freedom

One Year After He Was Flogged, Raif Badawi Remains a Prisoner

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One year ago today, a young writer was publicly whipped by his government for his writings. His words “insulted” his nation’s official religion, his government decreed. The worst part, of course, was that he published his words and that others in his nation read those words and even shared his opinions.

Today is the 1325th day he has spent in prison. After he was arrested, after a long trial, he was found guilty of having ideas that his country does not favor, even finds to be a threat. The authorities declared that his website “propagates liberal thought,” and the search for a punishment that it deemed proper took over a year to calculate. He spent that year in prison.

Raif Badawi’s writings include statements like this: “States which are based on religion confine their people in the circle of faith and fear,” so the Saudi Arabian judicial system decided to live up to that observation.
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1000 Days

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For the sixth week in a row, Saudi writer, blogger, and activist Raif Badawi was not publicly flogged today for insulting his home country’s state religion. Amnesty International broke the news as soon as the organization could confirm it:

No one is breathing a sigh of relief that this counts as sparing him, or that he is about to be freed. The 31-year-old husband and father has now spent 1000 days in jail with little to no contact with the outside world. According to news reports, there was no reason given by Saudi officials for the delay.
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#FreeRaif, Week 5

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For the fourth week in a row, Raif Badawi, a writer in Saudi Arabia, was not whipped fifty times yesterday as part of his public punishment for insulting his nation’s official religion in his blog. No one is breathing a sigh of relief that this counts as sparing him, or that he is about to be freed.

Amnesty International broke the news this morning via Twitter:

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