From top: human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair, jailed since 2014; A Free Raif poster outside the Saudi Embassy, Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2 in 2015
Free this Thursday [February 6]?
Do you blog?
Grace Dyas writes:
Raif Badawi Raif was jailed & publicly flogged for 10 years in 2012 after starting a website for social and political debate in Saudi Arabia Waleed Abu al-Khair, is a human rights lawyer arrested in 2014.
We have learned that Raif and Waleed are now in critical condition on hunger strike in Prison in Saudi Arabia.
On February 6, we’re having a live blogathon at the Saudi Embassy calling on King Salman and Saudi authorities to free Raif, Waleed and all other human rights defenders immediately and unconditionally.
The ask would be that you pop along for a few minutes with your laptop and write a blog post highlighting Raif and Waleed’s condition there and then and the crackdown on protest and freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia.
We hope that images of Irish bloggers taking part in this action outside the embassy will be a powerful act of solidarity and hope for people in Saudi Arabia which has one of the largest Twitter using populations in the world.
We hope that your readers will be inspired to take action for Raif Badawi & Waleed Abou al-Kheir, to hopefully save their lives.
Outside the Saudi Embassy, Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2.
Between 1-3pm.
Previously: Saudi Arabia on Broadsheet
I’ll be there
Come on AI Ireland – why aren’t you actively campaigning for the release of Julian Assange held by our British neighbours? It would have a much more realistic hope of gaining some traction. Instead it’s hopeless campaigns like this one – a bunch of nerds with laptops supposed to somehow increase pressure on Bin Salman in far off Saudi Arabia. Like John Pilger said, they won’t deem Assange a “prisoner of conscience” because they essentially function as “an extension of the establishment”. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/julian-assange-in-kangaroo-court/