The murder of a Saudi journalist draws attention to U.S. complicity in Yemen
Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations go far beyond the homicide of one journalist.
The
apparent murder of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi brought a
renewed focus on U.S.-Saudi relations in October. Turkish investigators
report that Khashoggi, who had been a regular contributor to the
Washington Post, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to
retrieve documents for his forthcoming marriage. They believe he was
tortured and murdered while inside the consulate and his body disposed
of in pieces via diplomatic pouch—a bizarre and gruesome end to an
outspoken critic of the Saudi kingdom.
His
apparent murder has provoked calls for the termination of U.S. arms
sales to Saudi Arabia and a reassessment of the cozy relationship
between the “reformist” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the
Trump administration. So far the president has resisted efforts to
couple arms sales to improvements on human rights in the kingdom.
It
would be remarkable if the United States suddenly discovered the
Saudis’ problems with human rights via the apparent homicide of a single
journalist, however macabre his murder, when it has ignored the Saudis’
ongoing stomping on of human rights during the brutal management of its
war on Houthi rebels in Yemen. In that benighted Middle Eastern state,
one of the poorest in the world, a Saudi-led coalition has been for
years pummeling the civilian population in a so-far unsuccessful effort
to dislodge Iran-supported Houthi from Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a.
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