Fugging Hypocrites - Torturers, oppressors and executioners: remember to buy British

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/19/torturers-oppressors-executioners-buy-british-saudi-arabia-kyrgyzstan
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From Saudi Arabia to Kyrgyzstan, there is no regime whose human rights record is so poor that our government isn’t desperate to sell them weapons and expertise

How should the British government respond to the grotesque punishment of Raif Badawi? As I write, the blogger and democracy activist sits in a cell, waiting for the wounds to heal from a first 50 lashes so that he is well enough to receive his next 50. Unless the Saudi supreme court intervenes, this obscene ritual will be repeated month after month until he has received 1,000 lashes for the “crime” of setting up a website to champion free speech.

While human rights groups try to marshal the world’s outrage into a decisive campaign, the British government remains all but silent. When challenged directly on the issue at PMQs last week, David Cameron hedged and fudged his way through some trite generalisations. When asked about it on the Today programme, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg claimed not to have heard of the case at all. Foreign secretary Philip Hammond, as far as I can establish, has yet to say a word. “Why do ministers keep wearing the Saudi muzzle?” asked Amnesty International’s Kate Allen, very reasonably. The cosy relationship between the British state and the theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia is neither new, nor news. Last year British arms dealers sold around £17m-worth of kit to the regime, including machine guns, grenades and military training equipment. Sales of arms from the UK to the Gulf are said to have increased considerably since the flowering of democracy protests in 2011. Many of us have become inured to shock at the revolving door between politicians, the civil service, high-ranking military personnel and the arms trade.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/25/ministry-justice-contract-saudi-arabia-prison
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The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is hoping to profit from selling its expertise to the prison service in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for public beheadings, floggings, amputations and courts that regularly violate human rights.

A new commercial arm of the UK justice ministry, staffed by civil servants, has bid for a £5.9m contract in Saudi Arabia. Just Solutions international (JSi) will soon start setting up a probation service in Macedonia, and is also in the running to build a prison in Oman.

Human rights groups have raised concerns about the MoJ working so closely with a regime currently under scrutiny over the botched execution of a woman who died protesting her innocence and the harsh punishment meted out to a liberal blogger.