| As President Biden prepares to travel to Saudi Arabia to meet with authoritarian Gulf leaders July 15-16, dissidents from the region provided a stark opposing viewpoint yesterday, urging the President to prioritize human rights concessions during his visit.
At an event on Capitol Hill, relatives of imprisoned pro-democracy defenders in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt pleaded with the president to honor his own human rights pledges and raise their families’ cases as Biden sits down with their oppressors. (Watch the full event here.) Below are selected excepts from the speakers’ remarks.
Lina al-Hathloul
Saudi human rights defender and sister of women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul
“President Biden justifies this visit for stability in the Middle East. I will say that this is not what stability looks like for me as a Saudi citizen. I don’t want a country that is governed by someone who tortures women, including my sister. Someone who cuts journalists into pieces. Someone who starts wars all over the region in Yemen, [a] diplomatic crisis in Qatar, and imprisons the Prime Minister of Lebanon.”
“If President Biden truly wants stability in the region, he must hear the people’s voices that are not included in [Biden’s July 9 Washington Post] op-ed. And this cannot be done without civil society. As civil society has been silenced inside of the country, it’s important to meet with the people who gathered in the diaspora and who are trying to build new, real reform in the country and a new Saudi Arabia.”
Sanaa Seif
Egyptian activist and filmmaker, sister of imprisoned writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah
“President Biden has been avoiding meeting with or having calls with [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-]Sisi for a very long time, which really means a lot to the Egyptian president. And I’m really worried about this trip now. Because the moment they have this bilateral meeting, even if it’s a quick handshake, this footage will be played over and over again inside Egypt.”
“I’m here to urge President Biden to raise my brother’s case on the trip. We have never been as close to getting Alaa out of prison or completely losing him as we are right now. Alaa has been living on a bit of skim milk or a spoon of honey in his tea for 101 days, which is like 5 percent of the normal calorie intake for a human being. He’s not going to stop his strike. He’s not going to break it, so he’s either going to be released or he’s going to die in prison.”
Maryam al-Khawaja
Bahraini human rights defender, former co-director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, and daughter of pro-democracy Bahraini prisoner Abdulhadi al-Khawaja
“[President Biden] launched the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal with the aim to bolster democratic reformers and to defend human rights globally. The visit of President Biden to the region today presents a U-turn on those promises. We cannot in good conscience think of President Biden meeting with the heads of these states and think that he will still follow through on these promises that have been made.”
“With any head of state that Biden meets with, it is imperative that he brings up the cases of human rights defenders, and of political prisoners still sitting in prison cells. But that’s only a first step, because we live in countries where the system is the reason why they’re in prison to begin with.”
Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
“[President Biden] insisted that human rights and fundamental freedoms will be on his agenda. I believe in engagement, so I hope all that is true. But it should be true because protecting human rights is an important American interest, as the President himself has said many times. But protecting human rights cannot be just about words. It has to be about actions.”
“We need to see prisoners of conscience freed. We need to see space open up for human rights advocates to speak out, write, organize, and protest without fear of being thrown in jail. We need journalists to be able to do their jobs without ending up in jail or shot dead. We need to see protections for human rights that are built into law and institutions, not just dependent on the whims of monarchs.”
Stephen McInerney
Executive Director of the Project on Middle East Democracy
“This administration has spoken very frequently about the global struggle against authoritarianism led by Russia and China. But I just want to note that they’re doing nothing to change the fact that the world’s number one provider of weapons and arms to dictatorships globally is not Russia or China. It is our own government.” |