Saudi Arabia

July 28: Speak Out for Ashraf Fayadh

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In February, a court in Abha, Saudi Arabia, announced that it had retracted its November 2015 death sentence for the poet Ashraf Fayadh and exchanged it for a sentence of eight years in prison and 800 lashes with a cane. He must also make a public statement of repentance.

This new sentence switched his conviction from one of apostasy, or renouncing his religion, to one of blasphemy, insulting that religion and its leaders.

On Thursday, July 28, artists and activists around the world will speak out on behalf of Ashraf Fayadh by creating art, writing essays, joining a Tweetstorm, recording podcasts, and many other ways of showing support in a “Day of Creativity.” The website “Arabic Literature (in English)” published a list of ten suggestions in a recent post: “Make Noise & Beauty on July 28, a Day of Creativity for Ashraf Fayadh.” If you participate, please use the hashtag #FreeAshraf. Everything that follows below is my small contribution.

The Operating System, a small press, will be publishing a volume of Fayadh’s poems entitled Instructions Within, translated by Mona Kareem.
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A Wife’s Lonely Fight for Her Husband

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A review of Ensaf Haidar’s excellent new book about her life with Raif Badawi

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How does a young mother tell her children that their father—her husband—is in prison for writing what he thinks in a fundamentalist country that oppresses freedom of thought and freedom of expression? How does she tell her children that their father was taken from them because their country punishes thinkers and writers? How does she tell them he was taken from them?

There is no instruction manual for that situation. The moment in which a young mother must live through exactly this moment is only a brief scene in Ensaf Haidar’s newly published memoir of life with and apart from her husband, the writer Raif Badawi, but it is painful to read, because Ensaf (and her co-writer Andrea C. Hoffmann and their skilled translator Shaun Whiteside) bring the reader into the room with her and the children and invite us to feel their terror and confusion.
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A New Prize for Raif Badawi

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is the 1418th day the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has spent in prison. Last night, the International Publishers Association awarded him its Prix Voltaire, and his powerhouse wife, Ensaf Haidar, traveled to London to accept the award on his behalf.

Raymond Johansen of the Pirate Party of Norway (#‎PPNO‬) and my sometime collaborator on The Gad About Town website, traveled to London and met with Ensaf this weekend (photo below the fold):
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