one he experienced on January 9, at which he received fifty lashes. Prison doctors reported the week after that whipping that his wounds had not healed, which is why they recommended postponing the second round of fifty lashes on January 16, and one assumes ever since. That is the thing about caning: the cane opens slashing wounds which, if they do not heal, can become infected. So the wardens wait for the wounds to heal so the next set of canings can be administered—to the same exact spots. This is done publicly. The wounds are cruelly re-opened. Because we do not know if the prisoner is spending the week anticipating the next round of fifty, his family spends the week anticipating it for him.

His wife, Ensaf Haidar, lives with the couple’s three children in exile in Canada. She is fighting for his life as well as for his freedom. (“Raif Badawi’s Wife Worried He Could Face the Death Penalty,” CBC.ca)

Every Friday morning comes the tense wait to see whether an official announcement will be made, or whether anyone on the ground in Saudi Arabia reports seeing him among the prisoners receiving corporal punishment or seeing that he is not among that week’s prisoners.

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What did Raif Badawi do? What is the nature of his crime? He is a blogger, like you or me. A writer. A re-cap: He has been living in a Kafka-like dreamscape of religion-as-part-of-state-bureaucracy since 2008. In May of last year, he was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1000 lashes, to be meted out in sets of fifty lashes each Friday for twenty weeks. For over a year, his sentence was publicly changed multiple times—for a while, it was to be six years and 600 lashes, and then it was ten years/1000 lashes—while his case bounced between a higher court and a lower court in his country’s legal system.

His country is Saudi Arabia, and as a citizen of the United States, I am aware that I have no say in the legal system or traditions of another country’s bureaucracy; I can only write this column to implore my government to at least say something to one of its allies in the name of a fellow writer and the freedom of ideas. I have written in the past about things I do not like about my country (its use of capital punishment, for instance), and I vote my conscience on these issues. In another country, I might have been arrested for expressing my views, but it has not happened here.

Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, PEN International, and many other organizations have taken up Badawi’s cause, possibly in part because of its clear-cut blatancy: A man is being publicly flogged because he is a writer and has expressed ideas his government would rather he not.

In 2008, he set up a website, a blog named “Saudi Arabian Liberals,” and he was arrested and released. He was then charged with insulting his country’s religion. He left Saudi Arabia, was told the charges were being dropped, returned home because he has a young family there, and then was blocked from leaving the country again, which is never an indication of good things to come. The web site continued, and he was arrested again in 2012 when a religious leader said that his website “infringes on religious values” and proved that he is an apostate, or one who renounces his religion. In his country, apostasy carries with it a sentence of death, and that particular legal matter—is Raif Badawi an apostate or not?—is what kept his case bouncing between courts in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A lower court declared that it did not have the authority to decide the apostasy issue, and it referred the case to a higher court, which then decided that the lower court could indeed decide if Badawi is an apostate.

He was cleared of the apostasy charge, which spared him his life. The court sentenced him for the charges that he might have been considered guilty of from pretty much the moment he was arrested in 2012: insulting the faith and “going beyond the realm of obedience.” Ten years in prison, 1000 lashes, and a one million riyal fine. And his lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, was arrested and found guilty of setting up a human rights monitor organization, which landed the lawyer a 15-year jail sentence. The Specialized Criminal Court of Appeal, which hears terrorism cases, reaffirmed the 15-year sentence just last week.

When President Obama visited the new Saudi king, Salman, last month, he did not express an opinion about the dozen prisoners of conscience and the international protests to the monarch. In advance of meeting King Salman, President Obama told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, “Sometimes we have to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns that we have in terms of countering terrorism or dealing with regional stability.”

I understand. The humanitarian outcry and diplomatic contacts do not get the attention of the authorities in Saudi Arabia, because they do not need to. When governments spoke out on his behalf, the response was a public flogging on January 9 and then this weekly update made possible only by him not being among the prisoners flogged before Friday prayers. And the authorities in Saudi Arabia can point to stories in which American writers and journalists in other countries that are decrying Badawi’s treatment have been jailed or face jail time for the crime of writing, so they feel that they can tell us to stick it.

Attention must be paid to all those cases, here in America and abroad.

Writing about this and speaking out is important. Amnesty International has posted a list of suggestions for taking up the campaign: “Five Ways You Can Help Raif Badawi.” Here is an easy-to-fill-out public letter, if you would care to join over 100,000 signatories: Saudi Authorities Must Put an End to Public Flogging of Blogger.

Three-plus weeks ago, the United Kingdom’s Prince Charles did what President Obama did not do: he spoke of his concerns for the young writer out loud with King Salman, the new monarch. The discussions were private, but the fact that Raif Badawi was a topic and that this fact was acknowledged in public may mean … something. Fears were voiced that the response would come in the form of another flogging at the next opportunity, but the opposite has happened so far: he has not been flogged, not publicly, not for eight consecutive weeks. But Raif Badawi remains in prison, continues to face a comically expensive fine—when King Salman granted amnesty to select prisoners upon taking the throne last month, amnesty was granted to those whose fines were a smaller amount than Raif’s—and he remains unheard.

Would that we live in a world in which we see Raif Badawi join his wife and three young children in a new life in Canada.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave permission to publicize a letter from his office about Raif Badawi:

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April 5, 2015: Someone called “Hashi” wrote me on Twitter just now to defend Saudi Arabia and to complain about my bullying of that country. I do not know if this is what is referred to as “trolling,” or something else. That person has spent all morning on Twitter defending Saudi Arabia in regard to the human rights violation that the Raif Badawi story is and represents; several million (no exaggeration) people have written blogs like mine, signed protests, and marched in front of Saudia Arabia’s embassies around the world each Friday, so I trust “Hashi” will be very very busy fighting against truth, justice, fairness, human rights, and human decency:

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for March 13 asks, “There are 26 letters in the English language, and we need every single one of them. Want proof? Choose a letter and write a blog post without using it. (Feeling really brave? Make it a vowel!)” The letter Q does not appear in this column. (Well, now it does.) Nor does the name of his country’s official religion, because I do not care what the religion is; any person or country that thinks his or her religion needs defending from free-thought—whatever the religion is—believes in punishment more than life.