Columns

Journalists have died on assignment, caught in the middle of wars and conflicts. But this was not always by accident. They have been targeted by those who did not want witnesses to their foul deeds or to coerce them into silence.

Demonstrators ride the double-decker bus as they attend the Stop The War Coalition protest against the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, war in Yemen and UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London, Britain, October 25 2018. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

Some might recall tank shells fired by US troops at a hotel in Baghdad in which international journalists covering the illegal invasion of Iraq were housed. They might also recall the targeting of the al Jazeera office in Baghdad.

Over the years there have been too many deaths caused by “friendly fire” to recount them all. Sri Lanka’s own journalists have not been free of death threats and death itself. Perhaps the most prominent among them was Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, a critic of powerful elements in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government. Long before that evil deed another journalist and actor Richard de Zoysa was tortured and killed.

Besides being a noted critic of powerful elements in the Rajapaksa government, it was the meticulous manner in which Wickrematunga was executed that pointed a finger at a military-like operation which drew worldwide attention.

Though Wickrematunga’s daylight killing aroused international condemnation it was nothing as gruesome and despicable as the pre-meditated murder early this month of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi Arabian journalist and columnist for the Washington Post.

Despite all the denials, cover-ups and buck passing, each new day elicits more evidence of the involvement of those close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MbS) and perhaps the Crown Prince himself who, it is alleged, had signed off on the plan to deal with Khashoggi.

It is well-known in domestic and international circles that MbS is de facto ruler. Nothing of significance happens in the desert sands without the knowledge of MbS who was picked by his father King Salman as heir apparent after deposing the then crown prince a few years back.

King Salman would not have had a need to read about court intrigues and palace treachery in Shakespeare’s tragedies and historical plays. Over centuries those desert monarchies would have provided their rulers with sufficient historical dramas on how these autocracies have suppressed their peoples and continue to do so to this day.

But King Salman might have been more circumspect in moving the political chess pieces around had he lent an ear to the words of King Lear: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

If one were to agree with analysts and Saudi Arabia-based diplomats that the real power lies in the hands of Crown Prince bin Salman then this whole dastardly fiasco over the pre-meditated murder of journalist Khashoggi must ultimately lie at MbS’s door.

This is but one of the nasty diplomatic errors that have roused international ire over Saudi Arabia’s medieval methods still practised in the 21st century and its strenuous attempts to hide a blatant truth of highest-level Saudi complicity.

It has also exposed the hypocrisy of some western nations that present themselves to the world as the moral guardians of human rights and international law.

When the recently named crown prince came closer to the Saudi throne and positioned himself as a great redeemer with so much power in his hands to modernise the autocracy, he was praised in many quarters as the reformer that the oil-rich nation needed to bring it into the 21st century.

So when the relatively young de facto ruler gave women the license to drive vehicles it was hailed as a progressive reform. But in the meantime the same man had jailed activists calling for modernisation and dissidents asking for genuine reform. Dissent is something for which bin Salman has a low tolerance level.

“The greater the power,” wrote Edmund Burke, “the more dangerous the abuse”. As this sad drama unfolds from total denial by Saudi Arabia to death by mistake and now to acceptance of guilt for the killing by a Saudi “hit squad”, those western nations that held the Saudi rulers to their bosom because to them Mammon means more than man, find they cannot extricate themselves from their own hypocrisy.

When news first broke about Khashoggi’s disappearance and suspected death in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul that unpredictable US President Donald Trump was among the first to jump into the fray, covering up for his Saudi friends by blaming some “rogue” elements for killing Khashoggi.

Trump was not interested in getting at the truth. He was only interested in safeguarding his arms deals with the autocrats in that desert kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is America’s No. 1 weapons buyer. Between 2013 and 2017, Riyadh accounted for 18 percent of total U.S. arms sales or about $9 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Yet a closer study reveals that the sales aren’t quite as big as Trump has boasted. The president recently praised Riyadh’s ambitions to buy $110 billion worth of U.S.-made arms. But that money hasn’t come through yet, according to State Department or Defence Security Cooperation Agency announcements.

While Washington has several arms agreements with Riyadh, it is unclear where the $110 billion figure comes from, aside from a potential wish list of future deals.

The UK is another country that has entered into arms deals with the Saudis and is a supplier of weapons used in the on-going conflict in Yemen, one of the poorest nations that is suffering constant bombardment by the Saudi-led coalition that is supported materially by the US and Britain.

British military sales to Saudi Arabia increased by two thirds in 2017 from 2016 — an increase of more than £450m, Sky News reported the other day. The real figure could be much higher as the number of so-called “secret” open licences doubled across the 12 months, from 21 to 44.

Britain issued 126 licences relating to military goods in 2017, with a value of £1.129bn – Department of International Trade figures show.

This is compared to 103 licences relating to military goods in 2016, with a value of £679m.

More than 10,000 people are thought to have died and 22 million people need assistance in Yemen in what the UN says is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The hypocrisy of these countries lies in the double standards they employ. The US and Britain have led the charge against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC pressing for international investigations and accountability trials for alleged violations of human rights and international law during the last months of the war against the separatist LTTE.

These countries and Canada have not changed their policies on Sri Lanka and would still like to see international participation in any accountability mechanisms that Sri Lanka would establish at some stage, if at all.

But curiously they have maintained a silence over the Saudi announcement that Riyadh would hold an investigation into the torture and killing of Jamal Khashoggi. And who is going to head this inquiry? Why Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who many claim is implicated in this heinous crime in which a Saudi national resident in the US was done to death in Turkey in a Saudi Arabian diplomatic mission — and the great upholders of human rights are only ready to wag their fingers at the culprits.

Imagine what would have been the reaction if a similar gruesome murder took place in Sri Lanka. The same western nations that preach their homilies to Sri Lanka about the violation of human rights and individual freedoms would have descended on Colombo with threats of sanctions and other dire consequences.

Yet when Saudi Arabia says it will inquire into its own abhorrent conduct the threats cease, the human rights abuses are forgotten-and possibly forgiven. Why the double standards? Why indeed.

That is all because the oil-rich kingdom has the money, and the Crown Prince apparently holds the purse strings. All the principles that the poorer countries are expected to adhere to and follow are thrown to the four winds when the weapons salesmen go on bended knee to the despots in the desert.

Why has the West not called for an international inquiry into the Khashoggi killing? Why is it the desert despots are permitted to continue with their primitive practices — torturing, killing and dismembering the body without any retributive justice for the guilty and the country’s rulers that seem to have permitted it?

I suppose dismembering the body comes easy for those whose system of justice permits them to sever the hands of some criminal offenders.

But what of those who continuously talk of their contributions to civilisation and civilised conduct? Why have they taken a vow of silence except to utter the pro-forma condemnations and continue with their business dealings?

Money, somebody once said, is the root of all evil. The petrodollars that make the world go round.