Medieval thinking in a modern world

The grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi focused world attention, at least for a while, on the ruthless Saudi Arabian regime, creating outrage and disgust around the world.

Yet for the various agencies that have monitored this nation’s human rights record over many years, it came as no surprise.

At the same time as the debate over Khashoggi raged, an Indonesian migrant domestic worker, Tuti Tursilawati, was executed in the Saudi city of Ta’if after being charged with the murder of the man who employed her.

In her defence she said that the man had tried to rape her and that after killing him in self-defence she escaped, only to be gang raped by a number of men before she was caught by the police.

It is impossible to ascertain the full facts of this incident, but as far as the authorities were concerned there was no need. The word of a foreigner was never going to be believed. Case proved and her death was inevitable.

Then there was the barbarous method of execution — beheading, and the failure to even notify the Indonesian Government, which had made repeated representations on Tursilawati’s behalf, that the execution was going to take place.

This is no isolated incident. At least three other foreign domestic servants have been executed in recent times, and the Saudis routinely do so without informing either families or the home Government in total violation of its own laws.

It will happen again and again as there are currently at least 18 Indonesian migrant workers on death row, many facing charges that would be laughed out of Western courts.

Given the way justice works in the kingdom, there is little hope for any non-Saudi national who falls foul of the country’s laws.

This latest incident might not have come to international attention at all had it not been for Indonesian representatives of the aid agency CARE, who went public with their condemnation.

CARE’s Indonesian Director, Wahyu Susilo urged President Joko Widodo to bar Indonesians going to Saudi as domestic servants.

Sadly, this will probably not happen, just as Khashoggi’s murder will not stop Western nations, principally the United States and the United Kingdom, from cutting or even downgrading their ties with Riyadh.

Oil still speaks with a loud voice in a world that is a long way from being able to do without it. The Saudis have used this leverage in the past and will do so again without compulsion.

Saudi Arabia is an hereditary dictatorship, based on the divine right of the ruler and the suppression of the ruled.

Its enormous wealth has turned it into one of the most dangerous entities imaginable in the modern world — a state whose thinking is firmly based in the Middle Ages, yet with a 21^st century arsenal of sophisticated weapons at its disposal.

Such a regime is impervious to modern reasoning and rejects humanitarian norms. It is a threat to its own region and a destabilising influence in the world at large.

Its atrocities are only likely to multiply in the face of weak protests from Western democracies intent on keeping the Saudi despots onside.