raif badawi

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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Badawi’s Absence Is a Presence at Prize Ceremony

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Raif is not a criminal. He is a writer and a free thinker: that is all. Raif Badawi’s crime is being a free voice in a country which does not accept anything other than a single opinion and a single thought.”—Ensaf Haidar

Ensaf Haidar, the wife of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, accepted the 2015 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, this morning. Badawi’s absence was itself a presence at the ceremony. He remains in Dhaban Central Prison, where he was moved late last week, as I reported here at the time.

Badawi is the young Saudi writer who was found guilty of “insulting Islam” in his essays on his website and sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes with a cane. On January 9, 2015, the first set of 50 blows was delivered in a public whipping. He has not been caned since. The international movement on his behalf, sparked by a young wife’s determination to make the world know her imprisoned husband’s name, led Amnesty International to declare months ago that it has received more signatures for petitions demanding his release than any other in its long and remarkable history. As far as I am concerned, Ensaf Haidar should be on every publication’s end-of-year list of Most Heroic People of 2015.

The European Parliament’s press release about the ceremony noted that Badawi is not the first honoree who was unable to accept the award in person; Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist in Myanmar, won the citation in 1990 when she was under house arrest and forbidden from leaving her country. In 2013, she was able to receive the prize in person. One hopes that Raif Badawi also is able to receive the prize in person someday and that a generation will not pass until that day. But one knows that the ongoing fight for justice and freedom of thought is, at its heart, supremely patient.
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Raif Badawi: A Cloud of Uncertainty

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

UPDATED at 11:00 p.m. EST, December 11: A second source reports that a confirmation has been received that Raif Badawi has indeed started a hunger strike, which emphasizes the point made in the article that follows: that the Raif Badawi story is a fluid one, changing moment by moment. The article was published at 10:00 p.m. and one hour later, an update was required. Because it describes the many open questions and pressing concerns about Raif Badawi’s situation as it stands right now, I am publishing the article as it was, here:

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The international media on Thursday picked up the story that Raif Badawi started a hunger strike last week while in prison. Every publication that has covered this unfolding case, from The Guardian to The Gad About Town, quoted or paraphrased a statement that Badawi, the young Saudi blogger who was found guilty of “insulting Islam” and sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes with a cane, was moved to a different prison with no explanation offered by authorities, and that he has started a hunger strike.

The Guardian reported that Amnesty International has not yet confirmed the hunger strike, and this lack of a confirmation is important to note. Not one publication, not Amnesty International nor the team of activists that has been assembled around this story, has been able to confirm the validity of the purported hunger strike. This is the second time that a hunger strike by Raif Badawi has been rumored. It is quite possible that this particular story, because it often draws sympathy from the public, is being used by someone to manipulate the media and those activists. In which direction and to what end are two of several remaining questions.

Each Friday, those who closely follow the Badawi case wait for a confirmation that Raif Badawi was seen among those being publicly punished—or if he was not seen among those prisoners. Ever since that terrible day, January 9, 2015, in which Badawi was seen and even recorded being flogged, his absence among prisoners being punished has been noted and reported. Each Friday from January 16 on, the report that Raif Badawi was not flogged has been usually published online by an Amnesty International-vetted source. None of these sources, more than 15 as of this writing, reported or could confirm that Raif Badawi has begun a hunger strike.

The story is more complicated than the media is allowing itself to present it. It always has been.
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