Raif Badawi: A Thousand Lashes And Counting.

 

Raif Badawi: A Thousand Lashes And Counting.

(A Short Piece)

by

Bankole Christopher Smart-cole (BSc)

Developed: 30 January 2015/ Researched Online: January 2015

© CC Publishers 2015

Raif Badawi’s wife in Canada, Ensaf Haidar, said “she’s worried. It’s impossible for a human to withstand 50 lashes a week”. The West and its moral agents (Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and what not) say from afar that the floggings are truly immoral acts, but yet, they in practice, still do nothing substantial about it, which also brands their actions as possibly immoral as well.

Ergo, shouldn’t this now leave us rational people to beg the question, “where and when does the Westphalian Principle of Sovereignty come into play?” A sovereignty by the way, which states that no other State has the right; de jure or de facto, to interfere in another country’s domestic affairs (no matter how large or small that country is).

Ok, ergo, here’s the question I beg at this juncture in time. If western leaders can visit to pay their respects to the Saudi Arabian Royal Family (which in all technicality, brands that visit as a meddle in the domestic affairs of thereof), then shouldn’t that now mean that western nations as well should now be sending in troops in abundance in order to also meddle/ avail the current miseries of Raif Badawi due to human rights violations? Because let’s not forget that the Westphalian Principle of Sovereignty can never be compatible with a State regime which commits crimes against humanity to its populace.  

Ergo, what should we now call the current shenanigans between the Saudi’s and Raif Badawi, should we now call that nothing?